Flutter Of Luv

By LM Preston

Dawn, the neighborhood tomboy, is happy to be her best friend’s shadow. Acceptance comes from playing football after school with the guys on the block while hiding safely behind her glasses, braces, and boyish ways. But Tony moves in, becomes the star Running Back on her school’s football team, and changes her world and her view of herself forever.

This is a short story told in ten episodes similar to an anthology of short stories over the course of Dawn’s and Tony’s realization of how much they mean to one another.

Also there is a short story at the end called Hush A Bye My Baby Brother for the reader to enjoy along with samples of LM Preston’s other book

• Language: English
• Publisher: LM Preston
• Release date: Sep 29, 2012
• ISBN: 9780985025120

LM Preston

LM. Preston was born and raised in Washington, DC. An avid reader, she loved to create poetry and short-stories as a young girl. With a thirst for knowledge she attended college at Bowie State University, and worked in the IT field as a Techie and Educator for over sixteen years. She started writing science fiction under the encouragement of her husband who was a Sci-Fi buff and her four kids. Her first published novel, Explorer X - Alpha was the beginning of her obsessive desire to write and create stories of young people who overcome unbelievable odds. She loves to write while on the porch watching her kids play or when she is traveling, which is another passion that encouraged her writing.

Book preview

Flutter Of Luv

LM Preston

Book Description: Dawn, the neighborhood tomboy, is happy to be her best friend’s shadow. Acceptance comes from playing football after school with the guys on the block while hiding safely behind her glasses, braces, and boyish ways. But Tony moves in, becomes the star Running Back on her school’s football team, and changes her world and her view of herself forever.

This is a short story told in ten episodes similar to an anthology of short stories over the course of Dawn’s and Tony’s realization of how much they mean to one another.

Also there is a short story at the end called Hush A Bye My Baby Brother for the reader to enjoy along with samples of LM Preston’s other book series.

Flutter Of Luv

Copyright © 2012 by LM Preston

Published by Phenomenal One Press at Smashwords

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission of the author.

www.phenomenalonepress.com

Ebook: ISBN 978-0-9850251-2-0

Acknowledgments

There are many times in my life when I’m inspired. God gives me the thirst to write but places amazing people in my path to nudge me. This story was inspired by my writing group, the Columbia Writers. They encouraged me to come out of my box and write a short story in first person. Then my daughter, my ever-vigilant supporter, read it and suggested that I craft it into romantic episodes between the two characters. I thank them for these wonderful nudges they gave me.

Episode 1: First Meeting

Nothing much happened on my block in the early summer mornings, but on this first day of summer there were moving trucks outside. I was rocking back and forth on the metal chair my Nana kept on the porch of our row house in the city, when they first drove up. There were no houses across the street from us, but the huge hill—topped off with a fence—had grass littered with daisies. It was beautiful to me, since the city didn’t offer much in the way of grass or flowers.

Not many people moved into our neighborhood. I guess it’s because when you were able to live in a place close to the train station you had convenience – so why leave it? At least that’s what my great-grandma Nana told me was the reason she’d lived there for over 20 years.

It was much earlier than when my friends came out. But I loved the morning, it was the time I got to just sit outside and not hear a thing. No fire engines, ambulances, kids fighting, cars honking—well I always heard those, but it was quieter than most times. And it was when I got to spend time staring at the high school I hated going to. It sat on top of the hill as an ugly reminder that I’d have to go back at the end of the summer.

Ninth grade stunk, and I had all summer to figure out how I was going to get through the tenth grade without getting into cat fights with stupid girls who liked to point out the fact that my boobs hadn’t grown in, my teeth protruded a bit, and my braces were ugly on me. Oh, and let me not forget, I wore thick welfare glasses. You know, the kind with the plastic brown trim. Not even the boys let me forget that. But contact lenses weren’t something I was ever going to get. My mother could barely afford the braces. No way could I get contacts, the eye doctor told us, because I had some type of irritation that caused little bumps to pop up under my eyelids. Just my rotten luck—as always.

Everyone else in ninth grade had seemed to go through their beauty makeover stage, but me. My stupid luck kept me grounded with the appearance of a middle-schooler. Also, my short height or ‘kiddy’ figure as my best friend Poochie liked to point out didn’t make things any easier for me. Not to mention part of me still wanted to be in middle school – at least there I fit in.

I stood up and walked down the first five steps of my cement porch. Our row house was squeezed between two others, but our porches were separated by large bushes that grew just under the rail framing. Why my Nana insisted on painting the porch and stairs blue I’d never know. It didn’t match the red brick house, but whatever made her happy, I guess. I didn’t have a choice but to like it since it was the only home I’ve got—at least until my mom could afford her own place.

A blue sedan pulled up behind the u-haul moving truck. And I balanced up on my toes in my high-top tennis shoes wondering who the new kid was that was moving in. The kids on the block loved discovering if the new sucker would be easily bullied or not. Lately though, no one had moved in for them to torment.

Rodney came down his steps. His house was next to mine, which made it easy for him to spy on me in the morning. It usually didn’t take him long to come out after I did—which made me wonder if he had a permanent eye attached to his bedroom window.

Hey Dawn! Whatcha doing? Checkin’ out the new blood? His unkempt curly bush seemed to shrink in the early morning dew. It resembled a hat atop his pale face, which was several shades lighter than my dark tanned skin and his bushy black eyebrows.

I rolled my eyes at him. No…well maybe.

Rodney got a kick out of teasing me as much as possible. Maybe because with him being rather chunky, he got his fair share of being the butt of the other kid’s jokes and he just needed to torment someone else to feel better.

We could get a closer look before Poochie comes out. Rodney stuffed the rest of a jelly donut in his mouth. His chubby fingers oozed with the goo and he loudly sucked off the red excess.

Rodney would point out that Poochie was going to be snooping around the new kid soon. Everyone knew Rodney was in love with Poochie. But to Poochie, Rodney was her pet. Anything Poochie wanted from a boy she got, and Rodney gave her everything. Money from his lunch, food from his dinner table, and clothes from his sister. Poochie never outright asked for the stuff, but she made it known to Rodney that she needed it.

Absently, I tilted my face toward the hill. Right across from my house was the big oak tree that hid the corner side of the high school. The huge tree sat on a hill I liked to climb everyday. Didn’t get to climb the hill much since my Nana always yelled at me to get down and embarrassed me to no end about it. But this year I’ll be running to the high school with my cousins who’d be starting ninth grade. Doubtful they’d like it any more than