After the interview, I took off. I wasn’t confident I had gotten the job, although I feel like I should be more confident now that I’m 26 years old already and have gotten a job at a few mechanic shops already. But the writing industry is different. The writing industry only lets the wonderfully talented shine in the spotlight. The writing industry wants to sell out.

But selling out isn’t really who I am, not at all, I thought as I sat on the bench, waiting to be picked up. The clouds were getting greyer and greyer.I’m not a Stephen King. I’m not a Margaret Atwood. I’m not a JK Rowling. I’m not the type of person to sell out just by writing whatever I like. My name is Carrie Wormwood, I’m surviving on a job in a mechanic shop and I’m sitting on a bench alone from a job interview that I probably won’t pass. It hurts my feet to wear high heels, it hurts my face to smile too much, it dirties my nails when I wear nail polish and I can barely walk in a dress, much less a wet one.

Wait... why is my dress wet? I look up and check for rain. The clouds had gotten so grey they were almost black, blocking out any hint of sunlight, and it was raining. Hard. Oh dear, my mascara is a mess. What am I going to do? I look around for some type of shade for me and the unfinished works of writing I have. Nothing. I groan bitterly. I guess that all I can do is wait for my dad to pick me up...

Silence for two minutes.

You know what, forget that. He’s already about an hour and a half late to pick me up, and I can’t remember the last time I had this amount of patience, and probably won’t for a long time. If he misses me, he’ll call me.

I walk out into the rain, my mascara probably running, revealing the deep purple bags under my eyes. My hair, a sopping brown mess which was once blonde before the rain touched it. I had taken my heels off, and now the only thing covering my feet were my tights. I’m a mess, but I don’t care. I don’t care what people think about it for the first time, because most are never worth impressing.

I can find the way home through my GPS. I wait for it to load and... it’ll take 5 hours to get home by foot. Whatever. I’m tired of people anyway. I don’t care if my feet start aching and my tights rip. I just want some time to myself.

By the time forty-five minutes pass, I have no idea where the hell I am, and all I know is that I’m heading home through the path my GPS made. My angry and depressed mood has faded through now. Now I’m just in a depressed mood. I want to listen to music, but I have no headphones and I don’t want to drain my battery anyway. I need it for my GPS. I’m lost in thought as I look at the neighborhood I’m passing by, shaded by large oak trees.

I still can’t decide if it was a good call or a terrible mistake to move out of my mother’s house in Texas to my dad’s house in Minnesota. Sure, there’s the part where I don’t have to deal with my mother’s things that no one bothered to move out after she died, and I don’t have to pay rent anymore, but then again, I know that Texas is all I’ve ever known. And I don’t know if I’ll even like this place. I frowned to myself, feeling a bit helpless. I never liked my mother, she was mean to my father when they were still married, and she wasn’t even a little kinder to me.

But she was my guide. She told me where to go, and never let me speak for myself. So, I guess, I had thought “Why think for myself then? Seems she’ll be dictating my life for as long as she has a hold on me.”But now, she doesn’t even have her hold on the earth. She’s gone. She’s dead. And she can’t guide me anymore, so I ended up erasing her from my memory. I can’t stand remembering her. It hurts me too much to remember she is dead. So, it’s better if I just forget she was ever alive. Won’t be too hard, since she wasn’t too far from being dead when I knew her anyway.

I feel like a little girl lost in the supermarket. Lost, with no knowledge of how to break out and find home. What am I going to do? What do I do? What do I do-

“Hey. You okay?”

I look up to see a young man under a dark umbrella. He has light brown hair that’s growing into bangs, which is slightly shielding one eye. He’s wearing a zipped up black jacket and is wearing long jeans. Even though it’s summer, and it’s about 70 degrees out here. He looks familiar, but I can’t place it. But it doesn’t matter. I’m not talking to him. I want to be alone. Besides, doesn’t talking to random men in the rain count as a risk for getting kidnapped? “Yeah, I’m fine. Leave me alone.”

“I’m not a creep, you know. I may look like one, but I’m not, really. Nothing in my trunk or anything. I can drive you home if you need me to.” I frown. Although a part of me wanted a ride home now that I was cooled off, mere words don’t prove that one is not a creep. Besides, a part of me wanted to keep my word to myself. I didn’t want to prove to myself that I didn’t know what I wanted, and although that’s true, I don’t want to realize that and feel defeated the rest of the way home.

“No. I’m fine. Leave me alone.” I turn away from him, because I have a feeling that he has a sad look on his face, and for some reason, I can’t stand to see that right now. I walk for fifteen minutes, the scenery going from the neighborhood I just passed by to isolation, the only thing being me, the rain, the forest on my left, and the street on the right. “My name’s Jamie, by the way.”

I turn around, making sure I was glaring at him the right way. “I told you to leave me alone. Why are you following me, creep-“ I cut myself off, realizing where I know that name from. High school. We used to be the closest friends anyone could find. Nothing could separate the two of us. I had only known him the three years we had met each other, but...

I never wanted to have to leave him. We shared everything about ourselves. We had passed notes in detention when the teacher wasn’t looking. We had dated at one point and decided to stay friends. But he treated me better than any of my friends ever had, or my family for that matter. I had once made plans to run away and he even came with me. We were inseparable. That is... until my mom and dad divorced each other and my mother took me to Florida. Then California. Then New York. Then Texas. I had missed Jamie more than any of my other friends in high school. And now here I was, telling him to stop being a creep. “Jamie? Hey, it’s- it’s me, Carrie!”

Jamie nodded, smiling. “Yeah. I recognize you. I just didn’t want to point that out yet because you didn’t seem to realize who I was yet. You know... I didn’t want to be a creep." He laughed. I blushed in embarrassment, feeling bad.”Oh, god, sorry about calling you that!” “That’s alright. I’m glad I can see you again, it’s just... what happened to you? You have messy makeup on and you’re not even wearing shoes or anything.”

That’s when it happened. That’s when I broke down crying. I told him everything that had happened, beginning to end. I never expected to find myself like this, and I couldn’t have ever predicted that this was the way I’d be living in middle school, or even high school, for that matter. But that didn’t matter. What mattered now is that now I’ve found Jamie, and I was going to be alright. He didn’t speak. He just listened to me while I spoke. I finally wiped my tears, my makeup finally clean off my face, and looked at my writing scripts, which were now sopping wet from the rain.

You know,” Jamie inquired. “You should just learn to have faith in yourself. You weren’t a bad person when I knew you in high school, and you’re not a bad person now. You were good at writing in high school. I bet you’re even better now. Those guys gotta let you get the job. And if they don’t, that’s their loss.” I looked up, smiling at him. “I’m glad you think so, but-“ 
“And you’re not what your mother said you were.”
The rain had stopped, and we had finally gotten to my dad’s place.

“Jamie?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m glad I found you after all this time.”

“Me too.”