Change of Heart

1 ; Small Beginnings

There are several elements involved in creating a romance novel.

"A great romance novel makes us believe in love. Not just that love exists, but that this love between these two people is somehow going to last and endure."

Know now that this will not be a "great romance novel" as defined by a random online search.

It doesn't start with magic or end with promise. It just is.

It began at a yellow house.

A three-story vacation house stationed in the depths of Utah, the yellow house was a place of familiarity for me. It was the location of an annual snowboarding trip that I went on with my family and my best friend's family.

Before I jump too ahead of myself, allow me to introduce myself.

My name is Anna Marie King. I am currently 16 years old. My story's beginning occurred 3 years ago, before I began high school without my closest friends and ultimately lost a love that I fought hard for.

I don't see it as middle school and high school, I see it as before him and after him because he is what I consider the root cause of change. He was the turning point of my life.

"Him" doesn't come until later though. Just wait on it.

Anna Marie is a perfect daughter, who obtains amazing grades and is does what she is told. She is a quiet, yet sweet girl, who everyone knows of but not many truly know. She has many close friends, a loving family, and a great life.

Bullshit.

Don't get me wrong, a lot of that is true. I love my parents, and I hate putting them through anything rough, so I try to do what I can to keep out of their way. I am unbearably quiet, because most of the time I have nothing important to say. I have close friends, and a loving family, and I get what I get because I work hard for it.

But my life is not necessarily a "great" one. Uneventful, predictable, easy. Great is too strong of a word.

But there are great aspects to it. My family isn't dumb rich, but we have enough to afford a lot of trips to a few places. The Yellow House trip is among these. It, along with snowboarding, used to be the most exciting things in my life. Snowboarding was something that I was actually good at other than math. The Yellow House provided me with a group of kids around my age who I felt I belonged with. Because both my sister, Olivia, and one of my best friends, Mia, were the somewhat leaders of the group, I was able to blend right in. I was welcomed into the family. The social hierarchy that was tied to our school lives disappeared because we were all living under the same roof for a few days, whisking away the feeling of friends and turning it into one of family.

Believe me, if we only met through school, a lot of things would be different.

For one, Olivia and Mia would not talk at all. Mia turned into what most would call a queen bee, because that's basically what she was.

I'd like to say that she wasn't always like that, but the sad truth is that she was.

When she came to New Jersey in fourth grade, everyone was talking about her. She was super cute, athletic, and kind of a badass, if you count flipping off all the boys in the class a baddass-y move. The teachers loved her, and she was just so freaking cool.

Me and my other best friend, Lauren, were the first people she talked to because we had an empty seat at our table (the boy that used to sit there, Ryan, got expelled for running around the gym naked. Long story). Lauren charmed the mysterious new girl with her awkward humor, and we bonded over our Filipino backgrounds.