Total pages in book: 107
Estimated words: 97337 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 487(@200wpm)___ 389(@250wpm)___ 324(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 97337 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 487(@200wpm)___ 389(@250wpm)___ 324(@300wpm)
Her best feature, and the ones she kept hidden at all times are her eyes. They’re a blue so pale that in certain light they appear almost translucent. An anomaly that leaves all who see them wondering how such a thing were possible. Not even contacts could be found with the same hue.
She’d known since childhood that there was something wrong with her eyes. Not technically, like she had poor eyesight, but there was definitely something odd about them. It was evident in the way people reacted to them. They were always either staring or making strange comments when she was younger.
She’d learned to walk with her head down and never looked anyone in the eye because her unusual eyes always brought her trouble. As a child it was hard to understand, but she hasn’t been faring much better on that score as an adult.
When she first moved in with the family her aunt had warned her not to look at people because it made them uncomfortable, making her even more self conscious about her odd eyes. Her cousins just told her that they were ugly.
So believing this, she’d taken to hanging her head whenever in the company of others. It had worked well enough and for a while she was spared the inconvenience of what she perceived to be a physical attribute that she couldn’t readily change.
The one time she’d slipped up at sixteen her cousin’s boyfriend had hit on her and she’d ended up with almost all the hair pulled out of her head. Of course no one believed that she hadn’t enticed him, and once again she’d borne the brunt of her family’s anger.
It was the first time she saw the effect her strange eyes had on the opposite sex and it scared her just a little bit. She didn’t understand what the big deal was, it’s not like she had any control over them.
She’d tried wearing contacts when she got older, but they were too irritating and glasses only seemed to enhance the color, making it even brighter. So, there was nothing to help her look up at the world.
Because of her cousins’ constant bullying she’d become more and more withdrawn, so that by the time she left for college she had all but disappeared into the wallpaper.
In college she’d set a goal for herself, to get her B.A and Masters in five years, which meant constant studying with no let-up for those five years.
So that eliminated dating and anything else resembling a life. It was also in college where she learned about transitional glasses, which was the answer to everything as far as she was concerned.
Though she still had to keep her eyes down when indoors, it didn’t matter as much, since she spent most of her time in a classroom where she wasn’t in the habit of staring down her five and six year olds. But once outside, the world was her oyster. Hidden as she was behind the dark tint of the lenses.
And so she was able to get through college as the shy loner who kept to herself and was always the most excited to get the crappiest closet sized dorm room, because it meant no roommate.
She’d accepted the job and moved to town within a matter of weeks after graduation. She did meet someone not long after moving, quite by accident, but it didn’t work out.
She wasn’t ready for what he wanted, and wasn’t even sure she even liked the man that had bombarded her for a date for weeks before she finally said yes out of desperation.
Once again it had been her eyes that had landed her in hot water. She’d taken her glasses off to read the fine print on a label in the grocery store and he just happened to be there when she looked up again.
She lived through two of his obnoxiously overbearing dates before telling him she wasn’t interested and hoped to go back to her life. It was not meant to be.
Robert has been making a pest of himself ever since she turned him down the first time. Here lately he’d grown even worst, more persistent. Her naturally shy nature wasn’t equipped to deal with something like that and she was still having a hard time getting the overbearing man to leave her alone in peace.
Now as if that wasn’t enough, she had this added headache to deal with. The thought of being alone in a room full of jocks for any length of time was enough to give her heart palpitations.
Like every young girl, she knew all about the most popular boys in school. The kind every girl wants to get with. And though she knew the definition of jock, she’d never had any real dealings with one even as a teenager herself and her lack of confidence when it comes to the opposite sex made the idea of dealing with them now break her out in hives.