Determination

Frustrated, Chase walked out of school, backpack on her shoulders and music playing loudly in her ears. All day, she had tried and tried to get Hailey to talk to her, but the blonde would just reply with a few chillingly emotionless words. That is, when she did reply. Mostly Hailey just shrugged, or moved her head in response.

It was as if she didn’t want friends, something Chase didn’t understand. Though she knew not everyone needed to be surrounded by people, Chase possessed the belief that everyone needs a person to confide in, least their emotions and thoughts destroy them.

During the walk home, Chase thought. She knew she wasn’t going to give up trying to befriend Hailey; if anything, she was only more set on it than before.

How can I get her to open up to me? She’s a complete stranger to everyone here, including me. It’s not as if she’s just shy, no. It seems more than that. As if she’s afraid to let others in, to trust them.

Chase sighed, stepping into the front hallway of her home after about a fifteen minute walk. No ideas had come to her yet, and her usual animated manner was dulled, a fact she knew wouldn’t go unnoticed by her cousin. So, as she called out a greeting to her cousin, she prepared herself for the questions she knew would come. Autumn knew her well by now, having taken care of Chase on her own for almost ten years, so that as soon as she heard the slight difference in tone and wording of Chase’s greeting, she hurried down the stairs.

“Hun, what’s wrong?” she asked, her entire face showing her concern for the younger girl. Chase sighed gently, shaking her head. She motioned for Autumn to follow her into the kitchen, and the both took their normal seats on the counter. “Well,” Chase began, “there’s this girl in my classes….”

***

“Maybe you should take it slow trying to befriend her, Chase. I love you to death, but you can be a bit much for me at times. Don’t you think you’d be a bit much for her until she grows used to your…quirks?”

Chase nodded, knowing her cousin did in fact have a point. “Okay, you do have a point with that,” she admitted. “But I do have homework to do before dinner. So, as I mull over what to do, I will go and attempt it,” she said, hugging Autumn before bounding up to her room.

Autumn was only thirty-two, and had been taking care of Chase since she was eighteen. But at the time, she had been going to college as well, so they two girls had lived with Chase’s alcoholic father. Most of the time he was passed out somewhere around the house or talking nonsense when he was awake.

But as soon as Autumn had finished college, she had gotten custody of her younger cousin and they had only each other ever since. Autumn was everything Chase needed in life, and Autumn harbored no resentment for raising her cousin.

Chase taped her pencil on her desk, looking at the Spanish worksheet that Senora had assigned for the night. Conjugate the irregular Spanish verbs.

Tener, Chase thought. To have. Tengo, tienes, tiene, tenemos, tienen. At the end, Chase wrote the vosotros form that was only used in Spain. By the time she reached the end of the worksheet, the sun was starting to set. She placed her books into her backpack for the next day and pulled out a worn copy of Comedy of Errors.

She spoke the first line of the play aloud, simply because it was one of her favorite lines that Shakespeare had written. “‘Proceed, Solinus, to procure my fall and by the doom of death end woes and all.’”