CHARDONNAY

I guess I am writing this because I actually knew Chardonnay and I believe that her story needs to be told. I do not appear within the text, as I have now eradicated that part of my life from my memory. Not because of any unpleasant moments that might haunt me from our brief time together - more because it emphasises my mistake of leaving her.

I met her while we were still in school and finally managed to start going out with her in the final year. I knew all her friends, many of which are mentioned in the process of writing her story and many of the events that are portrayed have been gathered from conversations with them. The rest was compiled from too many sources to list here. I will list the important ones in the epilogue. Only the parts about her childhood came from her and that is from the scanty remains of my memories of our many conversations. We used to take walks after school and explore the town, taking a different route home each day, chatting as we wound our way through alleys and parks. Sometimes we would even start off walking in the wrong direction and circle the block before choosing another path. She was always adventurous. Whenever I tried to sit her down, she would be dancing off somewhere else.

We would talk incessantly while we walked – rather, she would talk and I would listen. I am pretty sure she told me her entire life story, but I can only remember tiny parts of it. These are the parts that I have included, though I fear there are many that I missed. The stories about the twins are the ones that I found have lingered.

She dropped out of school and I went on to college. I never saw her again. When I came back from my studies, she was already shooting up the ladder of her career and I shirked away from trying to contact her. I was given the impression she was doing quite well for herself, but I was not told (nor did I ask) what it was that she was doing. Maybe I should have asked, but I was too wrapped up in myself to even consider trying to find out what had catapulted her to success. I think I was just jealous of the fact that she was doing well: I was miserable at college – probably because I missed her so much.

Anyway, I left to go back to college, none-the-wiser to what she was doing and led to the belief that whatever it was she was doing, she was doing really quite well at it. I lived on my shoe-string student’s budget and wallowed away in my studies and scraped through my first year. When I returned, I vowed that I would track her down and put my heart at her feet again.

I was already too late.