Prologue
"This was a joke right?" Brendan Matthews pushed his cell-phone to my face. The message I'd sent minutes ago stared back at me.
"No Brendan. We're over."
He looked around. "Come on C, I love you."
I was waiting for a last minute reaction to those words, anything that would change my mind. However my breath didn't catch, my stomach didn't clench and there was no trace of a smile appearing on my face.
"You don't. We both know that." I shrugged. "You're saying it because you think those words will make me stay."
"What do you want me to say?" He sounded defeated.
I smiled and shook my head. "Nothing. I don't want you to say anything."
Silence.
His wide eyes stared back at me, pleading. "What happened Chloe? I – damn it, you're fucking with me right?"
I turned around to walk away. "I'm sorry Brendan," my voice cracked. "Really. So sorry."
He cursed, banging his feet against the gravel, "I don't want you to be sorry! I wan't you to explain!" I kept my back to him.
"Damn it Chloe, you're a bitch. A cold hearted bitch!"
I brushed off his words, leaving them behind as I walked away from him. From that moment on the Chloe Foster that everyone knew would never be the same.
[Author's note. Please read.]
Hello everyone,
This story is getting a lot of visits again and I would like to add a note before you delve into it. I began writing Eight Letters. Three Words back in 2008, I was thirteen at the time. I was a child back then and many of the inner monologues you will find and comments made in the story are no longer in line with the adult I am today at twenty-six. They, however, represent the reality in which I grew up in. The comments made by the characters, even the dialogue, they represent a society that existed pretty recently, even if we'd like to believe otherwise.
You'll find what I mean as soon as you read the opening line in chapter one. Female empowerment, as an example, was a topic that didn't become popular until I was nineteen (2013). I grew up thinking it normal to slut shame other girls, to believe that I should not be like other girls. Because at the time, society as a whole, didn't teach us to believe differently.
"Well, why don't you edit the story/take it down?"
Because it acts as a reminder to me, "this is what society looked like when you were in high school." This is why so many people your age, today, struggle accepting many basic human rights movements. This is why female empowerment matters, how the content you are exposed to, the language and dialogue you listen to in your daily life, shape the way you act, the relationships you make, even the art you create.
I don't want to ever take for granted how far we've come, and why we've got to keep going.
Thank you,
A xx
YOU ARE READING
Eight Letters. Three Words.
Teen Fiction"I don't feel anything towards Dylan Miller." Leela nodded, combing through the messy knots in my hair. "Whatever you say." "I'm serious!" "Look, just try not to move so much this time," she said, making me feel happy as she dropped the subject. "...
