𝐓𝐨 𝐅𝐞𝐞𝐥 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐭

Prologue

I remember when I was 10, the scariest thing in the world was that build up of anxiety in the pit of my stomach about the first day of school. Thinking back, my parents were with me every step of the way, until they weren't. A flame being drenched in water, a plane with a blown engine that's how quick it took for them to be a part of the land of the living one moment and ripped from the next. A car thrown off a road to be exact, that's how my parents met their fate. The first day of school was never a fear again after that, it was simply a thought that danced in the back of my memory. I soon found that my worst fear was the realization that I would never again hear my fathers laugh or never again hear the same saying that was imprinted on my every thought that was said over and over by my mother. "You'll never get a new ending if you keep starting with the same tired beginning." My worst fear was knowing that they would never be with me again, go to my wedding, or hold their first grandchild, never get to say goodbye to their first born child before they slipped through a blissful door that led to their next life.

Grade after grade I always felt like an outsider. I may have been in this neighborhood since I was a little kid, I couldn't help but feel like life and everyone in it was passing by and I was struggling to keep up with them. I kept my head down in school, didn't join any clubs, didn't try out for any teams. I just awaited the time in my life where my image could be reconstructed, a time where students came from all over the country just so they would have the opportunity to go to one school, a time where I could be whatever version of myself I wanted to be and not be the little girl everyone pitied with their glance.

-And that's what I did.

Freshman year, it was time to enter North Trail University, school for the gifted or in some cases whoever can afford it. I worked on becoming an academic student, I joined clubs and played sports, each year adding to the credentials I could put on my university application. I tried to live my life according to how my parents would have wanted me to. Year after year I never fell under a 3.8 GPA as far as my academic career went, I was doing well. My parents will lived on within me, their words were the air that continued to fill my lungs, the gentle push on my back when I wanted to stop going. Their legacy will live on through me.