I didn't think there could be a nickname for me.

I was a farm boy, hands perpetually scored with the remnants of blisters that had gotten infected and scarred. My hands were shoved inside gloves nowadays, hidden from anyone and everyone, even Sammi, the pretty girl who lived on the farm just three miles down the road. She approached me once, hands on her tiny little hips, her fingertips nearly touching the end of her skimpy little denim shorts. Her stomach was bare, since her orange jacket of matching denim was tied right beneath her breasts, the tell-tale slash in her upper body telling me that Sammi wasn't as flat-chested as I thought.

At the sight of the gloriously under clad female, my hands unconsciously dove for my gloves and yanked them on, while I blinked innocently at my neighbor, watching her erupt in a fit of giggles at my lopsided smile, chestnut hair swishing as she did.

"So Noah…" She trilled, taking a step closer to me and leaning against the barn walls, brushing a twist of hair from over her face and smashing her skinny little arm against mine. "How have your cows been?" I knew she was stalling, since Sammi didn't care a whit about cows and was more interested in flirting.

"Oh…fine." I muttered, distracted by the two bouncing lumps on her bosom. For the love of God, everywhere I looked, I saw those behemoths jiggling alluringly like she had super-glued giant Jell-O cups right onto her formerly microscopic ding-a-lings. I blinked and tried to focus on her sapphire eyes. "One of them had a calf last week."

"Really?" Sammi squealed and grabbed my arm, squishing her jahoobies right up against me and giving my hand a little tug every word she said. "Show me, show me, show me, show me!"

"Alright, alright, I'll go see if she's in the barn. But I doubt it, the mama hates it in there. Usually she's in the pasture." I peeled Sammi off me and motioned downward with my gloved hands, telling her to stay there though I doubted she understood.

The moment I opened the door I shut it.

I jogged back to Sammi and shrugged apologetically. "Sam, she's not in there and one of the horses is hungry. You'll have to go home now." I was sure it was a horrible excuse but Sammi seemed to understand, slowly backing up towards her truck. "Oh, okay…bye, Noah!" I watched her wopbopaloobops swing like pendulums one more time, before dashing back to the barn and squeezing into the darkened room.

There was a little shape on the floor, small but long-limbed and willowy. A wild crown of scarlet ringlets were splayed out on the dusty wood floor and the position was floppy, as if she had just collapsed right where she was. She was face-down, both legs bent at an angle and slid next to each other, though one knee was less bent then the other. One arm was thrown casually on the ground, almost beseechingly, and the other lay in front of her with her forehead pressed against the back of her wrist.

At first I thought it was some kind of robber, like a pretty bait in some action movie and a guy in a black suit would jump out and shoot me thirty-seven times in the chest and then as I died the girl would drop a playing card on me or something cheesy like that.

But then I noticed that someone who faked being asleep would not be in that uncomfortable position, and hadn't moved an inch from the moment I'd laid eyes on her. "Um…hello? You do know you're on private property, right? I could shoot you and the police wouldn't give a shit."

No reaction whatsoever. She lay there like a rag doll tossed on the ground by an angry little girl. I grabbed a rake from a hook on the wall, and prodded her arm gingerly with one spike. The skin bounced back harmlessly, and she didn't even twitch a finger. I poked her harder, and still nothing happened. Finally I just whacked her in the back of the head with the web of tin spines. "Hey, sleepy-head, want to get arrested?"

I frowned. Damn, she was out. Carefully I took a few steps toward her, hoping to God she wouldn't reach out and grab my ankle and pull me into hell or something. But she did nothing. The Mysterious Dozing Girl laid there limply, and it dawned on me that she wasn't a threat.

Slowly I prodded her in the shoulder, then stuck my middle and index finger underneath her wild curls and searched for that vein in her neck. I found it, throbbing faintly at a slow, waltz-like tempo. But it was obvious to me she wasn't waking up anytime soon.

Then, I pushed her side so she flipped over and I saw the front half of her body.

She was wearing an light brown over-sized t-shirt with a darker brown cartoon owl on it, a speech bubble next to it reading 'I WILL EAT YOUR YOUNG.' Dark denim jeans with a rip in the knee and chartreuse paint spattered all over them covered her legs, and black and white sneakers were tied loosely in shaggy, frayed bows.

I tilted my head at her fashion choice but glanced at her face that had been unveiled by the crimson curls. Her face was childish, with huge doe-eyes shrouded with bruises underneath them, high cheekbones, and a sharp, defiant chin. Her jawline was severe, her nose adorably curved at the edge and her neck was long. But what I really noticed was the trickling wound at the side of her forehead, at her hairline.

I could tell it was at least two days old and it was still bleeding, which worried me. I flipped away the hair and found little dark purple bruises next to it, like someone had stabbed her really hard with a short, blunt knife. It looked fairly deep, and her complexion was scarily pale and chalky.

As I gingerly pressed two fingers to the wound, a shudder ripped through her fragile body and her darkened eyelids fluttered open. Glassy green irises flecked with gold swiveled around dizzily, and then were shrouded once more as her eyes flickered closed once again.

"Uh…are you awake?"

Obviously not. She had fainted again. Maybe it was just a reflex, maybe my fingertips touching her skull just make her brain freak out and she was in a coma or something. But something told me that by the way her gaze swung to look at me that she wasn't.