Seeking you

The Beginning

We all have different meanings and opinions, but one thing we can all agree on is that life is there for one thing – to be lived. So that is what I decided to do, live my life. Max capacity, always.

Now, I am not saying that it is the only way to live your life. Frankly, it is just the way I decided to. And sometimes I ponder upon if it was really the wisest choice I could have made back then – regardless it is what I did.

The beginning

It was December 1997, I was just finishing off my first semester of my junior year, at Hartforth High School. I remember it being cold, but not the type of cold, where you have to wear layers upon layers of clothing. It was more like a chill winter. There was no snow to be spotted anyway near the small town of Hartforth.

I remember sitting in my friend Lizzie's room, we were listening to The Cranberries. My ultimate favorite band of all time. Zombie was playing as loud as humanly possible. We were contemplating whether or not to go to a party later that evening. Normally it would be a flat out no from the both of us. We weren't really the type of people that went to parties or got drunk. Hell, I don't even think I had ever tasted a beer at that point in my life. Regardless, as I said, it was the ending of our first semester of junior year, and we had decided, that maybe it wasn't such a bad idea to start living our life now. College was only about a year and a half away, and we hadn't really done much. None of us had ever visited another town than the small roots of Hartforth, except for when Lizzie would go to her cousins in an even smaller town about forty minutes away. You couldn't really classify it as a town, in the matter of fact, it was more of a little fleck, hiding away between a wood and a large river. I had gone with her one time, I remember it, as if it was yesterday. We were bored out of our minds, not doing much other than reading and going swimming in the river, even though we were told not to.

"What would we even wear?" Lizzie said, as she swung her legs across the stool's armrest. "It's not like we even have anything to wear to such a thing as a party," and she wasn't wrong. We definitely did not have a single thing to wear. Considering we were always hiding away in the comfort of our warm, preferably, college sweaters. We both wanted to go to Princeton. It was the big dream. Finish high school with only good grades, a complete 4.0 average, and a list of extracurricular activities.

"Don't you think your Erica might have something we would be able to borrow?" I asked Lizzie with a confused grimace pasted across my face. Erica was Lizzie's sister. She was about three years older than us, she left for college about a year ago. To be honest, no one really ever thought she would leave for college. She was definitely more of a stay-at-home kind of girl. Or at least a live at home and go to parties. She was beautiful. The kind of beautiful you would see in magazines or walking down a catwalk. There was no doubt why the guys of Hartforth was always roaming around her all of the time. Lizze was beautiful too, but in a different kind of way. Lizzie was always more the type of girl, that you would grow up to learn to love. The kind of girl that had been there for you your entire life, and never left your side.

"I can take a look?" Lizzie questioned back. I gave her a nod, accepting her offer to take a look for something to wear.

We were stood outside of the house where the party was visibly ongoing inside. I was neatly dressed in a slightly uncomfortable tight pink dress. Not something you would ever catch me wearing. Therefore, it was no surprised, that I was catching the eye of the host – Dean Hartforth. Yes, Hartforth. He's family was the founding family of the small town. So, the size of the house was not small, to say the least.

"You look stunning tonight Adelaide," Dean sent me a smirk, as he held the door open for Lizzie and I to walk in. "I didn't know you cleaned up that well."

I didn't know, that walking into that door would change my life forever.