The Beginning of Everything

by Robyn Schneider

We move through each other’s lives like ghosts, leaving behind haunting memories of people who never existed. The popular jock. The mysterious new girl. But we’re the ones who choose, in the end, how people see us. And I’d rather be misremembered. Please, Ezra, misremember me.”

realized that it didn’t matter whether any of what she said was true; she believed it so completely that there was no convincing her otherwise.

She would always be confined by what everyone expected of her, because she was too afraid and too unwilling to correct our imperfect imaginings.

I might have made that decision without her, or if I’d never fallen in love with a girl who considered love to be the biggest disaster of all.

She lent a spark, perhaps, or tendered the flame, but the arson was mine. Oscar Wilde once said that to live is the rarest thing in the world, because most people just exist, and that’s all. I don’t know if he’s right, but I do know that I spent a long time existing, and now, I intend to live.