Author's note

Ok, *drum roll* so this is it. The final chapter… hope you enjoy it! You guys will probably kill me for this but before you get your pitchforks please read!
P.s. I hope you understand what's going on here, or in the words of Paul Simon 'I hope my meaning won't be lost or misconstrued'

Afterword

Hi. My name is Cassidy Bing and I'm 15 years old. I live with my mom, Monica Geller, in Ozone Park, Long Island. My dad died 15 years ago in an accident involving a lorry; my mom doesn't like to talk about it. She moved soon after the accident. I kept my dad's last name. Mom said it was best, a way to remember him.

We moved to Long Island to be closer to her parents, my grandparents but of course they don't live too close and that's better really. I like where we live. It's where Jack Kerouac (the author) lived with his mom when he was in his 30's perhaps.

Oh yeah, I want to be a writer and I love the Beat generation, especially Jack Kerouac. Mom gave me all of dad's Kerouac books (she said reading them made her upset) and I read them and now I want to be a writer. Mom says dad would be proud. Especially of this one, my first novel.

Well, my first proper novel anyway.

I owe it to dad's memory to tell the truth and not leave you with a false impression that everything turned out ok.

Dad died two weeks after the accident. He took a turn for the worse suddenly. No one saw it coming, even the doctors, he was doing so well. They were sure he was going to make it.

Mom got a call at four in the morning- one of the only nights she had gone home. She was a mess according to Uncle Ross and Aunt Rachel, she was even talking about moving state but they convinced her to move here, Long Island.

She learnt to move on.

We all did and we all have. It doesn't mean dad's forgotten. He isn't, it just means we can get on with our lives.

Now everyone's doing fine. We go into the city at least once a week to see Joey and Phoebe and her family. She got married to this piano playing guy called Mike, he's pretty cool. They have a kid called Alice.

Joey moved into a different apartment when we moved, he said it was the only way to get over what had happened, every time he so much as looked at the door of apartment 20 he couldn't help but remember.

Ross and Rachel bought a house in Albany so we see them nearly every day. They had moved in together about a year after the accident and they are now happily married with two kids, Emma and Chandler (in memory of my dad). Just after the accident we saw them all the time, they were worried about mom, especially Ross but it was ok because he knew how to comfort her.

As for me, well, I wasn't even born when all of this was happening so I've had to rely on information from others for this novel mainly, but I can assure you that no names or dates have been changed. I really wish I had the chance to meet my father but I know that can never happen.

I wrote this novel in his memory, to make him happy, in a way. So now you know the truth about everything. I didn't lie exactly; I just wanted to give my parents the happy ending they deserved.

Footnote

Ok, so that's it, I hope you enjoyed it. I would just like to thank my literature teacher for showing us the film 'Atonement' (and then ABANDONING us, but it's ok because I nicked two of the books he lent me. Ha) which is what this is based on, well, the idea of it anyway. If you're confused by it, try and imagine this whole story as a novel written by their daughter :) Anyway, thanks for reading x