Chasing Reality

Chapter One: Fantasies

I close the book suddenly and lay down on my bed once more with a enormous sigh filled with longing and satisfaction.
The last sentence of the novel echoed around in my head peacefully.:"And they lived happily ever after. "
To most sixteen year olds, fairy tales have become a foolish memory of the distant pasr. But not to me.
I have my favorites. Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Belle, and of course Ella in Ella Enchanted.
I had been the little girl to write down my dream wedding at the age of eight and propose to my childhood best friend when we were nine. Needless to say, Gavin blushed, called me a dork, and ran away. So much for happily ever after with him. It was more like happily NEVER after.
I stared up at my ceiling and silently pondered all the boys who were currently in my life. I rated them on a scale of one to ten, one being absolutely repulsive and five being "sexy as hell".
My best girl friend thought that I was crazy, but it wasn't my fault that she was more of a tomboy and totally addicted to her all-time favorite pastime of soccer.
I had never even seen Bekah in a dress, for Christ's sake. Who knew if she even owned one?
She didn't even bother to brush her hair most days. Her standard apparel was a pair of scuffed-up sneakers, stained basketball shorts, a sports T-shirt of some description, and her sweat-stained hairband. I'd never seen her in anything more or less. To my knowledge, Bekah didn't even go to the swimming pool in the summer. At least, every time I'd asked her to go with me, hell, BEGGED her to go with me, she'd come up with some lazy excuse.
True, I don't go to the pool to actually swim. God knows how many germs are in that water...body fluids...*shudder*. I'm not going to risk my chances in love on some shared bathwater. No, my job was to lay seductively in my beach chair by the water's edge, display my ever-improving tan, and look pretty for all the gentlemen.
Now by this time you probably think I'm some kind of slut. I'm really not.
There's a lot more to me than my outwards appearance. To most people's surprise, I actually do care about more than just looking good. There's a lot people don't know about me. Especially people at my school.
Hell, there's stuff even Bekah doesn't know, and we've been as tight as peas in a pod or girls with their cellphones since we could walk. Probably even before then.
Bekah's mom and my mom went to highschool together, and both attended the local community college in our little town of Kalispell, Montana.
They both married their highschool sweethearts, but that's pretty much where the fairy tale ends for my mom, at least. But I'm getting ahead of myself.