Poor Kaity

The world's most awkward school girl.

Based on a post by NiceDayReboot. Listen to the Podcast at Steamy Stories.

Kaitlyn was a charity case, and I knew it. Of course, I always held a sense of guilt about that knowledge because I had to keep her from figuring it out. Oddly, for how often I'd acted as a surrogate older brother to her, she was a year older than me at nineteen. She'd been held back at least once to my knowledge, making her a junior when I was enrolling in college full time. Kaity was a bit distraught at the thought of me moving on and leaving her to fend for herself in her remaining two (given her track record, possibly more) years of high school.

I should probably point out that this wasn't her fault. She had some kind of condition that left her both a little slow on the uptake, and bafflingly naive when it came to social situations. I would have assumed Asperger’s or something, but she wasn't actively antisocial. Far from it, she actively threw herself at people with a witless enthusiasm that generally drove anyone with a sense of self-preservation away. Add to that a conservative, very religious upbringing and a complete inability to detect sarcasm, and it became quite clear how she'd made it this far without friends to speak of, to say nothing of a boyfriend. The few friends she did have were the type of socially unconscious girlfriends you'd pick up through Sunday school, with the Christian charity to befriend the poor dear and self-righteous enough to be persona non grata in any of the popular social circles. For all the effort she had put into acquiring a boyfriend, she couldn't seem to think of a use for one aside from holding hands and filling in the required space on a well-adjusted high school student's checklist. The few boys new and ignorant enough to accept her attentions generally called it off after an awkward day or so, going on to insist that it had never happened should anyone bring it up in the future.

Which left me. When I came to high school as a sophomore, transferring in from another school, I'd also been met with her amorous attentions within a week of my arrival. Unlike most of her usual victims, I had the foresight to turn her down. However, I'd used the "Let's just be friends" approach I'd found effective at warding off unwanted advances in the past, citing that I didn't know her well enough to date her. Kaitlyn took that literally, to the point where I was abruptly transferred from potential token boyfriend to Best Friend Ever without much say in the matter on my part.

Now I might be genuinely antisocial. I don't hate people, per se. I just often find better things to do with my time. So it was no small amount of trepidation that I faced her daily enthusiastic greetings, surprise hugs and torrential reports on anything that might have happened to her in the space of her attention span, which was mercifully brief. I have to admit it was a bit embarrassing to be greeted every day by my name squealed at the top of her lungs, usually accompanied by a cheerfully spastic wave and an intense hug whenever she got within range. But I wasn't trying to impress anybody, so I endured it with as