Honey, this mirror isn't big enough for the two of us

Prologue

Prologue

Rome had just heard the front door shut, but she refused to open her eyes. Her mind was already made up but now that the moment had arrived she had chicken out slightly. As she kicked off the sheets and sat up in her bed she looked around. She loved her bedroom and all the amenities it provided her, such as her own bathroom, and her materialistic self was the part of her that wanted to stop her the most.

There were endless possibilities of failure but the one chance of success was so damn promising that it beat failure’s ass.

Rome had a quick shower but she enjoyed it. Everything she did was the last time she did it in that house, she thought, and the feeling was a little bit choking since she had grown up there. She wondered if the water pressure on the East Coast was as damn good as hers.

She decided she would have breakfast at the airport, so she grabbed a suitcase and began folding her favorite clothes, trying to make everything fit inside the green baggage. It took her a while and she almost lost it when she realized all her clothes didn’t fit in only one bag, but she couldn’t carry that much baggage, especially because she didn’t know if her plan was going to succeed, and in case it didn’t, it was better she didn’t have too much weight on her back—not more than the moral one she already carried, anyway.

She filled her matching green shoulder bag with all her toiletries and everything in her reach that she liked, such as all her Nirvana CD’s—which were the only ones she bought and didn’t just download—and then she looked around her bright bedroom, but nothing else called her attention. At last, there weren’t even material things she wanted as much as she wanted to leave LA.

But that was good. Absolutely nothing was holding her back anymore.

Tanner had broken up with her a few days after prom, his excuse being that he was going to Columbia in the fall and they couldn’t keep a long distance relationship, but Rome knew better than that. Tanner and his natural charm—along with his natural tan and deep, dark eyes and strong body—made him almost the perfect boyfriend, and he also was a friendly, funny guy, but his sense of commitment wasn’t very well formed.

Rome tore a paper from her notebook and grabbed a pen before jotting down “Janet,” but then she thought it was already an awful thing to do to run away, so she sat down at her desk and decided to put a little more heart into it. Not too much, of course.

Mom,

I love you, but I hate you. I’ll call you sometime, don’t freak out, I know what I’m doing. Tell Blake I love him too, and that I don’t hate him. Don’t tell dad anything, what can I say to him?

Goodbye,

Rome.

She read the short letter through and guffawed out loud as a shiver ran down her spine at the line ‘I know what I’m doing.”

She sure as hell wasn’t sure of what she was doing, but she just knew for sure she had to do it.