Book One In The Ahh-Ness Of Things Series: April & Donnie were once inseparable, but now almost six years have passed since she left NYC. What if April O'Neil could set the record straight, once & for all! The only girl down enough to chill with the...
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This room felt so cold & stale, like no one had been here for a long time; no one making themselves comfortable. It had always been a place of safe warmth & middle of the night conversations that went on until we couldn't keep our eyes open & our sentences were running together. I sat down on the futon pallet, looking aimlessly around Donatello's bedroom. I wished for better days; but how awful is it that back then I thought my life was so stifled. I had felt so trapped down here after three, almost four long years. No sun light, no birds singing, no fresh air & time seemed to just wander through the rooms. All I had wanted to do was escape into the sunshine & start my life. After a while, the guys had all become like overbearing chaperones & maybe, I thought with disgust; maybe I had only thought I was falling in love with him back then, because I was bored.
I pulled the little wooden crate, tucked behind the book shelf, over to my feet. I wasn't hiding out in his room, so much as taking one last look around; an official goodbye. As I went back through the contents of the box, I sat the clothes & keepsakes aside on the bed, & found myself listless; staring at old photos. I wasn't even paying attention to them, just skimming through. Suddenly my mind stopped, focusing on a photograph of Donnie & I on the sofa in front of the TV. It wasn't so much a photograph as it was movement captured in a single frame.
In it, I was staring into the distance towards the person snapping the candid picture & Donnie was in mid flight; over taking me with arms & legs & a sumptuous kiss that covered half of the side of my face. I was caught off balance & as the camera flashed, our limbs were blurred by the sudden commotion. I had looked up just as Michelangelo had taken the picture; Donnie so surprised to come home & see me sitting there, even the cushions of the couch were captured in mid disruption as he had piled on top of everything to hug & kiss me.
He was so happy. Everything in his life was where he thought he wanted it to be. I had been gone to my aunt's for two weeks & when I finally came home, the guys were out on patrol. When he had walked in, I too was right there; where he wanted me to be. What he never knew was that I had sat there waiting, trying to figure out how I would tell him everything that had happened in those two weeks. I was lost between the urge to just blurt it all out in front of everyone & the idea that such things should be private & everyone needed to go away. Looking at the photograph now, I remembered how cold I had felt, how numb. The whole world I knew, my whole existence within it, was meaningless. I was someone else's idea. I had officially confirmed, in my own mind, that I had no control over my purpose here in this life. And as Donatello laughed & hugged me tightly, while Mikey took our picture, I thought only of how I would destroy his blissful innocence if he knew. What was the point of letting him fall deeper in love with someone that would bring him deeper disappointment than happiness.
