What if we've never met, but our souls align just right?
A tale of two people finding their way through this world. They don't know it, but the hardest part is finding each other.
—even Time played her role, stepping in when Distance failed—
*
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
*
They almost collide.
Almost—it's always that word. It's as troublesome as a physical barrier: troublesome like the disaster that results upon a miscalculation to the millisecond.
They are convergent angles heading for one oasis. Two applications snarled on twin arrowheads arching across the sky, flying towards one institution, where four years will put their chance of collision to almost certain.
Until—
Matty opens his most anticipated portal and sees, Congratulations, we are delighted to welcome you into our incoming freshmen class. Your application spoke of your strengths and we believe you will add a valuable contribution to...
—turns around and announces the news to an empty house, his voice reverberating across the neighborhood where Bee collapses in front of her chair—
—and reads, This year more than 37,000 candidates applied for places in the freshmen class, making this the most difficult selection process in our history. The Committee on Admissions has carefully reviewed your application, and we are sorry to inform you that we cannot offer you a place in...
Just like that, one arrowhead has split from its arch, running divergent instead.
Bee isn't devastated, not when she was already accepted elsewhere, but it does scrap at her insides, it does feel like a chunk of her guts was bitten out and chewed down by a tangible beast that grew with her every doubt.
"Do you ever feel like," Bee whispers to Zara the next day, in the shade of a willow tree, with the nearby river running clean, "like there are notifications in your phone waiting to be checked, but all the red bubbles are already gone."
Zara offers her friend a sidelong glance. "I think you have a phone addiction."
"Not quite," Bee replies simply.
The truth: Bee is an anxious person. She finds it hard to imagine that other people don't rehearse their coffee order twenty different times while waiting in line, that other people don't read over their emails to their teachers until their grasp on the English language becomes nothing but a jumble of syllables and half-hearted vowel sounds because they are afraid of sounding rude. She doesn't know at what point in her life that this cruel monster grew larger and larger in her belly, but she knows that this isn't normal, and this isn't the sort of nervousness people can will away with a few bouts of deep breathing.
And she wants to scream. Instead of taking tiny little pills that take too long to work, she wants to scream away the feeling—to pick up a hammer and smash every window in her house if it will make the world hear her, look at her, look at the poison dripping into every line of her skin.
