Rawr. I haven't written any Gallagher Girls fanfics before, but I love the series.
You sit in one of the many nooks and crannies in the attic of the Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women, feeling less than exceptional. Loneliness bears into your soul like a knife stabbing you in the back. You were taught not to cry, but you can't help it.
The tears have been falling for hours as you quietly sit still, focusing on the wall, thinking about everything that happened in the past four hours, seventeen minutes, and forty-three seconds.
"Why do you like him?" You can remember the anger in his voice, the anxiety. And maybe even some hurt. You can even read the subtext behind his words. Why do you like him more than me?
"I don't know," you remember replying quietly, fighting to look away from his face. It's filled with so much emotion, while yours is a blank canvas. You've always hid your emotions well.
"Don't give me that," he had snapped, looking into your brown eyes. "You like him…" Looking back, you can tell how hard it was for him to find any words on the subject at hand, as if he too wanted to crawl back under his shell. "You like him because he saw you when no one else did. Right?"
You remember nodding, having nothing else to say. Because he was right.
"You like him," he had continued, "because he was a normal boy." He had tried so hard to hide his laughter, something he never hid all too well. He was a happy boy on the outside, but so torn up inside. "And he thought you were a normal, just like him."
The tears come faster now, all these hours later. His words still sting more than Bex's punches, Liz's sunburns, and Macey's comebacks combined.
"Don't be normal, Gallagher Girl," he had said, using the nickname he'd always used when mocking her. But the mocking tone was gone, replaced only by sadness and fury, the world's worst combination. "I hate normal."
And just like that, the memory ends, leaving you drowning in the tears you never cry, the tears that only your dead father have seen. Because you are Cameron Morgan, the chameleon, and all you want is to be different like Zachary Goode, the boy you truly love.