detonate (ON HOLD)

Chapter Fifteen

        "hearts on fire tonight, feel my bones ignite, feels like war,"        

        No one is quite sure who was the first person to introduce the hourglass to society. Despite its origin, it's still around today with the same principle as what it started with.  Most of the time, it's two glass bulbs that are connected with a small hole between them. You turn it upside down so that the sand in the top starts to flow down towards the bottom again. We used to have one in our house. As a child, I had been fascinated by the concept. All you had to do was flip it in order to change the direction of the sand. The hourglass became a metaphor to me. The older I've gotten, the more I realized how similar it was to life. One simple change could re-direct the course of your life. It's funny how one decision could open one door or close another. Sometimes its for the better; sometimes its for the worse. That's the thing about life: you never truly know what it is going to throw at you next. Sometimes your hands are the glass and life is the grains of sand that slip through them. In many ways, I saw my senior year as an hourglass with the moments of my childhood slipping through my fingers like the grains of sand. It took me until that moment to realize how fast the time had been going by. I was the sand, and slowly but surely, I was falling from the familarity of my childhood into the cold, harsh world we lived in. I was becoming an adult, and the responsibilities began to pile up. Whether I was ready for it or not, life kept pushing forward. Every day, I loomed closer to the day that I would walk out of Westwood and never look back. Reality was hitting me like a freight train that night, and it put an uneasy feeling in my stomach. I attempted to shake the thoughts from my mind by turning on music to rid me of my thoughts that screamed loudly over the stillness of the house. 

        My hazel eyes searched my reflection in order to ensure that I looked half decent. I knew that I needed to look good. I wasn't sure why yet. At that point, I wasn't sure where Luke was going to take me. He had a special night planned, but I wasn't allowed to know where he was taking me. It was a surprise to celebrate both Valentine's Day and sixth months of us being together. We weren't dating for the first few weeks, but we might as well have been. I figured it counted, and to be honest, Luke nor I remembered the exact date we started dating. It didn't bother either of us. We were together, and that was all that mattered. Just the thought of him taking me out made me slightly nervous. It wasn't like we never went on dates because we did. It was just different this time. It was fancier and more thought out. I stood from my place in front of the mirror and smoothed out the short, white dress. Reaching into my closet, my fingers ran over the different fabrics. They pushed each article over until I found exactly what I was looking for. The navy blue, striped blazer was tugged  on as I slipped on my vans. They were navy blue much like the stripes. I let out a shaky breath as I double checked my reflection in the mirror. The bracelets on my wrist rattled as I ran my fingers through my blonde waves. After doing a small twirl, I decided that I looked fine. Turning on my heel, I snatched my phone from my dresser before exiting the warmth of my own room. My footsteps were quiet and calculated despite the fact that no one else was home. The anxiety of the night was getting to me. My heartbeat skyrocketed at the sound of my doorbell. My feet felt like weights that I had to drag towards the door. My sweaty palm wrapped around the cold metal of the doorknob. I turned it slowly and pulled open the door to find a nervous looking Luke. Suddenly, the nerves melted away.