”Well, I ain’t told this to nobody before. Maybe I ought’n to. I don’ like Curley. He ain’t a nice fella.”

Thinking over her choices, Rosie slowly walked towards the back door, stalling by creeping only inches at a time. Peering out through the window, she saw that it was just beginning to rain, the kind where little tear droplets cling to ceiling called the sky. Think of your future, not this moment. Education is the most important thing, she reasoned. While the safe part of her mind nagged make dad proud, the dream chasing, wilder part of her mind told her but he’s just so...likeable. I can’t help it. He told me he would take me someplace special. She paused at the door. This was the first time Rosie Davis had had to make a big decision like this.  

However nice it was to be raised in a strong and sturdy bubble, growing up neither gave her a reality of struggling with difficult decisions, nor opened up the door to the intensity of people and threats that have forever been around her. She had a strict mother that only wanted the best for her, and her father had passed away when she was only five. Rosie’s dad was the sole person in her house to let her see the world, escape that bubble. Her father was an ongoing force in her mind, and it was he that she thought of as she had gone through elementary, junior high, and high school. His laugh, and easy-going demeanor stayed with her. A piece of her had been removed that day she found out her dad had passed. And holes can’t be correctly filled that easily, filled in a way where the completing part is just as good as the lost part. All of her life she had been longing for someone to fill that hole.

And there he was, that daunting, handsome, wild man that was the cause for her confusion. That unnerving smile that made Rosie want to laugh and cry at the same time. His sleek dark hair seemed to reflect the moon’s shine that night they had met. But was he really better than a free college scholarship? A once in a lifetime chance to become someone great and different? Almost no one was given the opportunity to be educated, and was she about to pass up this chance?

It was now pouring rain as Rosie pushed open the door and stepped outside. Little droplets falling down from the clouds, not knowing what to do. And Rosie felt just this way as she neared the parking lot, where two cars awaited her, one holding the principal of her college, the other holding Curley. Then, as she undid the lock securing the parking lot gate, Rosie saw two possible lives flash before her. Would she be intelligent, get a good job, and make her family proud? Or would she run, away, freely, with the man of her dreams? Her mind made up, Rosie allowed herself just one more glance at the principal’s shocked face as she ran, sneakers slapping hard and noisily against the dripping wet pavement, towards Curley. She jumped into his nice car not knowing that that ‘special place’ would alter her life forever. That nice looks don’t always come with nice personalities. That Curley wasn’t her dream man after all, and in fact, on that farm deemed a ‘special place,’ she was just as isolated and watched as back home. That her college would have provided that freedom she had always longed for. That she would regret her decision for eternity, and forever wander, looking for that one soul-mate, to fill that constantly deepening hole.