As the Wind Changes (Camren)

Chapter 3

"I've found that it's easier to believe we're invisible rather than accepting the people who actually see us..."

Do you know that whole meet cute concept they portray in most romantic comedy movies? Yeah, that whole hands grazing when the two characters were about to reach for the same item at some store or that cute awkward girl who bumped into you at a coffee shop, ruining your shirt and everything but she's so hot you really don't care and her phone number would do the trick?

Well, Lauren hated those. She hated it with a burning passion, because let's be real here, what are the chances of those things really happening in real life? Pretty good actually but Lauren believed that her life was more like soap opera rather than romantic comedy movie, those things wouldn't happen to her and no one could assure her otherwise.

Lauren was bitter, she could admit that now. And she was so desperate on breaking out of this cocoon of despair she had wrapped herself in for the last several months. It was a new year for god's sake, she was supposed to be excited for the endless and unpredictable probabilities life could offer her but she wasn't.

She realized that she had gone on for too long on the wrong side of the road. She had to do something to change things.

So she had decided that she would try to do something new every now and then. She started this so called resolution (she hated the term too because really resolutions are stupid) by joining the gym. If she wanted to feel better, might as well try and look better in the process. And it had worked wonders.

She had enjoyed getting all sweaty and she had found that boxing was actually therapeutic despite its aggressive nature. And it didn't hurt that a lot of hot girls walk around the gym every now and then, but if she were asked about it, she would say she hadn't noticed. She didn't want to be that lesbian who got caught gawking at straight girls. Talk about drama...

Another thing she had started doing was to submit her writings to school's magazine. She had a passion for writing and she knew that she had a way with words, which was actually one of the things about herself that she could genuinely like. Writing had been her escape. Just as much as her art had been, but she never really showed any of her writings to anyone.

She figured that she didn't need words to be understood. She didn't want to be understood by people who could only rely on her words. She had never been good with speaking but pen and paper had never given up on her, unlike most people. Most people tended to get impatient with her and her ineloquence. But that was another thing she didn't like to talk about.

She had also decided to get a part time job in a rundown bookstore she had stumbled upon one time when she had to wait around for Mikaela to finish her band practice in one of the music studios downtown. The very first time she had come there, the word magical had come to her mind. There's just something peculiar and enchanting about bookstores.

Lauren believed bookstores have their own distinct presence, as if there were souls wandering the place. As if the words, ideas and imagination were dancing around every space and corner, tantalizing, fascinating to those minds that were willing to be entertained. As if they were alive and they were calling those who were willing to listen.

Lauren had been a listener all her life and she wanted to believe that she could listen to the things most people tended to take for granted. She didn't think that she was better than most people or anything like that, she was just different. All her life people had called her different and she had learned to own up to that. It was just who she is.

But everything she had done so far since the New Year started had been within her control, something she decided on, something deliberate and calculated. So it came as a total surprise to her when one morning she opened up her locker and a piece of paper fell out of it, floating down towards the ground in an almost slow motion. Or maybe it was just how she saw it in her head.