Inachevé

Thirty-three - If I Die Young

When you’re in love you believe anything is possible.  When you have that one person holding your hand you believe that you’ll have them forever.  When you look into that person’s eyes you swear you see an angel.  Love is both fragile and strong; one lie can tear it to pieces, yet truth is what keeps it going.  Young people in love know no boundaries; they believe it’s just them against the World of Opportunities.   Young people forget they are just children, not adults.  They don’t have the knowledge, wisdom, and experience like their parents – they believe in only their feelings and hope of forever beauty and few conflicts.  Indeed, there’s a perfect ending for everyone, but so many young people shoot forward in the timeline, believing they’re old enough to take up responsibilities that are actually unknown territories for them.  Only a few believe to wait and take up patience. 

This short account is a love story about such a couple, who promised each other that they’d be faithful to each other and let Faith carry them through.  However, their journey takes a turn when the reality they’ve feared challenges them...

  

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Thomas Caine and Rosalind Wilhelm were seniors in high school.  They had met not as next door neighbors or childhood friends, or even during the summers, it was in fact in the parking lot outside of the DMV’s office.  Thomas was on his way to get his permit, and Rosalind had just gotten hers and was on her way out.   Thomas was promised he could receive his license on his 18th as he had been quite reckless when he was 16.  Rosalind was a very responsible girl, but wasn’t as eager to get out on the road as her brother.  And additionally, the insurance would have been doubled if she’d joined her sibling at the same time. 

Thomas wasn’t the most attractive boy, but his personality was charismatic, his energy bubbly, and his overall appearance, endearing.  Rosalind was a beautiful, fine featured young woman with long sun-bleached blonde hair.  She was a cheery, thoughtful person, and always thought twice before opening her mouth.   Thomas was the opposite: he said whatever he felt and didn’t think what he said mattered to anyone.  Thomas was in a relationship with his long time crush, Angeline, who was the daughter of his father’s best friend.     Rosalind, however, had just gotten out of a relationship with her four-year boyfriend whom she had met through a friend. After breaking up, Rosalind vowed to be “just friends” with a boy, even if she liked him more than a friend. 

On his way into the DMV’s office, Thomas stopped in the doorway to kneel and tie his shoe.  On his way up from tying his laces, his head, smacked Rosalind on the shoulder, knocking her into her mother.

"I’m so sorry!”  Thomas blubbered as he tried to find something productive to do, but he couldn’t exactly rub the stranger’s shoulder for her, or grab a pack of ice.  “I’m sorry, I didn’t see you.”

"It’s alright,” the girl said through pain as she rubbed her now bruised shoulder. 

"I hope you won’t be like that on the road!”  the girl’s mother snapped as she guided Rosalind out the door.

Thomas’s dark brown eyes sunk as he watched the girl and her mother get into their car.  Thomas shrugged the humiliation off and waited in line for his call.

 As Thomas waited patiently in the office, he began observing the drivers surrounding him.  He spotted the usual mother cradling her screaming, tired child and the common frowns of people who wanted to go home and have lunch.  Thomas panned the room, passing the hunched over teenage girl, who moved only her thumbs over her phone’s keyboard, and set eyes on an elderly man edging his way into the yellow-walled building.  Thomas’s immediate thought was that that old crust of a man should not be getting behind the wheel!  And moreover, he definitely shouldn’t if his glasses were half an inch thick!