But, in their youthful innocence, neither had the courage to do anything about it. And she was sure he felt something for her, back then. They sat together that year in English class, and Laura’s heart would start pounding every time he came near.

Back then, he was the shy kid sitting at the back of the class, the one who got picked on for being too smal, for having hair too long. Infatuated with him ever since entering high school.

The problem was, he was never talking to her. Eyes as radiant as emeralds graced his face, and he had an easy smile whenever he was talking to someone he liked. A star on her school’s lackluster footbal team, Brady had golden flowing locks that Laura had fal en in love with the first time she saw them. That Brady Shel didn’t seem to know she existed.īrady – of course – was the typical al -American high school heartbreaker. That was her biggest problem, and by far the most pressing. Now, if she could only get Brady Shel to look at her twice… Sure, it was a cookie-cutter kind of perfect, but it was hers. In fact, she considered her life to be nearly perfect. If it al seemed a little bit ordinary, so what? She had fun with her friends, did wel in school, and – as she knew al too wel – everybody around here lived the same way. More or less like every other girl going to school with her. While she wouldn’t consider herself beautiful by any stretch, she had been cal ed pretty often enough in her 17 years of existence.

She never felt herself to be one of those people destined for greatness and by al indications that life had given her, neither did anyone else. At home, she had a happily married mother and father, a wel -behaved younger sister, and one large, rather bulky dog. She had a good group of friends who she had grown up with and loved with al her heart. In fact, sometimes she found herself feeling bad for those people she’d read about in stories or see in movies – the kind who always founds themselves on the move, in a new environment, a new place, and always struggling to fit in. There was nothing to complain about – but nothing to write home about either. Nothing particularly exciting ever happened where she lived, and if that sometimes made things dul, so be it. She knew every nook and cranny of the town she lived in, and wouldn’t have preferred it any other way. She had been in one place her whole life, and couldn’t imagine what it would be like having to move around while growing up. She went to a public high school in Vancouver, Washington, located the outskirts of nearby Portland. Laura Cubus lived an ordinary life, in a very ordinary school.

Shattered by Sophia Sharp