My name is Opal Jeannette Woodward. I'm eighteen years old and I was born and raised in New York City, just a short walk from Time Square. I had known the lights of The Great White Way from the moment I was born and I could never imagine anything better, or more exciting than the stage. At least not until now. Not until I met one man with the capacity to change my life forever.
Had I been able to see this coming, I still wouldn't have changed a thing about it. I never would have known the possibilities that the universe held. I never would have met the man who showed me that it's ok to love without guilt.
I would also never have died.
I've always been a dreamer. I usually have my head in the clouds and my thoughts on some distant planet somewhere.
"Opal! Stop daydreaming." my math teacher would always say "It's no use dreaming if you won't even be able to balance a checkbook."
All day I would hear people shouting, "Opal, come back to the real world." or, "keep your feet on the ground and your head in the game." The only person who ever supported my dreaming was my Gramma. And she died a year before I left.
I was torn up for months. Even now I still start crying when I think about the way she would sit with me in the shade of the tree in the garden behind her old victorian house, in the grass with our legs stretched out in front of us, leaning our heads back against the rough bark. She would put her arm around my shoulders, and she would say to me "Opal Jeanette, you can do whatever the hell you set your mind to. Your dreams will take you to Broadway, or Hollywood, or to the moon. So you keep that head of yours where you want it, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise!"
Until now I never really knew all the power that a dreamer could have.
My day had began as normal as any other. I woke up and walked down to a cafe to get coffee and a muffin for breakfast. I didn't even see him standing there, watching me from over his newspaper.
I should have noticed him then, I should have known that his pin-striped suit and long brown coat were out of place here. I should have noticed that the newspaper he was reading was from '69. Even his english accent was unusual for New York. I should have known when I walked into my literature class, that it was no coincidence, and that he wasn't a normal substitute teacher. The way he babbled on about Charles Dickens and spirits that entered dead bodies, or about Shakespeare trapping witches with just his words. The most sense he made was when he told us about Agatha Christie solving a mystery, then he added something about a giant wasp. Maybe I should have faked sick and gone home, and just kept myself out of the way. If only I had known. If only I could have seen it coming.
I would have been more prepared. I would have been ready for it.
I would still be alive, and with him.