String of Fate

Chapter Forty Nine

Since I was young, I knew that I was different from everybody. I didn't know why but I could see the red thread that connected all the couples to each other – between my mum and dad, between the two girls sitting on the park bench, between the two men sitting at the café table, between the guy and the girl walking down the street. I saw the string as soon as it appeared between the couples.

I even saw my string appear on my birthday to a guy from a different school, a guy that I hadn't met yet. I had first noticed who it was attached to when we were standing in the middle of the town centre. I had been with my best friends and had seen the string wind across the centre, and it was surprising that I had actually been able to follow my string through the jumble of all the other strings that were there. Still, I had seen him with all of his friends on the other side of the busy centre.

The only thing that I hadn't expected was for him to have a second string – leading to a different girl. The two of them had been standing close together, and her arm linked through his as they chatted with their friends and enjoyed some hot drinks in the cold weather.

I had felt so happy when I had first gotten my string. I had been eager to try and follow it during my lunch as I hadn't found anyone in the school who had been at the end of my string. It had been something that I had been looking forward to for sixteen years, and all my hopes and dreams were all crushed as I saw that his string linked him to someone else.

How was that even possible? Could a person even have more than one destined partner? Did that mean that there was another destined person for me? Was there really just that guy? I had no idea what to think about the whole situation. I was too confused. I hadn't even spoken to the guy before so I shouldn't be upset about the fact that he was already destined to be with someone else. I was just confused as to why he had a string with me as well as the string he already had.

I had had to just leave everyone and go back to school, crying a little. I hadn't even explained to them what had happened, and it was only when we were walking home that they found out what had happened. There had been a lot of sympathy for me that afternoon.

It had been a month since then, and I managed to get used to my string on my finger even though it didn't lead to my destined person and I could never really follow it. After the fiasco that happened on my sixteenth birthday, I hadn't tried to see him again because his string had clearly led to another person, and he clearly hadn't tried to find me. A part of me didn't actually want to find him. Well, I had found him, but he'd found his someone else.

"Right, that's it! You and I are going to have a movie night tonight. You need something to take your mind off that idiotic string because you've had a terrible addiction to it for the past month. Plus, I just bought a film that I've been dying to see and I need someone to watch it with." My best friend, Stacey, ordered when she saw me at school on Friday. Even though she had been talking to me, she was also scanning the room for her boyfriend, Sam, who still hadn't arrived for the lesson just yet. It didn't surprise me. He either came in just before the bell or just after. More often than not, it was just after the bell.

"Didn't you have a date with Sam this weekend?" I asked. She was always hanging out with him lately. It was a little lonely now that we weren't hanging out constantly like we had done constantly before her birthday. "I don't want to intrude on you guys."

"Oh, we're having a movie night tonight whether you like it or not. You've been down in the dumps since your birthday and I haven't been able to properly be there since my birthday because I've constantly been with Sam. Sam will survive without me for one evening and we're going to go to town tomorrow with his cousin anyway." Stacey answered, squeezing my arm. She immediately perked up as she thought of something. "You should come with us! His cousin doesn't really want to come because he wants to follow his string, but Sam has blackmailed him with something to make him come. He said he couldn't follow his string because he'd been working on his school play and tomorrow was his first free day but he's going to go on Sunday instead."