For Real

By George Vaughan

Will she ever be enough for anyone else... or herself?
(Warning: contains minor triggers).

• Language: English
• Publisher: George Vaughan
• Release date: Dec 4, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463149140

George Vaughan

George Vaughan is a lover of all things creative from Tasmania, Australia, who has been writing stories for the last fifteen years. His books will be especially enjoyable for fans of Marcus Sedgewick, Lauren Kate and Laini Taylor.First published in 2013 with Out There On Bruny, a story serialised in a local newspaper, George's first actual book, Through Unseeing Eyes, arrived in 2016 to raise money for the conservation of local birdlife.He loves trying all genres and styles, but especially loves it when people have fun reading the end result!

Book preview

FOR REAL

George Vaughan

Copyright 2019 by George Vaughan

Distributed by Smashwords

Smashwords Edition, License Notes:

Thank you for downloading this eBook. This book may not be redistributed for commercial or noncommercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy from their favourite retailer. Thank you for your support.

This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents either are a product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

Cover design by George Vaughan using template and stock photos from Postermywall, and photos from Shutterstock, Flickr and Upslash.

This book is dedicated to anyone who has ever tried their hardest to be their best self; I know how hard it is, and, from me to you, I know you can do it.

Why can’t they just want me?

The girl marooned the edge of the party, staring at the views’ distant mountains… that was her question, right? Out of everybody here, this had to be exclusively hers.

What have I done? I must have done something, like, in some kind of past life? Maybe? Why the heck does nobody like me like this?

After three years of this, three years out of nineteen, nobody was just going to tell her the answers anytime soon, right? So yeah, of course she looked sad; dead sad. All them kids here, whooping it up, bombing into the pool, waving their arms in the air to yet another remix of Toto’s Africa… they weren’t going to come to her, were they? They’d never done that before; why were they going to start tonight?

Why would anyone come to her?

So yeah. She was going to have to go to them, again and again and again.

The girl… she was so scared. She was craving. She craved all these kids, all day, every day, and that was the scariest thing.

Nothing made her feel alive but the party, even as it pulled the light from her.

I want to feel something! I need more! I just need people; I need them so, so bad!

The girl didn’t even bother sighing; she wouldn’t hear it, so why bother? The music here, it was all deafeningly loud. This party… it was just too much; but hey, it always felt like that, at first.

She knew she probably looked very tiny and very overwhelmed here, clutching her hoodie to her on this hollow deckchair-throne just like always. And did a single one of those friendship-groups look at her like, "hey, what would she like to do?, and let’s ask her!, or She’s cute enough to crush on, should I talk to her? Should I ask her on… uh… on a scooter-riding date someplace?"?

Yeah.

Sike.

Not really.

Please, though?

All these lights and sights and sounds… this enormous balcony of people, packed shoulder to shoulder and sweaty cheek by jowl… this was