I wanted my life to be glamorous. I wanted to be something special and most important, I wanted to leave my small hometown Oregon and go to Hollywood. What kind of amazing life must that be? Living in Hollywood?
I mean, I had a nice life in Oregon, I don't want to say I didn't. Though I lived in a time when money was hard to get and life wasn't easy for the majority of people. But with my father being the manager of a shop, we've always had enough money to do what we wanted to do.
I could have done quite a few things but instead, I chose to live my life basically being addicted to movies and magazines about the life in Hollywood.
I always wanted to go to Hollywood but I never actually tried. So when that one salesman who somehow was incredibly liked by my father - probably mainly because he wasn't poor - proposed to me for the third time, I knew I either had to make up the courage to buy a stupid bus ticket or marry this man.
I knew I, of course, wanted to get a bus ticket rather than a husband, but it was so hard! First, I had to do it secretly. No one would understand me! And then, well, maybe that was my only reason.
So I tried to go to this bus station a few times, but I never really managed to actually go there.
Until that one day. I think it was in 1938. The 2nd September, probably. I, as ever so often, went on a walk to the bus station. Would I really go there and ask how much a ticket costs? Maybe. I didn't know but I hoped because my time ran away.
I usually got so far as the corner of the street where the bus station was. But this time, it was different.
I got closer to the station and closer and closer. Thinking of who might be there? Would I know them? Would they know me? What reasons would they have to be there and what would they think was my reason? Would they be able to see I wanted to leave Oregon? But that was ridiculous, right? I felt and even heard my heart pounding in my chest. I breathed heavily and every step I took that brought me closer to the bus station was harder for me to make. If someone had seen me, they would have thought I was crazy.
And then she finally arrived at the bus station. She looked around, taking in everything there was to see.
There were a few persons sitting and standing, all of which looked tired and I could easily tell they wanted to arrive at their destinations and not be at some bus station in some small town. I looked at the man who sold the tickets and he looked just as tired as the other people. But he was tired of his job that was the same thing every day. I felt like a few people were staring at me, but they probably weren't. Why would they care about a stranger? But the feeling of being stared at and this other strange feeling I thought would come from the place and the other people were enough for me.
I yet again turned around and I ran away. Away fro the bus ticket and away from my dream.
Only a few weeks later I married the salesman. We eventually got two children. Remembering my obsession of Hollywood, I named them after movie stars, hoping they'd be able to make their dreams come true. I think about what could have happened sometimes. If I had asked. But what's over is over. And everything in the world wouldn't change it.
So I had to write the story 'Greyhound Tragedy' in another perspective than it originally was written. So I chose the first-person narrator and this is what came out. I handed the story in and my teacher gave it back to me today and I got an A.
