Another Broken Smile

Goodbye to You

Alternate/ rewritten beginning 

The car honked in the driveway startling me out of my train of thoughts. I stood up from my bed throwing the picture frame I held onto the floor. The glass shattered breaking into a million pieces just like my heart this summer, but I decided I'd clean it up later.

For a second I gazed at the picture with my heart's wishful longing.

It was taken back a year ago, with my arms around the boy with the hazel hair and sky blue eyes that always took my breath away. We were by the beach, the sun shining down on us as renewed hopes were born and I gazed into the camera with a smile wanting to remember the moment forever. And his eyes that should have been on the camera held by a beaming Adeline were focused on me, too in love to look away.

We were young and naïve and promised each other the happily afters we had read in the fairy tales not knowing by next summer we'd both be still by the beach, not with smiles but tears in our eyes. The silver chain on my neck with a ring promised me that day about how we'd find each other no matter how many waves tore us apart but his hands that now weren't mine to hold anymore mocked the carved metal in the frame.

The car honked again and I bid a goodbye to him. He had moved on and I was done moping over him.

Goodbye to your promises Daniel. Goodbye to you.

I spared myself a glance at the mirror once again and faked a smile that I had practiced over the years that it seemed effortless by now. Didn't they say, fake it till you make it.

The shining black dress fitted my bodice accentuating the right curves. The sweet lined neck decorated with white snow flaked glitter that then merged with black as the skirt flared down from my chest in waves. I loved what I saw and nothing was going to change that tonight.

I didn't care if I didn't have him around, I told myself once again and then slipping into my heels rushed down the stairs outside the white mansion where Alissa waited for me in her new stoplight red Mercedes.

"Wow, Annellie! You look gorgeous tonight" Becca complemented the moment I slipped into the back seat as she sat shotgun with Alissa.

"Thanks, you too," I told her even though I hadn't had a single gaze at her outfit but the triumph smile on her face told me she didn't care. I wanted to correct her to call me Ellie since that's the name I always go with but I knew she wouldn't give a shit about it like the several hundred times before so I saved myself the trouble.

Becca was that kind of person, too in love with attention to even glance another way. The typical Regina George's puppy. She'd do anything to stay on the top of the social hierarchy of every high school no matter how low that meant stooping.

"So what's the plan tonight girl?" Alissa asked me from the front as her red hair blew in the wind magnificently from her rolled down window.

"A lot of booze, school starts in three days!" I whined truthfully. Senior year was waiting at my doorstep with college applications and internships to complete; it scared the wits out of me. More pressure to score well and demanding school, even though the prospect of all that freaked me out nothing could compare to the panic that had been rising in my heart at the fact that I'd have to see Daniel every day at school.

I couldn't be safely confined to my bedroom anymore like I'd been all summer instead, I had to constantly see him in the hallways and pretend like the two years didn't happen.

I wasn't sure I could handle it. Just then my phone buzzed awake with a text.

You are not heading to the party right? -Main bitch