Forever, Actually | A Short Story Collection

Forever Alone

     In the likeness of recent events, it seems I haven't even been able to walk straight. Nothing seems to have been going how I'd like it. Why me? Why must everything wrong happen to me? I miss the bus and have to walk to school. I nearly crash my car while learning to drive in a parking lot with only one other car. I trip and stumble everywhere I walk, I can't seem to think right, and I never know what to say. Do. Think. Feel. Everything is just... wrong.
     For starters, life is something precious. Something you get to experience once, the way you should want it experienced. You control what you say. Do. Think. Feel. Yet I never seem to have gotten the chance to grasp that phenomenon of control. Is my life truly ruled by free will? Or must I succumb to the inevitability of fate? One must never know. Lately, I've felt as though my life is being wasted. I have only one routine, one parent, one more year until I turn of age as a legal adult. All I ever get is one. I'm always left as one, by myself, alone. I only get one life, why must I feel that it is already slipping away?
     That feeling was always there. That is until I heard the news.
     "Kate, dearest? I have a surprise for you! Come to the door," my father shouted from afar, catching my attention. A surprise? What could that mean? I walked, or, merely staggered, to the door, which was held slightly ajar by my father's delightful visage.
     "Help me open the door, dear. Come see what I've got for you!" His smile, radiant as ever, led me to hauling back the door.
     "You got me a box?" I said with a smirk, folding my arms across my chest.
     "Oh, don't be ridiculous, Kate. Go on, open it!" My father handed me the rather large box as he stepped inside the house, shutting the door behind him as he hung up his quite poorly patched-up jacket on the rack. I set my hand to hover just above the box before me, and as I let out a yelp, the box moved. My father caught it at the bottom before I dropped it, assisting me in holding it with my trembling hands.
     "What in–" Interrupting me, a little black nub of what I thought to be a nose popped out from the folds of the box. Eagerly, I set the box on the kitchen counter and opened it. What my father had brought me was a surprise indeed. Before me, yipping joyfully, was a little brown labrador with excited eyes. I laughed as it lept in my arms to give me what I believed to be kisses. My father laughed with delight as he saw my beaming smile. A friend! For me, the loneliest one there was to be.
     Before darting outside to play with my new friend, I swung my arms around my father in gratitude and kissed him on the cheek. I no longer needed to be alone in this world. I could finally have someone by my side to talk to.
     Perhaps we don't need to be lonesome forever. Maybe, just maybe, life can be ruled by our own choices. Or maybe this was fate all along, coming back to repay me for all the horrible things it has brought upon me.
     After all, one must never know.