Already Written

Chapter 1

Ezgi

Ezgi Inal was special. It's what her mother had told her when she had asked about the strange mark on her rib. She didn't know what it said back then, she was only just learning her letters and anyway, the only way she could see the mark was upside down or backwards in the mirror so it was useless to try to read it. But her mother had told her not only what it said but what it meant. That she had a soulmate. And that mark was their name.

"What's a soulmate?"

Her mother had laughed and tried to come up with an answer that would satisfy a curious six year old.

"Well, it will be kind of like your best friend."

"But Cansu is my best friend," Ezgi said matter-of-factly, referring to her favorite cousin.

"You can have more than one best friend," her mother said sagely. "But one day you may even want to marry your soulmate."

Ezgi thought on this for several moments.

"Was Baba your soulmate?"

Her mother grew quiet and then shook her head.

"Not everyone has one. But you do. And that makes you special."

Ezgi beamed.

When she finally learned to read and write, the second name (after her own) she'd wanted to perfect was the one etched near her heart. Ozgur.

***

When Ezgi is thirteen, she's twice as old as the day she'd found out about soulmates which obviously means she's twice as wise.

"But how will you know it's them?" She groans to her friends. "There must be thousands of Ozgurs in the world!"

"You'll have your marks in the same place," Deniz informs her. "Plus, you'll just know. Believe me, you will see him and...you will just feel it."

Deniz proclaimed she'd already met hers. She had the name Mehmet written on the back of her neck and she knew, with the kind of certainty Deniz knew everything with, that her soulmate was the shy boy she'd met at swimming competition over the summer and had seemingly fallen off the face of the earth since. Deniz had decided that every other boy in existence was unworthy of her attention until the elusive Mehmet was back in her life.

"Plus it's basically a recessive gene," Cansu chimes in. "There may be thousands of Ozgurs but most of them won't have a soul mark."

Ezgi knew her cousin was right. Soul marks were rare. Despite her and Deniz both having one, Cansu didn't. In fact, none of the girls in her class had one either. It made Ezgi a bit of an oddity and after she'd left primary school she'd stopped telling people she had one at all.

"Did you see Mehmet's?" Ezgi interrogates Deniz. "Did it say your name?"

"I didn't get a good look at it," Deniz complains. "His hair is kind of longish so it covered it. But I'm telling you, you will feel it." She says with an encouraging smile towards Ezgi.

***

By fifteen, Ezgi had met exactly two Ozgurs. One of them had been an old man who delivered fish to uncle Unal at the restaurant so she knew that couldn't be it.

The other, however, was a boy in her class. Ezgi didn't feel whatever it was that Deniz had been describing to her but she had first seen him on the first day of class and she had already been extremely nervous about her new haircut. So maybe whatever magical feeling was supposed to happen got lost in the commotion.