The thing is: they're perfect for eachother.
But they are both so stubborn and scared.
He keeps telling himself that he doesn't have feelings and she thinks she's too good for a boy like him.
&&&
It all seems a little dramatic to me.
The constant circle that their lives run in - fight, apoligize, repeat - is exhausting. And they get so loud. My sisters and I hardly ever fight, and even when we do, it never reaches the level that Casey and Derek's fights always do.
At first, I thought it was just the fact that they were a blended family. But the longer they lived together, the worse it got. In the beginning, he would prank her, which in turn pissed her off, and she would yell, and he would smirk, and she would slam her door, and he might apoligize later. Then, as they grew older, the fighting changed. He said things he couldn't take back, and she threw out some concrete words of her own. He began feeling things he didn't understand, and she refused to look at it from a different point of view.
---
You'd never believe it, but I wrote a poem about them once.
Stupid and ridiculous, and if Derek ever saw it, he'd have enough material to mock me for a decade.
(I got an A+ and the teacher begged me to let her read it in front of the class. I refused.)
---
Some blonde girl named Brittany is draped all over Derek, and I am so over highschool parties.
Hip-hop blasts through the speakers, red plastic cups litter the ground. The living room is packed with wasted teenagers, all of whom are probably going to get caught later because they're too drunk to sneak back into their rooms. Ralph walks up to me, stands on my left, sips from the cup in his hand.
"Beer?" I ask.
"Of course." He says before he takes a healthy swig.
I nod, and he says looks like D's having a good time.
"Yeah," I say.
(Apparently he doesn't see the way Derek's eyes keep searching the room for his step-sister.)
I spot my former girlfriend in the kitchen, chatting up Emily while drinking a bottle of water. I look back to Derek and find that he has also seen her, his eyes are focused on her face and I want to say Dude, stop being so obvious.
Casey looks away from Emily for a moment, and their eyes meet. It's the kind of eye-locking that makes the whole room fade away, I can tell. She breaks away first, and he stares after her for a second longer, then he looks back to the girl that is currently kissing his neck.
Brittany's pretty, but she's so ordinary. Golden blonde hair, blue-green eyes, and tan skin. He's dated atleast twenty other girls exactly like her; she's nothing special.
And I know why. I know why.
She's not special because she's not Casey. She doesn't have those freezing blue eyes, or that graceful dancer's body. She doesn't have legs that go on for miles, or a smile that could light up a room. She's nothing compared to Casey, and it's not only about her looks. Casey is Casey. She's crazy and ambitious and clever and smart and loyal and nice and... she's just... there's no one like her.
It sounds like I'm in love with the girl, but I'm not. I could've loved her, but once I figured out that she and Derek were soul mates, that dream kind of faded away.
I catch the two of them sneaking glances at eachother again, and I want to lock them in a room together and refuse to let them out until they tell eachother how they really feel. I could do it, but they'd probably starve before they admitted the truth.
Ralph and I stand around, doing nothing but sipping on our beers and watching the people that stumble around us. Finally he says, I think I'm gonna head out. I say bye, and then I head to the bathroom. I come back downstairs, notice that Derek and Casey are no longer in their spots. They've probably gone home, so I decide to leave, but before I can get to the door I see something that stops me in my tracks.
Through the kitchen, I can see out the back door, and in the back yard I can see Casey and Derek.
They're fighting, which is not suprising, but what is suprsising is the fact that Derek's yelling. I can't hear him, but I can tell by the way his mouth is forming around his words. Casey normally yells a lot when they fight, but Derek usually doesn't raise his voice; he doesn't get as frustrated as she does, he can keep his cool. But tonight, something has happened, something big. I don't know how I've missed it, because I've been like, five feet away from him all night. Apparently I took a bathroom break at the exact wrong time.
Emily walks up to me, observes the situation.
"Did you catch what happened?"
I shake my head and she says damn; my mom called and I went in a bedroom to answer it. What do ya think it is?
I shrug and we watch the scene that's playing out in front of us.
There's more yelling, more of Casey rolling her eyes, more of Derek shaking his head. Five minutes later, Emily's phone buzzes and she groans.
"I've gotta go. Stupid curfew. Tell me how it ends on Monday."
She leaves. They fight. I watch.
Finally, I get bored of seeing with no sound. I leave out the front door and creep around to the back, determined to figure out a piece of the puzzle. I crouch down behind a bush, completely hidden. My eyes find them through the leaves and branches, her hands are balled into fists and his shoulders are tense with agitation.
"He was supposed to meet me here tonight. What did you do?"
Huh?
"I didn't do anything, Casey."
There's silence as she glares at him, and he says I am so gone.
She grabs his arm, "What did you do?"
"Nothing."
"I like him, Derek! I really like him! He's not Max or Sam or Noel. He's... something different and I like him."
Derek jerks his arm away.
He glares at her, really glares at her, and it's angry and confused and I've never seen Derek like this before. He swallows hard, starts walking away.
"De-rek."
He stops, his back going rigid with the sound of his name flowing from her lips.
"What?"
"What is wrong? Why are we fighting like this? What did I do?"
Derek doesn't turn around, doesn't do anything. Finally, finally, he says:
"Truman. Truman is what's wrong. We're fighting because I can see what you can't. And what did you do? You picked a guy that's... that's exactly like me."
And then he walks away, leaving Casey standing there, alone, watching his retreating form with wide eyes.
---
Stone statues forever frozen,
running circles, always fighting.
Time has no meaning,
they stand still, perpetually battling for dominance.
War tears them apart, and in the end
they realize that hate is another form of love.
Sam Richards - Eleventh Grade English
Author Note - that took forever. Sorry. Who should I do next?