The weather outside was perfect.  I knew I had to go outside and I knew I would regret it if I didn’t, but I couldn’t get myself to get out of my bed.  I continued to stare out the window until I fell back to sleep.  I was supposed to be on vacation right now, but yet, here…

I always knew Andy didn’t love me and probably never would.  I had done everything I could think of to try and get him to notice me.  To say I became obsessed was an understatement.  I knew his phone number, his favorite foods, where he went shopping.  Everything.  I knew it wasn’t normal to know this much about him, but…

To this day, I don’t understand people who buy new cars just to have new cars.  Or buy new phones just to have new phones.  I don’t know how many times I watch them push their phones around their desk just waiting for someone to ask about it.  All I wanted to do was go on a…

My next-door neighbor – Tara – is a professional dancer and every time I watched her leave, I wish I had grown up dancing instead of reading.  Reading was my favorite pastime, but sometimes I wished I had a hobby that kept me active and moving like Sandy always seemed to be.  She always seemed to be going to parties and always had a lot of…

When Amanda walked into the café for the first time, I knew I wanted to be friends with her.  The clothes she wore and how she carried herself was exactly how I wanted to present myself.  I had been coming to the café for years and most of the staff automatically started my order when I came in…

I always loved when my mom was able to bring home cardboard boxes and leftover crayons and markers from work.  Other than my bed and a few small bookcases, I didn’t have a lot of furniture – a fact I didn’t mind at all.  My room was easy to clean and the lack of furniture made it easy to build the…

I started planning my dream store when I took my first official art class when I was fifteen.  My parents thought art was a colossal waste of time and money so I had never been very supported in what I considered to be the early stages of my ‘career’.  I started babysitting for other families in the neighborhood…

My younger brother has always been obsessed with dragons.  Our mom has made him a new dragon costume for Halloween every single year since he was five.  He always told me his greatest victory was when he finally mastered the skills of reading and writing so he could make up his own dragon stories and fairy tales.  At…

“Hello.  I need you.  I love you.  Come back.”  I read and reread the letter over the course of the next week.  I was becoming obsessed, but felt like I had to know who the letter was to.  Or at least who the letter was from.  I had just bought a house and had found a few boxes in the shed that had…

“I don’t understand how she can be gone so much,” Rebecca told me as we walked out of our English composition class.  “How can she be getting a paycheck or not be fired when she misses one class every single week?  Especially when we only have two classes, maybe three.”  Mary pushed the door open to let…