Gah. I'm sorry it's taken me so long to update. Reviews encourage me to update faster. (:
It was only something as complex as human nature that could allow Kristen to both envy and pity her friends in the same aspects of life.
Kristen's future was mapped out in a clear, inescapable fate that had been sketched out by her parents at an early age. Naive and willing, she had accepted these duties as, inevitably, hers. But now, realising the liberty she had been denied and would continue to be denied for the rest of her trite existence, Kristen tried ineffectively to oppose the proposals intended to become her future. She was to become one of the girls who did nothing but study, had few friends (or none at all), had an externally successful career, and an internally despondent relationship with life.
What her mother had decided to mould Kristen's life into included but was not limited to the following: study to irrational lengths, attain a scholarship to an Ivy League school (preferably Dartmouth or Yale), attend Harvard Medical School, become a successful doctor, escape poverty, and repose in a satisfying, comfortable retirement.
Her three best friends, on the other hand, had absolutely no sense of direction or purpose, but seemingly knew exactly what to do when the right opportunity approached them. They were completely unperturbed by their lack of organisation and decency in conduct, utterly certain of a clear future. It was this freedom that Kristen envied, but the impending realities that provoked a feeling of pity towards her friends.
She leaned over her crossword puzzle, squinting in the dim lighting of the Montador's lobby. 17 Across: 12-letter word for "franchise."
Perhaps if she continued to spend time with Massie, Alicia, and Dylan, much to the dismay of her parents, Kristen would be able to adopt the same attitude on life. Despite the years she had dedicated to an intensive education, Kristen couldn't provide a sufficient word to describe exactly what it was she aspired to attain, or to become. Happy flashed through her mind more than once.
A horn sounded in the foggy distance, indubitably Massie's Rolls Royce. Kristen quickly scrawled independence into 17-Across and draped her borrowed Prada bag over shoulder. The doorman smiled at her as he swung open the glass door and introduced her to the bitter wind. Kristen vacillated, fidgeting with her pencil.
She erased independence and in the first two blanks of 17-Across wrote two letters that seemed to suffice.
It.