So, what's your deal?

Such simple words, yet they changed the summer break of 1992 forever.

They say you always remember your first love.

I'm not sure how true it is for others, but I do.

For all the wrong reasons.

I was a lonely kid, and after my parents' death, I'd lived with an uncle and aunt.

Now, they weren't bad people.

They never wanted kids, especially not a teenager in the middle of puberty.

I guess we were all happy in our own ways, though.

I proposed that I'd live on my own a few years later.

They provided me with enough money to scrape by, so I moved into a small apartment complex

of the edge of town.

The Thursday evening, one week in the summer break, when I first saw her.

Mary is a strange thing.

So much of my life is nothing but vague blurs and half-gases.

I remember this evening as vividly as if it happened yesterday.

For the past few days, I'd wasted away inside my apartment, eating microwave meals, watching

TV, reading books.

Eventually, the heat and the stuffy air for the small one-room place drove me outside.

I didn't have a destination in mind.

I just wanted to go on a simple walk.

They had been hot.

...