So, there was this boy... {Prologue}
Prologue
So, there was this boy and he broke my heart... But isn’t that always the way these stories begin? And really, my heartbreak is no different from yours. It isn’t more intense or special in any way. It hasn’t made me want to compose sonnets of sorrow or pull out my hair in mourning or rend my clothing in grief. Still, I feel compelled to share it with you. This story isn’t particularly interesting, nor is it very original. It all just started with a boy and a girl.
The boy of my story isn’t the sweetest romantic hero who ever lived, who comes in to sweep the girl who needs saving off her feet. The girl isn’t a great beauty who could have any guy in the universe, but chooses to be with the sweet, if slightly geeky boy who lives next door. They are just a boy and a girl who grew up on the same street and finally fell in love. But like love stories all too often do, this one has an end that almost came before it even began.
I suppose, if I’m going to tell this story, you deserve to know who I am. My name is Cleo January Burton. My twin brother, Thaddeus, and I were born in Nashville, Tennessee on a blistering hot July day. I grew up in the quiet suburb east of downtown, a small town called quite appropriately East Nashville -- the Shelby Hills neighborhood to be exact. It was a quiet, if slightly rundown town; filled with young families, students and old-time Nashvillians, settled comfortably in a crook of the Cumberland River.
Our neighborhood was filled with kids. Unfortunately, they were pretty much exclusively boys. I was the lone girl in a world of boys. Sure, there were girls down the street and through the block, but the boys thought they were too prissy to play “blood” soccer or full body tackle tag. And the boys were probably right. The boy of my story grew up in the house to the right of mine, a house and yard where my brother and I spent almost every afternoon for the first 15 years of our lives.
That is until an afternoon in August of our newly sixteenth year. That afternoon, the family that lived next-door left on a journey that would literally take them around the world and my brother died. My brother and the boy who lived in the house on the left went swimming. I was mad at him for leaving me home alone, but my leg was in a cast and I couldn’t go with them. “See ya Dickhead” were the last words I spewed at my beloved brother. He drowned, which always sounds so weird since he was the strongest swimmer I’d ever known. Really, on that day, an essential part of me died... But, this story isn’t about him or how I lost him; it’s about a boy.
In the years since that day, I lived the life laid out for me. I had skipped kindergarten, 6th and 11th grade; I graduated from the restrictive all-girl Catholic high school my parents had chosen for me at 15, not long before my brother died. I was so much younger than the rest of the girls that I wasn’t included in anything and because they thought I was a snotty little know-it-all, I wasn’t very well liked. My dream was to go to an Ivy League school, but my parents wouldn’t let me go to school out of state because I was too young and they had lost Thad so recently. So I stayed in Nashville and attended Vanderbilt University, where I earned a bachelor degree in three years; and then I earned masters degrees in English, history and education four years later. Suffice it to say, I studied hard and often.
Despite all of that, I had the typical college experience with a steady boyfriend, as a sister in a sorority and basically moved through my life in a perpetual fog. People often complained it was impossible to tell if I was actually listening to them or even aware they were in the room; I was, I just didn’t want them to know I was. Then soon after graduation from Vanderbilt University, I was offered a job; a very good job as the assistant for the family who lived to the right of us as they continued their journey around the world.
So, now, I sit staring at my blank computer and feel compelled to tell you a story that will inevitably make me sad. Maybe this compulsion stems from my intense need as a member of the human race to share the ugliness of my scars; but this scar is so well hidden, I can’t display it for you. I have to tell you, describe the shape and the color. So, I begin my story with telling you, there was this boy and he broke my heart...
So, there was this boy and he broke my heart... But isn’t that always the way these stories begin? And really, my heartbreak is no different from yours. It isn’t more intense or special in any way. It hasn’t made me want to compose sonnets of sorrow or pull out my hair in mourning or rend my clothing in grief. Still, I feel compelled to share it with you. This story isn’t particularly interesting, nor is it very original. It all just started with a boy and a girl.
The boy of my story isn’t the sweetest romantic hero who ever lived, who comes in to sweep the girl who needs saving off her feet. The girl isn’t a great beauty who could have any guy in the universe, but chooses to be with the sweet, if slightly geeky boy who lives next door. They are just a boy and a girl who grew up on the same street and finally fell in love. But like love stories all too often do, this one has an end that almost came before it even began.
I suppose, if I’m going to tell this story, you deserve to know who I am. My name is Cleo January Burton. My twin brother, Thaddeus, and I were born in Nashville, Tennessee on a blistering hot July day. I grew up in the quiet suburb east of downtown, a small town called quite appropriately East Nashville -- the Shelby Hills neighborhood to be exact. It was a quiet, if slightly rundown town; filled with young families, students and old-time Nashvillians, settled comfortably in a crook of the Cumberland River.
Our neighborhood was filled with kids. Unfortunately, they were pretty much exclusively boys. I was the lone girl in a world of boys. Sure, there were girls down the street and through the block, but the boys thought they were too prissy to play “blood” soccer or full body tackle tag. And the boys were probably right. The boy of my story grew up in the house to the right of mine, a house and yard where my brother and I spent almost every afternoon for the first 15 years of our lives.
That is until an afternoon in August of our newly sixteenth year. That afternoon, the family that lived next-door left on a journey that would literally take them around the world and my brother died. My brother and the boy who lived in the house on the left went swimming. I was mad at him for leaving me home alone, but my leg was in a cast and I couldn’t go with them. “See ya Dickhead” were the last words I spewed at my beloved brother. He drowned, which always sounds so weird since he was the strongest swimmer I’d ever known. Really, on that day, an essential part of me died... But, this story isn’t about him or how I lost him; it’s about a boy.
In the years since that day, I lived the life laid out for me. I had skipped kindergarten, 6th and 11th grade; I graduated from the restrictive all-girl Catholic high school my parents had chosen for me at 15, not long before my brother died. I was so much younger than the rest of the girls that I wasn’t included in anything and because they thought I was a snotty little know-it-all, I wasn’t very well liked. My dream was to go to an Ivy League school, but my parents wouldn’t let me go to school out of state because I was too young and they had lost Thad so recently. So I stayed in Nashville and attended Vanderbilt University, where I earned a bachelor degree in three years; and then I earned masters degrees in English, history and education four years later. Suffice it to say, I studied hard and often.
Despite all of that, I had the typical college experience with a steady boyfriend, as a sister in a sorority and basically moved through my life in a perpetual fog. People often complained it was impossible to tell if I was actually listening to them or even aware they were in the room; I was, I just didn’t want them to know I was. Then soon after graduation from Vanderbilt University, I was offered a job; a very good job as the assistant for the family who lived to the right of us as they continued their journey around the world.
So, now, I sit staring at my blank computer and feel compelled to tell you a story that will inevitably make me sad. Maybe this compulsion stems from my intense need as a member of the human race to share the ugliness of my scars; but this scar is so well hidden, I can’t display it for you. I have to tell you, describe the shape and the color. So, I begin my story with telling you, there was this boy and he broke my heart...