Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul II (14 page)

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Authors: Jack Canfield,Mark Victor Hansen,Kimberly Kirberger

BOOK: Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul II
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Page 33
breaking down in tears. Her comforting words did little but give me a reason to feel sorry for myself.
Pretty soon my sadness turned into madness. I began to hate him and blame him for my troubles, and I believed he had ruined my life. For months I thought only of him.
Then something changed. I understood I had to go on, and every day I grew a little happier. I even began to see someone new!
One day, as I was flipping through my wallet, I came upon a picture of him. I looked at it for a few minutes, reading his face like a book, a book that I knew I had finished and had to put down. I took out the picture and stuck it in a cluttered drawer.
I smiled to myself as I realized I could do the same in my heart. Tuck him away in a special place and move on. I loved, I lost and I suffered. Now it was time to forgive and forget. I forgave myself also, because so much of my pain was feeling like I did something wrong. I know better now.
My mom used to tell me, "Chloe, there are two kinds of people in this world: those that play hopscotch and sing in the shower, and those that lie alone at night with tears in their eyes." What I came to understand is that people have a choice as to which they want to be, and that each of us is a little of both.
That same day, I went outside and played hopscotch with my sister, and that night I sang louder than ever in the shower.
Becca Woolf

 

Page 34
Inside
Bottled up inside 
Are the words I never said, 
The feelings that I hide, 
The lines you never read.
You can see it in my eyes, 
Read it on my face: 
Trapped inside are lies 
Of the past I can't replace.
With memories that linger 
Won't seem to go away. 
Why can't I be happier? 
Today's a brand-new day.
Yesterdays are over, 
Even though the hurting's not. 
Nothing lasts forever, 
I must cherish what I've got.
Don't take my love for granted, 
For soon it will be gone 
All you ever wanted 
Of the love you thought you'd won.

 

Page 35
The hurt I'm feeling now 
Won't disappear overnight, 
But someway, somehow, 
Everything will turn out all right,
No more wishing for the past. 
It wasn't meant to be. 
It didn't seem to last, 
So I have to set him free.
Melissa Collette

 

Page 36
Lost Love
Love is the extremely difficult realization that something other than oneself is real.
Iris Murdoch
I don't know why I should tell you this. I'm nothing special, nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing has happened to me my whole life that hasn't happened to nearly everybody else on this planet.
Except that I met Rachel.
We met at school. We were locker neighbors, sharing that same smell of fresh notebook paper and molding tennis shoes, with clips of our favorite musicians taped inside our locker doors.
She was beautiful and had that self-assurance that told me she must be going with somebody. Somebody who was somebody in school. MeI'm struggling, trying to stay on the track team and make good enough grades to get into the college my folks went to when they were my age.
The day I met Rachel, she smiled and said hello. After looking into her warm brown eyes, I just had to get out

 

Page 37
and run like it was the first and last run of my life. I ran ten miles that day and hardly got winded.
We spent that fall talking and joking about teachers, parents and life in general, and what we were going to do when we graduated. We were both seniors, and it was great to feel like a "top dog" for a while. It turns out she wasn't dating anybodywhich was amazing. She'd broken up with somebody on the swim team over the summer and wasn't going out at all.
I never knew you could really talk to somebodya girl, I meanthe way I talked with her.
So one day my carit's an old beat-up car my dad bought me because it could never go very fastwouldn't start. It was one of those gray, chilly fall days, and it looked like rain. Rachel drove up beside me in the school parking lot in her old man's turquoise convertible and asked if she could take me somewhere.
I got in. She was playing the new David Byrne CD and singing along to it. Her voice was pretty, a lot prettier than Byrne'sbut then, he's a skinny dude, nothing like Rachel. "So where do you want to go?" she asked, and her eyes had a twinkle like she knew something about me I didn't.
"To the house, I guess," I said, then got up the guts to add, "unless you want to stop by Sonic first."
She didn't answer yes or no, but drove straight to the drive-in restaurant. I got her something to eat and we sat and talked some more. She looked at me with those brown eyes that seemed to see everything I felt and thought. I felt her fingers on my lips and knew I would never feel any more for a girl than I did right then.
We talked and she told me about how she'd come to live in this town, how her dad had been a diplomat in Washington and then retired and wanted her, all of a sudden, to grow up like a small-town girl, but it was too late. She was sophisticated and poised and always seemed

 

Page 38
to know what to say. Not like me. But she opened up something in me.
She liked me, and suddenly I liked myself.
She pointed to her windshield. "Look," she said, laughing. "We steamed up the windows." In the fading light of day, I suddenly remembered home, parents and my car.
She drove me home and dropped me off with a "See you tomorrow" and a wave. That was enough. I had met the girl of my dreams.
After that day, we started seeing each other, but I wouldn't call them dates. We'd get together to study and always ended up talking and laughing over the same things.
Our first kiss? I wouldn't tell the guys this, because they would think it was funny, but she kissed me first. We were in my house, in the kitchen. Nobody was home. The only thing I could hear was the ticking of the kitchen clock. Oh, yeah, and my heart pounding in my ears like it was going to explode.
It was soft and brief; then she looked deep in my eyes and kissed me again, and this time it wasn't so soft and not so brief, either. I could smell her and touch her hair, and right then I knew I could die and be happy about it.
"See you tomorrow," she said then, and started to walk out the door. I couldn't say anything. I just looked at her and smiled.
We graduated and spent the summer swimming and hiking and fishing and picking berries and listening to her music. She had everything from R&B to hard rock, and even the classics like Vivaldi and Rachmaninoff. I felt alive like I never had before. Everything I saw and smelled and touched was new.
We were lying on a blanket in the park one day, looking up at the clouds, the radio playing old jazz. "We have to leave each other," she said. "It's almost time for us to go to college." She rolled over on her belly and looked at me.

 

Page 39
"Will you miss me? Think of me, ever?" and for a nanosecond I thought I saw some doubt, something unlike her usual self-assurance, in her eyes.
I kissed her and closed my eyes so I could sense only her, the way she smelled and tasted and felt. Her hair blew against my cheek in the late summer breeze. "You are me," I said. "How can I miss myself?"
But inside, it was like my guts were being dissected. She was right; every day that passed meant we were that much closer to being apart.
We tried to hold on then, and act like nothing was going to happen to change our world. She didn't talk about shopping for new clothes to take with her; I didn't talk about the new car my dad had bought for me because that would be what I drove away in. We kept acting like summer was going to last forever, that nothing would change us or our love. And I know she loved me.
It's nearly spring now. I'll be a college sophomore soon.
Rachel never writes.
She said that we should leave it at thatwhatever that meant. And her folks bought a house in Virginia, so I know she's not coming back here.
I listen to music more now, and I always look twice when I see a turquoise convertible, and I notice more things, like the color of the sky and the breeze as it blows through the trees.
She is me, and I am her. Wherever she is, she knows that. I'm breathing her breath and dreaming her dreams, and when I run now, I run an extra mile for Rachel.
Robby Smith
As told to T. J. Lacey

 

Page 40
Why Guys Like Girls
One day while reading my e-mails, I came across one of those that you have to scroll down for an eternity just to get to the letter part because it is sent to hundreds of people.
Well, normally, I automatically delete those. But this one intrigued me. It was titled, "A Few Reasons Why Guys Like Girls." The instructions were to read it, add to it and then forward it to at least twenty-five people. If you did not forward it, you would have bad luck with relationships, but if you did send it to twenty-five people or more, you would be the lucky winner of romantic bliss.
After reading the reasons why guys like girls, I had an idea. If I could attain romantic bliss by sending this e-mail to twenty-five people, imagine how lucky I'd be if I sent it to millions. My husband and I are looking forward to marital perfection thanks to each and every one of you who reads this.*
[*References to chain letter results are not meant to be taken seriously.]

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