Fifteen

The year I turned fifteen, my perfect heart broke into uneven pieces. I remember the morning of that very first day, taking a deep breath and walking through the  grand wooden doors of my school. The sky was grey and unhappy, tears of pain splashing and splattering on the converging black umbrellas below. Shyly waving at students I hadn't seen all summer, I went to my locker, counted to ten, and pulled out my books. Standing at the door of my first class, I had realised I was one of the last people to arrive and felt a stab of panic. No familiar faces stared back, no friendly smiles wiped the nervous and anxious expression on my face. No one had even noticed me, standing silently, detached at the threshold between school and freedom. I slid into a random seat, somewhere in the back corner next to the window just as the bell rang for the commencement of class.

 

In the middle of the lesson, when I had dispassionately concluded that no one would talk to me, the girl next to me turned around. The first thing I noticed about her was her red hair. The second was her bright smile, compassionately lighting up my heart with its brilliant rays of happiness.

 

Abigail, she introduced herself with a whisper. Taylor, I whispered back. I smiled at her, the first time that day.

 

Soon enough, we were best friends.  We were so alike in so many ways, yet so different in others. While I, blonde haired and blue eyed, was shy, and self-conscious, Abigail's personality was as fiery as her auburn hair. I didn’t mind being dominated by her wild nature. It was refreshing. It reminded me of who I used to be, before the bullying loneliness had started.

 

We were both scornful of the other girls, who lived to be pretty and was wanted because they were beautiful. Looking back now, I realise we were jealous. All we wanted was to be wanted, to be pursued the way those girls were chased by the boys on the football team. No matter how much we laughed and scorned at the girls who watched their reflections like it was an addictive television show, deep down inside was a yearning to be like them, to be accepted by them, and to become one of them.

 

When the long awaited chance finally arrived, we immediately dropped our contempt and embraced who we thought we'd sworn on never becoming. We'd never realised that there were greater things in life than just dating the boy on the football team.

 

Abi had encouraged me to emerge from my shell, where I had resided in silent solitude in a safe haven that protected me from the corruption of the rest of the world. I began to open up, other students began addressing me as their friends, teachers started to take more notice of me, and I found myself looking forwards to each day of school. Through Abigail, I once again became reconnected to the world. Because of her, I started to sing again.

 

We were both ecstatic when two sophomore boys asked us to go with them to the yearly dance. I remember it as one of the most happiest and painful times in my life. Dressed up in our formal dresses, I recall admiring ourselves in the mirror, thinking that we shone and shimmered brighter than the stars that were pinned onto that dark velvet night sky. They had their own cars, our dates, and we giggled in innocent anticipation of the night to come as we flew off, leaving the warm, loving arms of Childhood behind as we entered upon the branching paths of Youth.

 

All night, I was completely lost in the deep blue eyes of my date. I was in a dream, where for the first and only time, someone treated me like a princess, as if I was precious, fragile, and unable to be replaced. We swept through the dance floor in a passionate tornado of twisting steps and swirls, submerged in the pure and sincere affections of young love. I often relive that night, shaking my head at my younger self, constantly wishing I could go back and tell myself what I know now.

 

 That night, I felt as if there was nothing left in the world to figure out. It was just me and the boy next to me. Sometime during the night I realised Abigail was no longer next to  me, the absence of her rising laughter hollowing the air. I didn’t think it odd, too adrift in the misleading waters of that enchanting night to think properly. I learnt the truth sometime later.

 

My mother waited up for me that night. I was dropped home in the same car that had driven me to that sparkling night, the one that left me feeling wonderstruck and thinking he was the one, leaving me dancing around in my room alone for a long time afterwards. I had my first kiss that night, the kiss that left my head spinning around in mesmerizing pirouettes and leaps, the kiss that made me lay on my bed replaying those few and precious moments.

 

 I woke up the next day to find the night gone, streaks of orange and pink borne from the new day dissipating the shadowy magic of the previous night. I woke up to reality, realising that I had fell free, tumbling head over heels into the arms of a beautiful and tragic mistake. That was the past, and yet, to this day, I still carry it along as I climb up the mountain of life.

 

I didn't know who I was supposed to be at fifteen. Even now, years later, I want to believe with all my heart that when someone tells me they love me, they do, just like I believed it when I was fifteen. I want to be a child again, to be convinced that the handsome boy with the perfect hair who makes you laugh is your Prince Charming, and not the boy who broke your heart days after you swore you were going to marry him.

 

Abi and I both cried together, berating ourselves for our foolish childishness, for our belief that we could ever be wanted and loved by a boy.  I found out soon after that my best friend had given everything she had to the boy who changed his mind. We never thought that this wound, the first of many cuts that would stab our hearts, would be so curable. At the time, it was an abyss of emptiness, a chasm of sadness and loneliness that accompanied the heartbreak of first love. But I've found that time can heal most anything. That wound healed to become a mere fissure among the rest of the cracks life has given my heart, and through the pain and heartbreak, I managed to find who I was supposed to be in the reassuring world of words and rhythm that sings in harmony to lyrical feelings.

 

We never thought it possible, but i promise you, so far, Abi and I have both done things greater than dating the boy on the football team.