The first time you meet her, you’re both twelve years old. You’re all knobby knees and big mouths and teeth that are a little crooked. She’s wise beyond her years and looks at you like the dirt on the bottom of her shoe. You’ve both been through too much, too young. You flinch when she raises her voice or goes to high-five you or hit your shoulder. She is battle-worn and her eyes get hard whenever she looks at the tree on the hill. You’re not in love, but you’re in like, at least, but that’s maybe because she knows everything and you don’t know anything. Still, she tolerates you, barely, but that’s okay. That’s all you could ever ask of her. That is, until you get closer and closer and then almost all at once you realize that you’re hooked on her, but at least she is too. By now, you’ve been to hell and back together, but gods, it made you stronger than anything.
The first time you meet her, you’re ten and she’s nine. Your stomach feels all fluttery and you don’t know why because you’re supposed to like boys. But there she is, with her knocked out teeth and her messy hair and her hard eyes and her bloody knuckles and you can’t help it. You go to your sister, and she tells you that there’s such thing as boys who like boys and girls who like girls, and that’s okay. And then you meet her, with her muscular arms and her calloused hands and her grease-stained face, and you hate everything because who ever heard of loving two people at once? You force it away for six years, but you’re in love, and your mother is proof that love always finds a way. And somehow, somehow, they’re both yours for a short time, anyway, before everything goes to shit.
The first time you meet her, you’re ten, and she’s twelve. She’s the prettiest, the best, the strongest girl that you’ve ever met. But she breaks her promise, and you’re broken. You want to be fixed, but you don’t know how to do that, so you run away. She tries to help, but you push her away until you’re stuck in a pit alone and you hate everyone and everything, and you ignore the useless puppy crush that won’t go away. It fades, it fades so slowly, until one day you're looking at her, and it doesn't seem like the stars are shining in her eyes any more. And that's okay.
The first time you meet her, she’s sixteen, and you’re fourteen, and you still hate everything. She shines like the sun (and isn’t that an appropriate comparison) and she wants to help you. She’s so nice to you and you just don’t get it. No one likes you, you’re the fucking Ghost Queen, and you’re a curse, but here she is, offering you a hand and pulling you up out of your pit. You don’t even realize you’re falling for her until you’re already gone and she's smiling at you and her cheeks are bright red and she's kissing you and you forget, for a moment, that you're messed up inside. Because she's a healer and she's helping you heal herself, and that's when you realize you love her more than anything in the world. It's scary, it's more terrifying than any monster you've ever faced, but as long as she's right here with you, maybe it will be okay.
The first time you meet her, you’re both sixteen. She’s gorgeous, and even though you don’t remember everything - you don’t even remember if you’re into girls, but if you weren’t before, then she’s your answer - you hope to the gods that what she remembers is real. Except it isn’t and you hate it, and you’re confused and you need space, and it tears you apart to stay away from her, but you don’t know who you are anymore. Because she’s perfect in the most imperfect way, with her small smiles and her swirling eyes and her attempts to be everything but who people think she’s supposed to be. She’s everything to you, and you’re in love from the very beginning, so that much has to have been real the whole time. It has to, because otherwise it feels like you’ll fall apart, so you hold yourself together and she’s always there if you need a reminder that everything is real now.
The first time you meet her, you’re both sixteen, and you think it’s just another day with your best friends in the world. But she’s staring around with her striking eyes, squinting like always, and confused as hell, and something isn’t right. You find out why and it feels like you’re lost, because your best friend isn’t your best friend, and that’s when you realize you don’t want to just be friends. But she’s not in love with you and that’s okay, because you’re broken anyway, and no one wants to date someone who can fix everything but herself. So you nod along as everyone else ogles hot actresses and pretend you care, and pretend to flirt with every pretty girl that crosses your path, just like you pretend that you don’t love her, because you couldn’t even give her what she’d want. The feeling fades eventually, but then she’ll smile or flip her hair and the butterflies are back, and you hate her because she’s happy with your other best friend, and they love each other. But you don’t say anything, because you’re broken and unimportant, and that’s okay. You’re okay.
The first time you meet her, she’s sixteen and you’re thirteen. You’re tiny and innocent and confused and when you think about how you want to kiss her, your stomach hurts. Because it may be okay now (sort of, to an extent) but that kind of thinking is wrong where you’re from. And you’re confused because you felt this same way for him and that’s just impossible, right? You half-expect to get stoned to death when you find out the term for it from her - you’re bisexual, it means you like girls and guys. But the descriptor comes like a breath of fresh air because you’re not alone and you’re not sick, at least not now. Not here. (It still feels like you are.) And then there she is, standing beside Jason, all long limbs and muscle with a bit of chub and awkwardly fitting camo clothes and she looks like she wants to crawl into a hole and you just want to hug her, right and wrong be damned. And that’s when everything your mother ever said about your cursed father clicks, because you love her so much, you couldn’t care less about what the rest of the world thinks.