Destiny

Chapter 1

Have you ever thought about what it would be like to die? If your life was just hanging in the balance and your only grip onto life was hanging by a translucent thread, would you worry? Or would you fall into a feather-soft relaxation state, pass onto another life and not have to worry? Maybe we would turn into ghost forms, be able to see and not touch what was our lives. The possibilities are endless, just like an endless stream of blackness that is a dream. It’s like a never ending black hole that we get sucked into, we can’t get out of it—we have to rely on other things to break us out of that calm, never ending pit of thoughts.

I always thought I would die young. When I was thirteen I could never see my future stretching past at least 30. I thought it was just because I hadn’t made up my mind about anything, but now after I had thought about my future, I still couldn’t see any further. It’s silly, I told myself, nothing’s going to happen. You’re going to live until you’re old and grey with a husband who loves you, kids and grandkids to spoil rotten and a family to talk to and gloat about. Now, at 16, I see it’s all silly. I’m not going to have any of that. I have a steady job as a waitress, then my second not-so-steady job at a music store. I only had two jobs for the money. Even though I was still living at home and going to school, I still had bills to pay. These days, you have to pay for everything. You even have to pay someone to be happy.

It was my lunch break, after persuading my boss to let me off after already having to wait to two sections of the not-so-popular café for three hours, I was granted my lunch—which was then followed by a half an hour trip down to the park, which was only across the road from McDonalds. I thought it was pretty ironic, a fast food place being across the road from somewhere where you can run around and get fit. It’s almost encouraging people to eat crappy, greasy food just so they ran sweat off the guilt with a couple of laps across the road. But, mind you, people are usually too lazy to do that.

Despite my thoughts about crappy greasy food, I sat at an outside table at McDonalds, grimacing at the greasy fake-marble table. Flicking away a piece of lettuce from the last person’s burger that sat here—or maybe it was the person before that—I settled down and shoved some chips into my mouth. People gathered into the Restaurant next door, and I noticed children gazing longingly at the Golden Arches, and also the playground that I sat in front of. I listened to their screams of joy as then slid down the slides, and regretted almost immediately sitting where I did. Unfortunately, it was the only seat that had a good breeze and a view of the park.

As I ate, I stared down at my chest where over my left breast sat the pin which read Allie. Allie Faith Harland. I was of Greek heritage, my mother believed in continuing and respecting the Greek ways, but my Father—who was English—proved that she really couldn’t care less. My mother respected the ways, sure, but she surely didn’t follow them. I would often hear her babbling to herself about something that she should have done, that was Greek—by the way, then I could hear her curse and tell herself that the past was the past and doing it would have been pointless anyway. I rolled my eyes to myself and silently swore as the condensation from my drink rolled down the sides of the paper cup and spotted onto my white t-shirt. I grabbed a half-dirty napkin and dabbed at the almost see-through spot on my shirt before setting the drink down on the table and sighing. I wasn’t having a good day and school holidays were making my head hurt.

Looking up into the sky, I decided that I was going to spend the last ten minutes that I could staring up at the sky, trying to make pictures out of the fluffy white clouds. When I was little, my dad and I would go to the park, which was only across the road from the space where I gloomily sat, and lie down in the grass—which was always prickly and uncomfortable. He and I would have competitions of who could run the fastest, and we would both end up lying on the grass, laughing and puffed from all of the running. That was always in the summer—my six weeks of freedom, which I was in now. Except freedom isn’t what it was then, now. Now, I have two jobs to raise enough money to keep going to college before I could only work one job again. I still struggled to find what I was going to do with my life, weather I was going to be an accountant, or a doctor, or…something.