Back To The Beginning

How far we have come! Below is the original, first draft- oh my god what was I thinking--prologue for When You Were Mine-- then titled Rosaline. What do you think? A lot has changed, since this piece of writing (word vomit?) :) 

Have a great week! (And remember to revise!) 

R

What’s in a name?

I read the story and knew how it ended, it just never occurred to me that I’d be playing a different part. Sure, I realize that we can’t all be the heroines of other people’s stories, it just didn’t seem possible that I wouldn’t be the heroine of my own. I was pretty certain life was a lot more like the plays the theater kids put on than anyone imagined. I mean, this is high school, people have roles and they stick to them. You can’t just try on a bunch of different characters, be Sporty and Poetic at the same time because you feel like it. There are things that are permanent, unchangeable. People who are good at calc (not me) and the ones who can pull off white in the middle of winter (sure, but we live in California). Guys you are meant to love and who are meant to love you back (Rob Henly. Definitely). It’s life, it’s just the way it is. These stories don’t get re-written. They’ve been the same way for thousands of years. Who are we to change them?

Which is why it’s so infuriating that people are always going around telling teenagers that we don’t know who we are yet, that we still have to discover ourselves. I mean, I knew who I was:

Rosalind Kennedy. The most popular girl at San Bellaro, the daughter of a senator, best friend of Samantha Kessler, Olivia Diamond and Denine Goldman, and, most importantly, girlfriend of Rob Robert Henly.  I was the leading lady. Anyone would have said so.

Rob was mine. My best friend and the handsome neighbor next door. The one who first chased me around my backyard when I was five. Who sat with me, Saturday after Saturday, eating popcorn on my bedroom floor and watching old re-runs of Friends. We were always going to get together. It was just a matter of time. Rosalind Kennedy and Rob Henly. The perfect pair. The girl with the long, dark hair and the boy with the piercing brown-black eyes. Tall, dark and handsome. Rich and envied. We fit the part. So when he kissed me, three weeks before senior year began, my life, my identity, fell into place. In that moment, sitting on my parent’s back porch wearing his sweatshirt, the one with STANFORD stitched on the front, I knew, without a doubt, that there was no one I’d rather be with. Or be, for that matter.

But there was something I didn’t know. Something I hadn’t been paying attention to.

Rosalind had a different story, not at all like the one I remembered. This one had star crossed lovers and heartbreak and, yes, even death, but it wasn’t anything like the original. That’s the funny thing about shifting point of view, all of a sudden everything changes. Mrs. Grazinsky is always talking about this in English class, how a story told from a different character might as well be a different book. But Rob always looked so adorable in English that I never paid much attention. I should have. I should have listened when we read this one. I should have seen it coming. But I didn’t, of course. You never see anything coming when you’re in love. That’s the point. It’s blinding. Someone once said that love makes you forget the simplest things, like what color the sky is or whether it’s a Monday or a Tuesday. That love can even make you forget your own name.

They were right.