Nadine's Point of View

I want to be like those girls in the movies
and have a man so in love with them..
it makes him drop to his knees...
-Unknown

Let me be the first to explain that I don't have any reservations against love. I'm all for it, actually. Great guy saves girl from a life of loneliness and despair? Man stepping in, in the nick of time to save a girl from a horrible situation? Heck, a guy saying 'God bless you' after a girl sneezes—I'm all for it. Just not for me. I probably have watched every chick-flick known to man and have read as many romance books as I could get my hands on and for that some would call me a hopeless romantic, and they'd be right. I'm just not ready to be in love with anyone. Least of all…

"Thatcher Wood! Thatcher Wood, as in; I knock back brewskies down by the old train tracks!" I screamed into the cordless phone.

It was later that night, and I had called Angie to have someone to whine to, since I had run out of other people willing to listen to me. I had already tried to complain to my mom and all she had to say to me was; "You can tell a lot about a person by how they handle a rainy holiday, lost luggage, and a flat tire." How the heck is that supposed to help me out? Generally I love her words of wisdom, but I'm not really sure what she was trying to say. So, of course, I headed to Dad, whose response to my heartfelt speech of hatred toward that which is Thatcher Wood was; "Since when do you have a boyfriend?! Why am I the last to know everything?! You're too young to date—you're what, eleven?"

Try seventeen, Dad.

After the failed attempt with Dad, I headed for my little brother, Twister (Actually it's ' Monet', but ever since he was dubbed a Twister™ king, he's gone by his nickname—and can you blame him? His other options were 'Mon' or 'Monnie') and being the wise sixteen-year-old boy that he is, he asked me if I was secretly harboring an intense crush on Thatcher and if I was using this opportunity to tell everyone about him without openly having to admit to my feelings. His exact words were 'testing the waters', I believe. My reaction had, of course, been to throw a pillow at him. This only prompted him to ask me if I was attacking him because subconsciously I knew he was right.

It's not always fun being the older sister to a certified genius.

So I had decided to leave him before he tried analyzing me anymore or before I succumbed to the need to throttle him, and headed for my older sister's bedroom. (Jasmine's going to a community college, and is living at home. Strangely enough, everybody loves this setup.) 'Wasn't Thatcher that hot junior that switched schools at the end of his sophomore year?' Was her reply to all my whining about the evil Thatcher Wood—who just so happens to be a senior now.

By then it was late and the only other person to talk to was our demonic cat, Silesia (aka, "Silly"), who I happen to fear. Actually, everybody fears Silly. Our mailman refuses to bring our mail up to the door anymore. He used to knock on the door and share pleasantries with Dad, but ever since the time Silly was at the door (and attacked him with more fury than a dog) when he brought up the mail, he's been throwing it on the porch and taking off running towards our neighbor's house.

So it's understandable that I chose to call Angie rather than die. Since it had been eight in the evening I had thought that Luke (who had also been conveniently sick today) would have gone home. No suck luck, I could hear him laughing in the background.

It's not that I don't like Luke—I do. It's just that ever since he came around, there hasn't really been a need for me in Angie's life. Or at least that's what she lets me believe, and doesn't even seem to care that it's how I feel. I've become the dreaded third wheel, and I hate it. Moreover, I wish there was something that I could do about it, but I don't really have many other friends besides Angie, so I'm more or less screwed. Besides, she's always been my best friend…it just hurts being the one left behind.

"How would you know that he drinks down there? Unless you went down there to howl at the full moon again." Angie replied, a snicker in her tone.

"You know full and well that I go down there to look at the stars! And I'm not some werewolf; Ange….I only did it once, for experience purposes." And it happened to be the night that I saw Thatcher down there, and he had completely thrown me for a loop when he made his presence known and went searching for the "wolf". Sadly, it was our first encounter with each other—one I've never forgotten.

She laughed, "You're so crazy, chica."

I rolled my eyes and caught my reflection in the mirror attached to my closet door. My hair was in at least a hundred little braids that reached my waist (which I had found was the only way to control my mane of hair. I may love Diana Ross, but I don't want to look like her with the whole afro thing). My dark caramel skin was blemish-free at the moment and my dark brown eyes were full of sadness.

The matchmaker had taken away my best friend, and all she had to do was force Angie on a blind date. I can't let Meghan keep doing things like this—I can't let her ruin other people's lives. Love shall not prevail! Not while I still have breath in my body, I will stop Meghan from ever conducting her terrible deeds of matchmaking in Rose Water Creek again! Mark my words—she is going down!

"Die." I growled.

"What?" Angie asked.

"Nothing."

"Look, you've never been able to keep a boyfriend…actually; you've never had a boyfriend. I say you give Thatcher a chance, if for nothing else so that people stop calling you a lesbian. You know they think you have a thing for me, don't you?"

I glared at the cordless phone and then clicked the off button. Seinfeld was right; there wasn't as much satisfaction on clicking that button as there would have been from slamming the phone onto the cradle. Darn technology…

I can't believe she'd even say that. At least not in the tone she used; condescending I believe you would call it. A tone she's been using on me for a long time now. Ever since Luke came into her life to be exact. It's almost as though she suddenly believes that she's above me just because she has a boyfriend—which isn't fair, not at all. It's not like I can just go out and buy one…although I can apparently have them thrown at me.

I want to have a boyfriend, that's the thing. I would love to have someone that would protect me from evil (or really mean people…same difference) and that would make it his personal mission to make sure that I'm never cold. I would love to have a guy that would always give me a ride home from school when it was raining, even if he can never remember any of our anniversaries. I would love to have a guy around that saw me as something beautiful and just wanted to be around me. I would love it…I just know that it'll never happen. Besides, I'm not ready for love…I'd be too scared for it. I wouldn't know the first thing to do if I was in love and I'd always be terrified that I'd screw something up.

I'm a coward when it comes to love—big deal.

No one would ever want me in the first place, so there's no reason to worry. I'm too shy/crazy for anyone to want to stick around and see things through. They'd run for the hills or try to get a date with Brooke Rivers…or something like that. More to the point, I'm not ready for heartbreak and I know that that and love go hand in hand with each other. No one marries their first real boyfriend, so I may as well mature a bit more before I have to deal with that crap. Which is why I really need to fix my Thatcher Wood problem now.

"Nads? Naddie…where are you sweetheart?" Mom called up the stairs and I froze, turning to stare at my bedroom door in horror. She only calls me sweetheart when she wants something. The last time she called me sweetheart I ended up on the room cleaning out the gutters. Oh, did I forget to mention that it started raining while I was up there?! And what did my wonderful, caring mother have to say about the weather? She told me I should stop clutching to the gutters so hard, because I'd break them.

Basically, I can't let her find me.

I dived underneath my bed and scooted as far back from the edge that I could. I was trying to be as silent as a church mouse and hoping that she'd move on to one of her other two children. Jasmine was always the graceful and athletic one; she would do great at whatever Mom asked her to do. Furthermore, Twister has always been the smart one; he would be able to easily fix Mom's problem. I've always been the creative one; can't I just be left alone? What has creativity ever done? Well…besides all those things that it's done…

I can't let her find me.

"Nadine Elizabeth Whittaker! Come here!"

Crap! How'd she move into her angry mode so fast? Whatever happened to the all the sweetheart business? Oh no, that means only one thing: it's time to take the trash out. You'd think that it wouldn't be such a big deal, but in our house it really is. My father is what you'd call a crazy inventor (otherwise known as a man that gets paid to make messes for a living), so generally we have about a thousand trash bags to take outside to the street every week, and they always seem to weigh about a hundred pounds each. Each bag is filled with inventions gone wrong and all the stuff that he uses to clean up after the calamitous experiments.

Sometimes the stuff that he creates eats right through plastic and come leaking out of the bags. Who in the world would want to mess with something that burns through plastic? Not I, which is why I generally try to escape my turn of trash duties—and who can blame me? But since everyone else in the household tries to do the same exact thing (and they are all willing to band together if it means that they don't have to do something) it always seems to be my turn to take the trash out.

Majority rules.

I curled into a fatal position and squeezed my eyes shut, and then horror upon horrors happened: the phone began to ring.

Angie.

Since I didn't want to talk to her I tried to cover the phone with my body to muffle the noise. It didn't seem to be working. Finally I turned the phone on and kicked it away from me.

"Nadine?" I slowly turned my head to see my mother peeking underneath the bed. "Who's on the phone, sweetheart? Oh, and the trash needs to be taken out tonight." She smiled and then got up and walked out of my room, "Thank you dear."

I groaned and reached for the phone as I crawled out from under the bed, ready to tear into Angie for what she'd done. "I'm never talking to you again." I hissed into the phone once I retrieved it, "And I will find you and make you eat the garbage that you have forced me to take out."

"What did I do?" Jasmine asked through the phone and my breath caught and I frowned, and then looked up to see her standing in my doorway. A smirk was upon her face and her cell phone was pressed to her ear, my jaw dropped in surprise. "You should really be getting to that trash, don't you think?" She went on and I felt my eyes narrow.

"You're pure evil." I growled, hanging up the phone and pulling myself to my feet, "Pure evil."

She laughed and clicked her cell phone off, "Yeah, yeah I know."

I pushed past her roughly and walked out into the hallway outside my bedroom door, "It's nice to know that my family will turn against me in my time of need!" I called out over my shoulder as I made my way downstairs and out of the kitchen door.

We have one of those garages that have a connecting overhang to the house, and in the little area we store all our trash. That's a lot of trash, believe me here. I stared at the mound of black garbage bags and shook my head. Thinking about how my life sometimes sucked…or rather that every Wednesday night it sucked (read that as: garbage night).

Sighing I grabbed on of the bags and tried to lug it away from the herd. It had to have weighed at least fifty pounds all on its own and I apparently can't lift that much weight. I tugged at it and nothing happened, it stayed exactly where it was. Trying again all I managed to do was fall over. By then I had things to work out on the bag and tugged it as though it were Jasmine's hair (yeah, I was working through my anger); it finally moved. After managing to lug it from our little hill of waste I began the long trek of dragging it down to the sidewalk.

It was so dark I couldn't even see my feet in front of me. When I turned back to look at the bag I couldn't even see it. And other than being dark, it was a freezing night in January. I was cold and blind—what fun. The only light to see by was coming from the street lamps, and the bulbs were so dim that you could only see when standing directly beneath them and even then you could only see the area immediately around you. Someone would have to be right on top of you before you'd even realize they were there. Which is creepy…have I mentioned that I'm afraid of the dark?

I took a deep breath and resumed dragging the bag to the street, trying in vain to distract myself from my fear of vampires, werewolves, aliens, and strangers. Nighttime was the friend to all of them, and they used it as a shield for all their wrong doings. Especially the last ones; strangers are as scary as Satan in a leotard—and they're even scarier when it's dark out.

"When it's trash duty, no one can help me, but if I needed help on a science project, math homework, of anything that has to do with the English language I'd have tons of help." I muttered to myself as a way to distract myself from my intense fear of the boogeyman, "If I had the suddenly inkling to join ballet I would have help, but help taking out the toxic trash? No one to be seen."

I finally made it to the sidewalk and dropped off the bag, only to have to head back and start again. After ten though, I was exhausted and there had to be at least twenty to go. Which isn't good at all, seeing as the limit of trash bags per house is twelve. This meant only one thing; I'd have to start lugging the bags further from home (which I don't believe I can possibly do) so that I could leave them at our neighbors' drop off points.

I had managed to get one over to Mr. McAllister's mailbox, but I was having trouble with the second one. Hissing through clenched teeth I pulled as hard as I could on the bag, but I couldn't even feel my arms. It didn't truly stop me from trying, but it was definitely making me hate my family a bit more intensely.

I glanced behind me to see that there was quite a ways to go before I'd make it over to where his four piddly trash bags were. Squaring my shoulders I took a deep breath and gave my all to trying to move the bag, but all I managed to do was lose grip of the bag and fall on my butt. Breathing hard I stared up towards the sky, "Oh come on!" I screeched, "How about some divine intervention?!"

They say God works in mysterious ways; apparently one of those ways is by not helping out a poor little girl and her trash bags from Hell.

I sat up and stared at the bags angrily, preparing myself to stand up and try at it again. Then the smell of nicotine made its way to my nose, I glanced up and saw a little orb of red making its way towards me. I was too far away from the streetlights to be able to see and the smoker of the cigarette was basically invisible to me. My heart started to race as it all connected in my mind—whoever was coming near me was a stranger, and I couldn't see them at all.

After processed that, it made its way to the irrational. Suddenly the thought of being put in jail for trying to dupe the trash company filled my mind. How was I supposed to tell the other girls in prison why I was there? They'd beat the crap out of me if I told them I was sent to the pokey for dragging trash bags to my neighbors' lawns. I guess I could tell them that I killed a man…

"Are you okay?" the deep voice of a stranger asked—a voice that was strangely familiar.

I jumped, my eyes transfixed from the glow of the cigarette. "Y-yeah, I'm okay…great in fact…I was just taking my trash out to the street." I whispered, stumbling over my words.

Whoever it was took another deep drag from their cigarette and then tossed it to the sidewalk where they ground it out beneath their heel. Or at least that's what I think they did, since the light was smothered. I was still staring at the cigarettes final resting place when the owner of said coffin nail asked me a question. I shook my head and looked up at them.

"What was that?" I asked in a breathy tone.

"Do you need a hand up?" they—I mean, he—repeated slowly.

"Um…sure." I answered then almost jumped out of my skin when I felt strong hands wrapping around my elbows. They carefully trailed up my arm until they reached my hands (leaving everything in their wake rather warm) and then grasped them and pulled me up. Once I was standing on my feet, I could practically feel the warmth of the body in front of me…I could also smell the coffin nails on him.

"Do you need any help?" he asked and before I could say anything he leaned down and picked up the bag of trash I'd been trying to lug. I couldn't see anything, but it sounded as though he did little to no dragging of the bag at all, and before I knew it the warmth was back. "Need any more help?"

"Y-yes…they're more by my house." I whispered, and then slowly walked over towards the mound of bags. I could actually feel the person walking behind me and hear them as they walked over snow. Once I reached the pile, I wished that we had a motion light or something, so I could see who was helping me. Without a word they grabbed another bag and headed back out towards Mr. McAllister's mailbox—he kept his back to me the whole time that he was in the pool of light, so all I could see is that he was dressed in dark clothes and had dark hair. When he finally lugged the last bag away (and headed towards Mrs. Reeds' trash spot), he stopped out by the sidewalk (again, all I could see was his silhouette, although this time his face was to me) and shoved his hands in his coat pockets. "Do you need any more help hiding your trash among your neighbors?" he asked and mutely I shook my head although I knew he couldn't see me.

He let out a sound that sounded like a smothered chuckled and then backed up a few feet so that he was standing beneath the light. My heart stopped when my brain registered who it was that had been helping me with my trash. He held up a hand and slightly waved at me before turning around and walking away. I couldn't seem to catch my breath, for it had been the very much talked about Thatcher Wood that had taken time out of his night to help me.

I slowly turned and walked up to the back door of the house, my mind going a mile a minute. Did he know about Meghan? Was that why he helped me out? Did he even know who I was? Was that his weird way of saying "I'm happy to be your new boyfriend"? Or is he still in the dark about this whole matchmaking thing?

I walked in through the back door and into the kitchen, once I made it inside I leaned against the wood and tried to figure out what had just happened (read that as: analyze the whole situation to death). I sluggishly blinked a few times, feeling like I was trying to pull myself out of a trance. For a moment I couldn't even remember walking into the kitchen.

"Nadine, what's the matter?" Mom asked, walking into the kitchen and thoroughly surprising me. I let out a bloodcurdling scream and ducked behind the kitchen counter. Which prompted Mom to scream and since we were screaming, Jasmine (who had been walking by the kitchen) followed suit and screamed.

Talk about the domino effect.

"What's the matter?! What's the matter?!" Dad called out, racing into the kitchen with Twister at his heels.

I stood up and shrugged a shoulder, "Nothing's the matter—I'm just going through a meltdown, that's all." I glared at them, "But none of you care!" I cried and raced up to my bedroom. When I got there I dived straight into my bed and then sat up and stared at my walls. I don't have wallpaper like most people; instead I made a collage of old posters up onto my wall. Some of them were in color but most were in black and white, and they all advertised old bands showing at coffee houses or bars.

I stared up at a poster of Eva Cassidy showing at a coffee shop called Coffee and Cream. " Eva, I'm in a tight jam." I whispered, rolling onto my back and staring up at the constellations that had painstakingly put up in glow-in-the-dark stars. I found the big dipper and sighed, "The Matchmaker finally caught me and I don't know how I'm going to get out of this one." I murmured, "Not a clue."

I pulled my pillow over my face and tried to erase the questions that were racing through my head. Alas, it didn't really work at all, although I did manage to get it down to only one question going through my head: did he know? Or better yet, why was it that the divine intervention that God sent me him?

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A/N: And that's the end of chapter two—I'm really having fun writing Nadine, she's so odd! Hehehe…and I can't wait to completely bring Thatcher into the picture, I already love the guy! And I know you're probably wondering why she's so afraid of him, being the gentleman that he was in this chapter (by helping her with the trash) but don't worry, you'll find out soon enough. Thanks for the reviews!

-:Secretive:-