***1st Place Winner in Teen Fiction for the Undiscovered Writer Awards***
***One of the EarnestyWriterAwards favorite female leads***
Lulu's mom is sick and Lulu desperately wants to be free of all her troubles so she convinces herself that she no l...
Zac set the flowers he'd bought at the supermarket down onto the small headstone. The cemetery was empty save for a small woman sitting on the grass a few meters away, cleaning the gravestone of a beloved.
He sighed and wiped away a tear from under his dark sunglasses.
"I'm so sorry I couldn't save you," he whispered.
Lulu laced her fingers with his and gave his hand a reassuring grip. "Your brother would've been so proud of you," she said into his ear and gave him a soft kiss on the cheek.
"Come on," he said. "We're going to be late."
They walked through the grassy graveyard down to where Lulu's car was parked. It was spring already and the weather was getting warmer by the day. A soft breeze blew through her dress as they walked. She took a deep breath, inhaling the smell of new flowers and sunshine.
In a few hours, she'd be sitting in front of the doctor who'd been treating her for the last 6 months, but right now, they had a date with the beach. Lulu hadn't visited the shore since the night of the accident, since the night Matty had jumped in after her and pulled her out of the freezing water. Her doctor thought now was as good a day as any to go back and test the waters, figuratively and literally.
Lulu was afraid. She still heard the ocean calling her name. It wasn't as strong as it used to be, but it was there. With Zac's help, though, she grew stronger. They were both battling their own demons, haunted by the nightmares of those two nights: the night he went blind and the night she fell into the water.
Her father blamed himself for what happened and through the pain, he fought to make things right. He joined her in therapy when he could and was now sober more than half a year. Construction began on their new home right where the old one used to be. It felt like a rebirth for Lulu. A second chance to know her father and to build something she never thought she'd have with him.
She drove the familiar road to the beach, her hands shaking a little. Matty and Ava would be waiting for them along with Liam and Gemma. It was funny to think that they were all now an indispensable part of her life when half a year ago, the only person who mattered was Matty.
Matty who she'd thought she loved. But he'd understood, somehow better than she had understood herself, that no, she did not love him. He was stable and his arms were strong enough to carry her through but it wasn't his stability she loved, it was what she had depended on to make her strong. He had been her strength but none of that had made her stronger. It was he who had gotten her through her mother's illness and when he'd gone, she'd become crippled. Unable to carry herself. It wasn't that she had loved him like a girl loves a boy. It was that she had used him, drained him like a battery that had kept the lights on within her. She did love him, but a different love had bloomed within her, for a very different boy.
"Are you ready?" Zac asked from the passenger seat when she'd parked the car.
"I am." They walked hand in hand towards the water. The lighthouse still stood by the shore, but no longer looked as big as it used to. The entrance was boarded up and there as a shoddily built wooden railing around it, warning people to keep away.
But Lulu wasn't thinking about that now. She was thinking about her friends and Zac's hand in hers and how nice the water felt on her bare feet. She didn't think about wading in deeper into the water, but about what she would do later tonight with Zac, and about how sweet it felt to know there was something to look forward to in the future.
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I finally finished my first novel! I'm so excited! (The song is very fitting. It's Alive by Gabrielle Aplin.)
AUTHOR'S NOTE
The story was written as a sort of coping mechanism because I too like Lulu was stuck in a hopeless situation of unrequited love.
Matty is sort of an amalgamation of different boys. He's the ex-boyfriend who told me he couldn't deal with my depression, he's the best friend I thought I loved, he's the other best friend, banished into exile because I couldn't love him back and he's the Hollywood trope—the perfect best friend that you're supposed to realize was right in front of you the whole time. The boy created by the media that embodies a sense of perfection when in reality, no one is perfect. And Lulu is blind to that fact.
Zac is a new hope. The boy that while we pine for the best friend will sometimes pass us by. He is full of flaws and doubt, but different. But he's important because perfect boys don't exist. Just like manic pixie dream girls aren't real, they're part of a collection of impossibilities we've deluded ourselves into believing because we hope they are true. Lulu is me. Me and countless other girls who have believed themselves irrevocably in love with someone who we created in our minds. I too had a best friend who I thought should be with me. I didn't love him like Lulu thought she loved Matty but there was certainly a part of me that believed we were perfect together. Lulu is the sadness I felt when I felt unloved. But she grew up and grew hope and became her own person.
This story transformed into something I wasn't expecting it to. I love it, but not as it is right now. I will be taking the time to carefully re-read it and edit it. There will be new plot points added and a new character will be introduced who will provide something very important that the novel is missing. The struggles Lulu goes through only helped to glorify her suicidal tendencies and I think that was a huge mistake on my part. She became dangerous for readers and I want nothing more than for this to be more of a book of hope in life than an escape into death. I tried to wrap it up differently, where Lulu would learn to love life, but I'm not a hundred percent sure I accomplished that.
Thank you to every single one of you who read the book and stuck by. It was a beautiful experience and to have finished my first manuscript is the greatest feeling in the world! I hope you'll stick around to see the new edition. I promise I won't change it beyond recognition, but I'll only make it better. It'll take me a while to complete it, but when it's done, I hope to see you there.
