*This is a new story I had the idea for a few months ago. Knowing me, I might not finish it. BUT, I would appreciate if you would read it and give me feedback nonetheless. Thanks. :)

~HomeschoolGirl

There was a small town. Well, there are a lot of small towns as it is. This town had a girl. A lot of towns have girls. Some are plain, and some are beautiful, and some are mean, and some are kind. This particular girl was a mixture of these. She had shoulder-length brown hair, yet her face was perfection. She was bitingly sarcastic, since her father had problems, and then she was too sweet.

There was a gas station boy, of course. There are lots of gas-station boys. And he watched this girl whenever she came in for a coke or a pack of cigarettes. He thought she was too wonderful to smoke them herself, and it was found that it was her father who enjoyed these disgusting things. The boy eventually worked up the nerve to ask her to dinner. Like most gas-station boys do.

Well, several dinners later they worked up to hand holding. The father grew angry and the girl packed her bags. She lived with her Aunt for a couple of days. The boy watched with sorrow. She was scared her father would come after her and take her away. And so, the gas-station boy asked her hand in marriage with seven dollars and fifteen cents to his name. She said yes.

They left a short note, not giving any clue to where they might be going. The young people boarded the first train out of town. They weren't alone, not at all. There were a lot of people boarding the train in order to get away. They weren't the first, and they certainly weren't the last.

The gas-station boy knew of a little shack that was in rambles. They walked the seven miles to the place, five towns over from where they originally were. She was barefoot and so was he. They laughed a lot as they walked, hands twined together and swinging. The summer-dried grass tickled their skin.

The place consisted of four, dirty-wooden walls that seemed to have been washed in mud. The floor was dirt, and so he laid down a tarp he had thought to bring. That first long night they slept with a sparse quilt and thin pillows, straight on the ground. The next morning he went to the railroad and asked for a job. Needless to say, he was given one along with three dollars.

He brought a mattress with that money. She cleaned the walls as best as a seventeen-year-old could manage. The gaps were stuffed with cloth she got from tearing up one of her dresses. He came home to a fresh house, kissed his wife, and looked around the pitiful room with pride.

The next few years were hard. Work was unstable--sometimes there were jobs and sometimes there weren't. Over time, the home grew. Cheap floors were put down as soon as they could. A table was added, and a small (quite old) stove. They even got a base for their bed. The girl became good at making things, and so a new quilt was fashioned along with a table cloth and rug. It became quite cheery.

And then the news. There was a war, and everyone was required to go to it. It was hard, that night. She sobbed and sobbed, clinging to his shirt and staining it with saltwater. He just sat in shocked silence, trying his best to comfort her. He was so young, only twenty-one years of age, and to be leaving her...

He lived through that first ship-out. He came back for Christmas, and the reunion was bittersweet. When he went away again, she felt safer. Letters kept up shattered hopes as things got worse. And then another moment in time...her bending over clutching her stomach...fear flaring in her chest...

That next letter was difficult to write. A reply didn't come for the longest time. When it did, she cried out of relief. He was happy and promised to be home soon--at least in time for the birth of their baby. The gas-station boy came home six months later, looked at his glowing wife with more pride, and suddenly became a gas-station man.

He was able to stay with her until the baby was born. She cherished the time with him. They went on long, sunset walks talking about today. The past was far too painful still to remember. They both suspected it would be for the longest of time before they could talk about it. Painful things usually come with being a gas-station boy and a semi-beautiful girl. 

He fashioned a cradle out of wood--it was all they could afford. She made the bedding. On a cold night in October, the baby was born. The girl looked at her daughter with pride, trying her best to form a word through her tired lips,

"Greta."

And then, as happens in every third story someone writes about a gas-station boy and a girl, she died. Greta watched her mother with surprise, having just seen her face. The boy took his daughter from his limp wife, sobbed uncontrollably, and then buried her the next morning.

You see, when bad things happen, life must go on. And so, it did.

It was my life that told a new tale. It was my life that was different.

And it was my life that would be the hardest.