Inspired by My Happy Ending by Avril Lavigne
Everything I knew, gone. Everything I believed, everything that I trusted, vanished. My happy ending, disappeared.
It had seemed so perfect for so long. I was in love with Ethan, heck, I was going to marry that boy in just one short month. Ethan had said that he felt the same way, but he’s an amazing liar. I’m sure that I’m not the only person who would’ve been fooled; I’m just the unlucky one who was. The truth was too much to ask for, apparently. It wasn’t as if he just got cold feet, or that he decided that maybe he didn’t love me, no, not at all. He’d been lying for months and months. The entire three years that we’d known each other, all the memories that we’d shared, all of the kisses, all of the words, everything was fake, a lie. And if that was all unreal, then what had really happened?
We were clearing out the cabinets and files in Ethan’s apartment, preparing everything to be moved into the apartment that we’d soon be sharing. I was sitting in the spinning office chair, and he in a kitchen chair that we had moved. There were piles upon piles of files, receipts, and the usual junk you would find in any person’s home office, and the shredder had been filled and dumped into the trash seven times already. We were finishing up, with only about four or five cabinets left to do.
“Hey, Eth, where’s the key for these cabinets over here?” I asked, throwing a glance over my shoulder.
“The master key should be in the desk drawer,” He answered, not even looking up to see which cabinets I had been pointing at. I dug through the drawer that he spoke of, and rifled through its contents, pulling out a key ring with six or seven keys on it.
I looked through the keys, delighted to find one labeled “Master.” Ethan walked over, “No, not that one, I’ll do it.” My fiancé said.
“Don’t be silly, I can do it! You have a bunch to do over there.” I fit the correct key into the hole in the front of the cabinet, but before I could turn it, he hit my face. Hard.
“I said, not that one!” Ethan’s voice was harsh, fury dripping from each word. Tears welled up in my eyes, and I gingerly touched the place he had hit. I could already feel swelling. It was as if a switch went off inside Ethan’s head, and he realized what he had just done. “Piper…” He said to me.
I looked up at the man who I loved, at the man who I was getting ready to marry. What was he hiding so diligently from me? My trembling hand reached towards the key, slowly, turning it in the lock. I opened the cabinet door, and pulled out one of many file folders.
The first paper in the folder was a picture and I.D. of a man I recognized from America’s Most Wanted. The remainder of the folder contained pages and pages of information about this man. I pulled out another folder, it contained another picture and set of information on another man who I recognized from America’s Most Wanted. And another and another, there were four total, with one last remaining folder in the cabinet.
I was afraid to take it out, but I forced myself to. There was a note card taped to the front of the folder. The top of the note card read, IDENTITIES, in big block lettering. Underneath, there was a list of each of the names that had a folder, with sets of years next to each. The last name on the list was Ethan Turnbladt (2003-?).
“Ethan, who are you?” I asked, tears beginning to stream down my face.
“Piper, please, let me explain.”
“How in the world do you explain this? I don’t even know who you are.”
“It isn’t what it looks like,”
“It looks exactly like you’ve had multiple identities, and screwed each one up before moving onto the next.”
“Then it’s exactly what it looks like.” Ethan looked me directly in the eye.
“Why didn’t you tell me? What am I to you? Ethan, we’re getting married in one month. How could you hide the majority of your past from me?” I was so hurt.
“Piper, maybe, I don’t love you. This has all been, my attempt to, walk the straight and narrow. But I see that my past will never disappear.” His eyes didn’t stray from mine. I couldn’t see the beauty in those blues anymore; they were masked by cruelty and lies.
“What?”
“Get out. Leave my house, now.” He pointed towards the door. Still shaking, I picked up my purse, and made my way out into the hallway of the apartment building. That’s where I could no longer hold myself together anymore. I began to sob, shoulders shaking, tears pouring uncontrollably. From inside Ethan’s apartment I could hear his muffled voice talking to somebody on the phone, but I couldn’t quite make out what he was saying.
That was a week ago. And for a whole week, I haven’t heard a single word from Ethan Turnbladt. It’s as if he’s disappeared from the face of the earth. Which I’m sure he did. The year 2011 must have replaced the question mark on that note card, followed by a new name, with a new question mark. A new folder added to the collection, Ethan Turnbladt just a bitter memory. I’ll be forgotten, along with every part of this era of his life, and he’ll never think of Piper Richards again.
He’s gone, I keep telling myself, but I don’t believe it. I don’t believe anything anymore. The only truth I know is that Ethan lied to me. I think the only reason that I even know that’s true is because of the still dark purple bruise on my face from when he struck me. Who knows, maybe when that fades, I won’t know anything for sure anymore.
Saturday, April 30, 2011
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Discontinuation
Sadly, I wish to inform you that I am going to discontinue my posting of Eva's story on this blog. My hopes are that I will be able to finish writing the novel, and turn it into something that could be professionally published.
I do not, however, want to discontinue posting in this blog completely. I will post short stories, poems, and other small pieces of my writing. I hope that you all will continue to read my writing, and continue to follow my words, despite this change. Thank you, everyone!
I do not, however, want to discontinue posting in this blog completely. I will post short stories, poems, and other small pieces of my writing. I hope that you all will continue to read my writing, and continue to follow my words, despite this change. Thank you, everyone!
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Religious Battle
Once again, I was awoken early by the heat filtering into my house, only rather than beginning to prepare for another day, I lay in bed and think about what had happened the night before. Writing in my notebook reminded me of the prayers that I used to write to God before The Incident, when I still had room in my head for anything else. I used to be really into Christianity, but after The Incident, well, everything changed. It wasn’t that I stopped believing, no, that wasn’t it at all, but I couldn’t deal with going to youth group or the services on Sunday mornings. I became afraid of large groups of people who didn’t know about what had happened, afraid that people wouldn’t understand, that the people who I used to think of as friends would notice the change in me. As I stopped attending church functions, I kind of let my faith slip away from me.
I missed talking to God, though. God was the only person who I could tell everything to. Even Marissa and Dana didn’t know as much about me as God did. Well, I know that God knows everything about everyone, but what I mean is, I told God more than I had even told Dana and Marissa. When I was still in elementary school and people would ask me who my best friend was, I was actually known to say Jesus on most occasions. I missed those days.
I guess I was angry at God, too. I mean, after all, He hadn’t done anything to stop what had happened to me. He had watched every horrifying moment of The Incident occur, sat by and watched as I screamed and tears poured down my face. I had to remember what I had been taught when I still went to Church, though. God gave us free will, that’s why bad things happen. God doesn’t do the bad things to us. I was still angry, though, no matter how many times I tried to tell myself what I knew was the truth.
My Bible still sat on the little bookshelf next to my bed, but I hadn’t touched it since a few months after The Incident. I hadn’t meant to stop caring about my religion, but it just sort of happened. Most people wouldn’t have been shocked about my sudden religious change after The Incident, but I was. God and Jesus used to be such a major part of my life. I missed those times, though, and I really wanted to go back.
That desire to have the happiness that I had before The Incident is what drove me to rolling over on my bed, and pulling my Bible off the shelf. I blew the dust from the cover, and allowed the book to fall open to a random page. My eyes fell upon a verse that I had underlined at one point in my younger, more innocent, days.
“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding,” Proverbs 3:5
I laughed quietly to myself. Yeah, right, I thought, trust. I barely trust my own family members now. But then, as I began to think deeper into what the verse really meant, I thought that maybe God was trying to send me a message. I didn’t really want to listen, though. I mean, I had been begging to know the reason why all that I’ve dealt with has happened to me just hours ago, but that doesn’t mean that this was my answer. No. I didn’t like this answer any more than I liked what had happened to me. It was like the insult after the injury.
Despite my anger at that moment, though, I was driven to pray the first prayer that I had prayed since around the time of The Incident. It was a short prayer, fueled by anger and stubbornness, but a prayer nonetheless.
Not today, Lord, not today
I missed talking to God, though. God was the only person who I could tell everything to. Even Marissa and Dana didn’t know as much about me as God did. Well, I know that God knows everything about everyone, but what I mean is, I told God more than I had even told Dana and Marissa. When I was still in elementary school and people would ask me who my best friend was, I was actually known to say Jesus on most occasions. I missed those days.
I guess I was angry at God, too. I mean, after all, He hadn’t done anything to stop what had happened to me. He had watched every horrifying moment of The Incident occur, sat by and watched as I screamed and tears poured down my face. I had to remember what I had been taught when I still went to Church, though. God gave us free will, that’s why bad things happen. God doesn’t do the bad things to us. I was still angry, though, no matter how many times I tried to tell myself what I knew was the truth.
My Bible still sat on the little bookshelf next to my bed, but I hadn’t touched it since a few months after The Incident. I hadn’t meant to stop caring about my religion, but it just sort of happened. Most people wouldn’t have been shocked about my sudden religious change after The Incident, but I was. God and Jesus used to be such a major part of my life. I missed those times, though, and I really wanted to go back.
That desire to have the happiness that I had before The Incident is what drove me to rolling over on my bed, and pulling my Bible off the shelf. I blew the dust from the cover, and allowed the book to fall open to a random page. My eyes fell upon a verse that I had underlined at one point in my younger, more innocent, days.
“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding,” Proverbs 3:5
I laughed quietly to myself. Yeah, right, I thought, trust. I barely trust my own family members now. But then, as I began to think deeper into what the verse really meant, I thought that maybe God was trying to send me a message. I didn’t really want to listen, though. I mean, I had been begging to know the reason why all that I’ve dealt with has happened to me just hours ago, but that doesn’t mean that this was my answer. No. I didn’t like this answer any more than I liked what had happened to me. It was like the insult after the injury.
Despite my anger at that moment, though, I was driven to pray the first prayer that I had prayed since around the time of The Incident. It was a short prayer, fueled by anger and stubbornness, but a prayer nonetheless.
Not today, Lord, not today
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