PREFACE
I can still picture Mr. Roshan’s classroom perfectly. It was one of those days where the usual school routine was broken up—a class party, the kind where the sharp, sweet smell of frosted cupcakes and cheap fruit punch filled the air. The energy was high, a loud blur of laughter and scraping plastic chairs as everyone stayed distracted. I sat at my desk, my fingers nervously tracing the wooden edge, staring across the room.
Back then, the world was completely different. We didn’t have smartphones, AI, or Microsoft Word to instantly type out our deepest feelings and express ourselves to the world. If you wanted to do something on a computer, you walked over to the back corner where the clunky Apple computers hummed, slid a big, bendable 5.25-inch floppy disk into the drive, and waited for the loud, rhythmic whirring sound as a game loaded. If you wanted to tell someone how you felt, there was no screen to hide behind. You had to do it face-to-face.
So, I gathered up my courage. My sneakers squeaked against the freshly waxed linoleum floor as I got up from my desk and made my move.
I approached Ayla, the girl I had been thinking about for weeks. The background noise of the classroom party seemed to fade into a dull hum. My throat went dry, my palms sweating as I took a breath and asked her out.
The answer was immediate, sharp, and brutal.
“I’m not interested.”
It hurt. It was that heavy, hollow crush in your chest that only a kid can feel, accompanied by the sudden warmth of blood rushing to my ears as I realized a few people nearby had heard. In the real world, that embarrassing rejection was the end of the chapter. We grew up, we drifted apart, and I never saw her again. Over thirty years passed, and those names became nothing more than distant memories frozen in 1993.
But a story doesn’t have to end where reality does.
Today, we have the outlets to write, to create, and to ask the questions we couldn’t ask back then. So, as I sit down to type this, my imagination takes over the keyboard. Because while I walked away from that classroom, swallowed my pride, and moved on with my life... what if someone else in that room never did? What if that simple, innocent childhood rejection was actually the match that lit a thirty-year obsession?
This is the story of how far a shadow is willing to go.
