But We're Not Dating

"Hey, Grandma, check this out!"

Olivia comes bounding down the stairs, her blond pigtails bouncing. I chuckle. She was so energetic.
The small six year old runs up to me and places an old, beaten down book on my lap. It's covered in dust and grime, but I still recognize it like I made it yesterday.
I smile to the very corners of my eyes and gasp in delight. It's the scrapbook I made back in senior year to commemorate all of the fun times we had.
Most people had an awful highschool experience, but mine was amazing. Well, freshman year was pretty stereotypical, but my tenth grade year is practically unforgettable.

"Grandma?" Olivia looks up at me with big hazel eyes. I must have been staring at the book for a while now, my wrinkled fingering its well worn pages. I'm almost afraid to open it up, afraid that's it's just a dream and it's not here after all. I feel my mind awakening old memories that had been sleeping for fifty or so years. Tears of happiness prick the corners of my eyes.

"Where did you find this?" I ask my granddaughter, motioning for her to sit beside me on the floor while I'm perched in my rocking chair like a typical old woman. A soft summer breeze ruffles my graying strait hair. She smiles.

"In the attic. It's clean out day, remember? Oh and I also found..." but I wasn't listening anymore, and instead fingering back through the cracked and yellowed pages.
There was me, Kate, and Frank pulling a goofy face during our senior week at the beach.
There was Hannah and I seeing Dan and Phil on your for the first time.
And there was me and Gerard, grinning up at the camera in the basement of his house. I'm not sure what we were doing that night, so long ago. Probably eating pizza and watching American Horror Story. It was our typical Friday night routine.
I laugh fondly at the memory.

Gerard. I'm not sure exactly when I fell in love with him.

Maybe it was that time in art class when we all had to draw each other in sombreros.
Or that time during the school bonfire when he lit his marshmallow on fire and almost burnt the building down. I even had that memory captured perfectly in an iPhone taken picture, a look of pure horro on his face.
No, I think it was way before all of that.

I flip back to the front page of the scrapbook. A picture was glued at the very top. It wasn't even of us or the group; Asia, Brianna, and Lyn got a Polaroid camera that day back when they started making them again. They were filling around a took a really bad selfie.
There the three were, smiling widely at the camera in the middle of the cafeteria decked out in crisply fitting uniforms. But in the top right corner, you could just see us, frozen in time.
Robyn and Kate's face were contorted in laughter. I could just make out the back of Emma's long, brunette ponytail. There I was, shirt untucked and shoving food in my face as usual. And there was Gerard, smiling shyly, unsure of how to act.

And even though this Polaroid was taken over fifty years ago, I remember that day like it was yesterday.

Notes

Well there's the prologue! I really hope you enjoy this story, and don't worry, I'm still working on the next chapter of The Insiders.
Please excuse any spelling/grammatical errors and feedback is much appreciated ^_^