This whole story is narrated by Abby. I made up all the characters myself. This story is completely fictional. To anyone who wonders, my real name isn't Abby Robin.

Thank you so much to all of you who are taking the time to read my story! I really appreciate it!

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Intro

My name is Abby Robin. When I was in middle school, I was going through that boy-crazy phase that a lot of girls go through in there early teen years. There were tons of guys at my school, especially eighth graders, and a lot of them were pretty cute, but none of them really seemed to be the guy that I was looking for. That was until I got into eighth grade; but this whole story begins before then.

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Chapter 1

I awoke to the sound of my alarm clock blasting right in my ear. Apparently I had forgotten to turn it off the night before; I'd been up pretty late last night playing my iPod. I hit the snooze button; ugh, 7:15 AM. It was a Saturday and I was already up this early in the morning. I hated early mornings; once I would wake up, I wouldn't be able to get back to sleep. I figured I shouldn't waste any time lying in bed. I decided to check my e-mail real fast before I got in the shower. I had two new messages. One was from my best friend Kim, reminding me about our shopping spree today. She said to meet her and her mom at the front entrance at eleven. The other message was from one of my other friends, Hannah. She'd written: Hey, how's it going for you? That was nice of her, taking time out of her life to ask me how I was doing. I replied back:Not bad; Kim and I are going to the mall today. Can't wait to see you at church tomorrow! She was about half-a-year younger than me, but she was a really nice girl and I could tell her anything; I was glad she was my friend. I had a lot of friends at church; Kim and Hannah were only two of them. I went to church a lot, which was weird; I used to never want to go to church when I was little.

It took me only an hour to get in and out of the shower, get dressed, dry my hair, go downstairs and get breakfast, and go back up to brush my teeth. It was only 8:30 AM. What was I going to do for the next two hours? No one else was awake, so I decided to go downstairs and hang out on the computer for the time being. My mom came down an hour later. When she saw me, I could see a mixture of exhaustion and concern in her eyes.

"How long have you been up Abby?" she asked me.

"Only since 7:15."

"Aren't you tired?"

"No, not really. I took a shower less than an hour ago, so no."

"Really? I didn't hear you in the shower… So, am I still taking you to the mall today to meet with Kim?"

"Yeah, she said to meet her and her mom at the front entrance at eleven."

"Oh, OK. I better go get ready then."

You could definitely see where my earliness of starting the day came from. I thought about maybe doing homework, but that idea didn't really last in my head for a long time. Only forty-five minutes until I'd be at the mall with my best friend. We'd be leaving in half-an-hour, since it was a fifteen-minute drive there. Ugh, why do clocks have to go slower when you just stare at them? I started wondering where mom was. She never really took long, so I considered that she'd be down pretty soon. I was right; she finally came down ten minutes later.

"Are you ready yet?" I asked her eagerly.

"Yep, let's get going. I was wanting to go early so we can have some time to spend together."

That was so typical of my mom. She always wanted to spend time with me. I never minded; in fact, I usually enjoyed going out to spend time with her. Her plan worked perfectly, but the whole ride was silent.

* * * * * * *

Kim and her mom were waiting for us at the front doors. I could see that Kim was just as excited as I was about our shopping spree. She jumped up when she saw me, ran to me, and gave me that friendship hug we always had when we saw each other. It wasn't easy trying to escape her grip.

"I missed you all week Abby!"

Well of course; we hadn't seen each other since church last Sunday. That was practically the only way we saw each other: going to church on Sundays and choir practice on Wednesdays. We hadn't had choir this week due to the bad storm we'd had that night.

"I missed you too Kim!"

It was harder for us to hang out since we didn't go to the same school and we weren't in the same grade. My mom came over and handed me my wallet.

"You girls better be careful now; I put a lot of money in there."

Ugh! She was always so overprotective! She claimed that we were practically broke, but it was really just so that she could get herself the job of cashier at Wendy's. She used to be a dance teacher, but after she started to have problems with her knees, she'd given it up to be a cashier to work for fast food. Kim and I waved at our moms as we walked through the mall's front doors. This was the entrance to five hours of freedom, clothes, jewelry, and pizza. Kim was fonder of jewelry than I was, and I was fonder of clothes than she was. We lived in a pretty big town, so our mall was pretty big with more than sixty stores. Kim and I both liked a lot of the same stuff and shopped at a lot of the same stores, so we never had to split up. Since our day had started out a bit early, Kim suggested that we go skim the mall for cute boys.

"You know, you already have a boyfriend."

Must I have to remind her?!

"I know, but you don't have one!"

That one got me. It was true, and it never was untrue. I had never had a boyfriend, never kissed a boy, heck; I had never even held hands with a boy before! I hated it when my friends would tell me that they couldn't hang out because they had a date that night. Almost everyone I knew had had a boyfriend/girlfriend, so I was feeling a little left out. There were a lot of guys at our school, especially eighth graders, and most of them were pretty cute, but none of them seemed to fit me right. There was only one that really caught my eye…—

"Abby?"

I was snapped out of my train of thought.

"I'm sorry Abby. I know how much it bothers you, I just keep forgetting."

I hated seeing her upset like this.

"It's OK, it doesn't really bother me. I'll get one soon; let's go look for some cute boys."

Her face brightened the moment I said that. She was totally boy-crazy, but she would never cheat on her boyfriend! She knew way better than that. I did too, but then again, I'd never had the experience because I'd never even had the chance to. I'd already gotten so close to having a boyfriend, but it all ended in heartbreak, and I wasn't going to let that happen to me again! The skimming didn't really interest me and none of the boys seemed interested anyway. There was only one boy on my mind at the moment…—

"Abby! You've got to quit daydreaming! This whole "perfect Saturday" isn't going to be perfect if you keep getting lost in thought!"

She apparently was desperate for me to get a boyfriend soon; she must have felt alone being the only one of the two of us to have had one before. My mom had always told me that at my age it really wasn't necessary to date anybody. I didn't really feel the need to have a boyfriend, but there was that one boy at school that I had some interest toward…—

"I can't help it; you know there's only one guy that I'd rather be flirting with and asking for his number right now!"

I knew that even right before I could bring up his name in my own mind she'd interrupt me.

"Why do you always think about him? You don't even talk to him, so why do you even talk about him?!"

That honestly wasn't the smartest question she's asked. I had tons of reasons! I decided to get off the subject of boys and go to what we were here for anyway.

"I think he's a great guy, now let's go do some shopping! That's why we're here, isn't it?"

She took a second to consider it.

"Yeah, I guess you're right. Let's go!"

It was pretty fun for the four-and-a-half hours we spent in store after store. We only bought about one-third of the clothes we tried on and we had spent about an hour at the arcade. We'd gotten tired and hungry from playing Dance Revolution so much, so we headed to the food court. It was the usual mall meal: she got Chinese food; I got pizza and a pretzel. It was a pretty awesome time and I'd completely forgotten about boys altogether. Kim and I went to the candy store for our last stop of the day. We both got our favorite candy: chocolate mints. Yum! Everyone in my family loved them, so I decided to be thoughtful for them. It was about time for us to head back to the front doors. Our moms were waiting for us when we got there. Sadly, our day together was just about over, but we'd still get to see each other at church the next morning. We said our good-byes and went our separate ways. My mom was talking on the phone with my dad the whole ride home. I'm still surprised that she didn't even bother asking me how my time had been with Kim.

* * * * * * *

It sort of felt good to be home; it was the one place where I could do anything and no one would stare at me like I was crazy. I decided to go and see if Hannah had replied back to my e-mail yet. I had a new message from her. It read: Cool, glad you're enjoying your Saturday. I can't wait for us to hang out tomorrow either! Hey, did you hear about what Jacob and Kyle did to Kim when Jacob was over at their house? It was so funny! Kyle was Kim's brother. He was eighth grade, like me, and he was a pain sometimes. He tried to flirt with me quite often, but it never really did anything to how I felt about him. Actually, I had heard about what had happened. Kim had told me while we were getting lunch at the mall. She was an absolute die-hard New York Yankees fan, so they had put up a bunch of Boston Red Sox posters in her room. She had said how mad she was when she saw it all. I got a little bored, so I headed up to my bedroom. I couldn't help but notice my seventh grade yearbook sitting on my headboard of my bed. I picked it up and opened it. It opened up to one of last year's sixth grade homeroom classes. My friend Brenda had been in that class; I saw her picture at the top. We had a medium-sized school; there were about four hundred kids at our school, so it got pretty chaotic. I turned to last year's seventh graders. I turned to one homeroom class that'd had a bunch of the popular kids. The guy that I hadn't been thinking of for the past three-or-so hours was on the page too. Kim wasn't here anymore and I could think without her interrupting my thoughts. He was the one that had always caught my eye. He had been in my Music and Gym classes in sixth grade; seventh grade I think he had been in my Gym class too, but my memories of it all were fuzzy since I'd been focused so much on what was happening at the moment. What was happening at the moment? Well, I really liked this guy, but I was really shy to admit it. He was the one that kept me from staying in bed all morning and going to school instead.

Connor Dodson; he was an eighth grader too, probably about fourteen years old by then. He had short black hair, was about a half-inch taller than me, and had a slight mustache; he was pretty good-looking. He was pretty popular from how many people he hung out with. Half of them were girls, but none of them had ever seemed to be interested at all in any way, so I never had any competition. He was in my math class, that I was the only class I had with him and I never really talked to him. I heard his conversations a few times and they were pretty funny! I thought he was a pretty cute, funny, and nice guy. I went to sleep that night and dreamt that I went on a date with him and he kissed me. That was one thing I wish would happen between us out of many. I wanted to hold his hand, give him my special smile, dance with him; I even wanted to be his girlfriend someday pretty soon. Little did I know that my life would change in the next few months.