You Laugh DIfferently When You're Upsidedown
an excerpt

--Keira--

Keira is a fifteen year old girl who has a rather tragic life. She's run away from home and is trying to find a place to live, but as we all know things don't go quite as well as we plan and she finds herself living at an older man's flat. She's trying to figure out if she can trust him enough to tell him all her secrets and she figures that it's just one person, who could it hurt? But what happens when that one person has problems of his own?

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--Dave--

Dave's life had a pretty rough start, but he's gotten out of the hard part and has a very simple life. He wakes up, eats a meal that his housekeeper makes for him, goes to work, comes home and repeats this everyday. Until one day he finds a terrified, young girl on the streets and takes her to his home. He wants to figure out what is wrong with her, why he found her all alone in Seattle, but right when he's about to figure it all out his life gets thrown a loop and he's not quite sure what to do with it yet.

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I looked up at his cloudy, blue eyes and wondered what I should tell him. I mean, it’s not like I could just tell him that I was snooping around his room and looking at the pictures on the wall. That answer would probably freak him out a little bit, but what could I tell him? I didn’t want to lie, lying didn’t feel right to me. I had done it so much in my life before I had met Dave and Maribel, but now I was trying to stop, even if it had only been a little over a week. I wanted to change and I wasn’t going to start lying now.

“Uh…I was just…um…thinking,” I answered. Now, that wasn’t exactly a lie, but it wasn’t the whole truth ei the r.

“About what?” He asked curiously. The look on his face told me that he just wanted to talk to me about something, but to me he was just being a tad annoying asking about this.

“Just…family and stuff like that,” I answered smiling inside at the response.

“Oh,” He replied, the look on his face turning upset. As I watched a frown form on his face I could feel one forming on my own, I didn’t want to make Dave sad, I had just wanted him to not find out about my snooping.

“Maybe…I could…uh…tell you about mine sometime?” I offered and a smile grew on his face.

“That sounds great, maybe later tonight, when we go on our walk?” He offered. Great, what had I just gotten myself into? I didn’t want to tell him about my family yet. I know that I had upset him, but did he really need to know tonight?

“Uh, maybe some o the r time, I don’t think that I’m quite ready to tonight,” I explained hoping that he would accept my excuse and not be as sad as before, “I do want to tell you,” I assured him, “It’s just, I need to get to know you a little more before I do, okay?”

“Whenever you’re ready, Keira, I’ll be here to listen,” He offered a smile and I replied with my own. At least he understood.