Beyond The Screen

Chapter 1

My name is Devan. (It's pronounced like Kevin. I don't know why my parents didn't give me a normal name.) I'm 18 years old and I live in a little town outside Denver, Colorado. I've lived here my whole life, and I've never traveled far from it. Right now, I work at a convenience store and take classes part time at community college.

I have no idea what I'm doing with my life.

When I was younger I wanted to be an actor. But that dream was crushed pretty fast when I realized that I would probably have to move to a city that actually had an airport. Probably somewhere in California. Far away from my family and everything I know.

When I was a kid, this seemed like a perfectly reasonable dream. I'd just have the film crew and the director and everyone come on down to Nowhere, Colorado, just so they could have the honor of having me in their movie. I thought pretty highly of myself back then, I guess.

I was zoning out, thinking about all this, standing at the counter at my job, when a notification from my phone snapped me out of it. It was a Wattpad notification -- Marcus had updated his story. I smiled as I unlocked my phone and opened the app. Marcus, was my favorite Wattpad author. I followed him for his 1 Direction content (I'm a Directioner for life!) but He had been writing a story lately based on his life. It was really interesting to me because it looked like it was describing his realization that he's gay. Assuming it was actually based on his real life after all. I don't know, because I don't know anything about the guy in real life. He didn't have any info on his page about how old he is, where he's from, or a picture of himself, so maybe it wasn't fair for me to assume that the story was actually about his real-life self.

Marcus's latest chapter described how his main character, Mark, was struggling with drama in his friend group. That's really what the whole story was about, actually. The story really wasn't even very well-written, but I found myself absorbed in it anyway. Something about the characters just seemed so real.

I left a comment saying I was excited to see how the story would progress. Marcus wasn't a very popular author, he only had a few followers. (I didn't have any real followers either, probably because I never actually wrote or published any stories. I had been on the site long enough that I had a few random people following me, along with my friend Derek's long-abandoned account, but that was it.) Since he didn't get many comments, Marcus was good at replying to me. It made me happy to see that he cared.

Right after I submitted the comment, my phone buzzed again with a second Wattpad notification. I looked at it and was surprised to see that it was an announcement. There was going to be a writer's convention in New York, and Wattpad would have a booth there where we could buy merch. I was immediately interested. I would love to go there to support Wattpad, and maybe I could meet some other writers too. But I didn't have much money, so I'd have to ask my mom if I could go.

I opened her contact to text her, but then I realized how late the time was. She was probably asleep.

Ok, I'll talk to her tomorrow. Who knows how this could go?