As I walked away, I couldn’t help but wish for something more. I didn’t drink much, and I wasn’t very familiar with his friends who liked to party. I usually felt out of place at their gatherings, and I hated to be a burden. My friends, who were always having a good time, would end up having to carry me home. Zachary knew I struggled to fit in, but he would still play around with them for a while before taking me home. He used to say, “My girl is so lovely; of course, I have to take care of her.” Later, I was afraid of dampening the mood, so I rarely attended their gatherings. But this time, I told myself that maybe he just hadn’t seen Emma in a long time and didn’t want to leave her side.
With no plans for the day, I wandered the streets for what felt like hours and somehow ended up near the school Zachary and I used to attend.
I was an abandoned child, taken in by my grandmother, who had also been cast aside by her family. I got into my dream university, but she passed away before I could share the good news with her. My earliest memories are of my grandmother; I couldn’t recall anything before that, except for the last name Reed.
Even though my grandmother never went to school, she remembered a poem she had learned as a child:
"I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;"
When she named me Madeline, it was the most cultured name she could think of, a name that she felt carried a sense of grace and beauty. I may not remember much from my early life, but her loving care filled in the gaps. She told me that when she found me, I was badly injured, lying by the roadside, barely alive. She always regretted that after all these years, she hadn’t been able to find any information about my birth family.
I was deeply sad when my grandmother passed away, but the grief seemed to be trapped inside me, and not a single tear came out. After taking care of her affairs, I went back to school. I avoided speaking and interacting with others, and life suddenly felt dull.