Lose Track of Reason to Believe in Nothing

The last snowflake that Melanie felt like tolerating drifted its way onto her keyboard, prompting her to press crtl-S on her English paper and stow the laptop back in its red leather case, protecting it from the impending blizzard. The original project had been to write a personal narrative. No strings attached. If asked to share a story, most girls she knew could launch into the first of a thousand. Like the time they got drunk and threw up out of the third story window onto their friends convertible, or the time their heart was broken the 8th time by the 20th guy (how one could even have so many functioning hearts was beyond Melanie).

Melanie had learned time and time again that open-ended wasn’t her thing. She needed strict orders that would guide her, giving her confirmation that what she was doing was right. Or at least - that was what she told herself, rather than the fact of the matter being that story that would make the most interesting narrative was a certain summer she would like not to remember.

Either way, she found herself e-mailing her teacher, asking for an alternate assignment. Melanie may have been shy, but she was clever. She knew her teacher didn’t have the nerve to say no to a poor girl explaining how her life “just wasn’t that interesting”. Yup, that was it alright.

A research paper on her favorite book was a much better project, anyway. Black and white, just how Melanie liked it.

Her blue eyes looked up to the building surrounding the courtyard of her private school on all sides. She loved the way the almost fortress-like dorms surrounding the courtyard would block the snowy wind, leaving it to provide only the chilly air and light dusting of snow that Melanie thrived in.

The fall after that summer, Melanie’s mom decided to send her to private school up north. She decided it would be more like camp, still feeling bad for her daughter who was never quite the same come September. While Melanie disagreed, she grew to love the school for different reasons. She thrived for the independence, and truth be told, her roommate wasn’t even that bad. Even if she did loathe the three hour train ride whenever she wanted to visit home. Some things never change, she thought with a smirk.

Time flew by and before she knew it, it had been a year and a half. Melanie was just finishing up the first semester of her senior year. It was Wednesday; She would be on a train headed home in 48 hours.

She could almost taste graduation, but she knew she couldn’t slack. At a pretentious school like this, she could hardly blink before another student was in front of her, begging to take her spot at one of her dream colleges.

Thoughts like these consumed her life. This was what she needed, a solid future. Or so she thought. She put her restless heart and mind into the hands of a certain Alex Gaskarth and she saw how that ended. Never again would she be at the mercy of uncertainty, Melanie decided as she blinked the snowflakes out of her eyelashes and headed inside.