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.
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