“Happiness is not a state to arrive at, but a manner of traveling.”-Maragret Lee Runbeck 
***
Life...it can be short or long, happy or sad, ordinary or extraordinary, eternal...but what is it, in truth?  Well, for some it can be a mountain to climb, or a hurdle to jump over. For others, it’s a beautiful adventure; some peoples lives see them begin as though they were butterflies.  Their inception into the world sees them as caterpillars, always climbing, always yearning and searching for the next new place, always growing, meeting peace and crashing into chaos along the way.  In the end, the chaos and the peace fit together like a nice neat little puzzle, and the caterpillars enter their cocoons to later come out into the world as something new.
No, they are not the same as they started out; they have changed, but they have changed into something beautiful, grown into a gorgeous new creation. Their lives always end in complete happiness like in the books and movies, and they most likely find someone who completes their dreams that run into their forevers, like people always sing about in those gorgeous love songs on the radio. I love that version of life just as much as the next person does, and I desperately wish for that to be my life as badly as a toddler wants to get his favorite ice cream from the store. Sometimes though, as much as I crave it, I don’t always tend to get what I wish for.  
Hi, my name is Clementine, and you can count me in the probably millions of teen girls who want a life like a butterfly.  However, like I said, I don’t tend to get what I wish for.  If I had to describe my life, I would put it this way: an awkward bumpy roller coaster that takes too long and is entirely too slow.  Or, at least that’s how I viewed it before everything happened, but I will explain that to you later.  You see, before events I have yet to tell you, I wouldn’t have said that I lived much of a full life. 
My life before recent events was like a lollipop; Not one of the ones you don’t want and are easy to open, but one of the ones that is huge and you want so much you drool all over yourself for but can never open for the life of you.  I didn’t live in too shabby of a town, I mean yes it could have used a few fixer upper operations, but it was still home and it still had my love. Admittedly, I didn’t have that many friends, no, but I did have great friends who I knew would give me anything from an umbrella to a penguin in a rain coat if ever I so asked (you know, in case my life was in jeopardy and somehow a penguin in a rain coat could save me from utter annihilation).  I did love my family, I really did I promise; My dad was the best dad in the entire known universe, and my mom made the best pancakes imaginable, always putting smiley faces and whipped cream on mine, just the way I liked them.  Despite all of these things though...okay, just, let me explain my cooky family. 
I come from a long line of cooky, but very interesting people; The latest of installments into this whacko group happening to be me, my mom, and my dad. My sophomore year of highschool, we moved to a town halfway across the country that had a population of maybe one thousand people in it. Seriously, my last middle school had more people in it than this place! Imagine you live on a donut (yes, I know nobody lives on donuts but have an imagination for just like five seconds), and suddenly your landlord, the icing, evicts you for nonpayment of sprinkles. So, having little sprinkles left and pretty much no where else to go, you decide to move onto a donut hole; You know, those little round things they sell right next to donuts in tiny bags at grocery stores? If you can picture that move, that is what it was like moving into the small town that my parents chose to inhabit.   
Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t exactly mind moving there.  My dad had just landed a snazzy job as director of a brand spanking new movie, and my mom had transferred to a local art college to teach classes in drawing and sculpture. So, I was pretty happy for them I mean what kind of daughter would I be if I didn’t support them? It was all just a matter of moving into and getting used to living in a town the size of a donut hole instead of living on the actual donut (darn that icing and his need for sprinkles!).  However, even with the awesome new jobs they both had, that wasn’t the only reason they had decided to move. 
Late into the proceedings of my freshmen year, my parents decided that I was too “exposed.” Now, I know you are probably wondering what this means, and trust me I was too.  Well, get this: my parents were actually telling me that I was too exposed to the world.  They decided that living in the city that we did had ultimately exposed me too much to all of the terrible and very bad things of the world, and they wanted to give me a better life than that. In the midst of this, I just felt utterly confused on account of not knowing where my overexposement had arrived from; We already did practically nothing other than stay home and eat dinner as it was, and my parents barely let me out of the house, even with friends. 
They decided that, in order to “protect me from pain,” I needed to be in a smaller, gentler place. So, that is the reason we packed everything up and moved halfway across the country. It wasn’t too hard I guess; Back in my old school, I hadn’t really had any friends. I had known one girl, Shelly Pryor, during my middle school years.  I met her in sixth grade, and she was there with me through every freakout, every cute guy, every after school snack session, and through the beginning of my life becoming even more awkward than it already was; The reason for my life becoming more awkward, inevitably, due to the intensely mortifying transition my body decided to make on my behalf from adorable little girl to awkward teenager.  Ugh, to think that at one point I had actually looked forward to being a teenager...seriously, what had my twelve year old self been thinking? As soon as I hit thirteen, it was like I got smacked in the face with all the little imperfections that I hadn’t even paid attention to.  For example, I have freckles all over my body; Apparently, having freckles isn’t “cool” anymore once you hit middle school. Another thing other girls seemed to hate me for was my hair. I had always liked my hair because it went down to my butt, and was dark black and somehow always managed to stay straight. Inevitably, however, in middle school it was just something more that girls decided to hate me for, along with my green eyes.  Shelly wasn’t like that though; From the moment I met her, it just seemed that she always found a way to appreciate me for me, and not for what was “cool” or “popular,” and I really loved that about her.  She had this way of looking, really spectacularly looking at people, and suddenly knowing everything about them. With one glance, like some mysterious oracle, she could understand almost everything about you.  Other girls didn’t like Shelly back in the middle school days though;  Everyone always made fun of her braces, her long body, her voice...you name it, they ridiculed it. If you have ever seen a lion circle its  kill before pouncing, that is what the other kids did daily to Shelly Pryor.  We used to be best friends, and I really did love Shelly...that was before freshman year, though.  After eighth grade, Shelly cut off communication with me completely.  Apparently, that’s just something you do when you gain beauty and suddenly become one of the popular kids; You go with the crowd of beautiful, extraordinary people, and leave your old mediocre friends hanging out to dry, like old moldy laundry.   So, like I said, the move from one school to the other wasn’t really all that hard on little old me.  Besides, over those few months of being rejected by the student body, I had come to learn I actually really enjoyed video games, and that coffee could be my new best friend (I flippin love Starbucks, yes I know I am such a white girl, but ohhhh I just can’t help it!).  The funny part about moving to this town though, is that things actually steadily got better for me. I actually made friends at the school I went to, like real life I-will-defend-you-with-my-life friends.  I met my lover (best friend), Courtney, and my video game buddy, Astrid, who, despite her name, is actually incredibly gorgeous.  She has this long blonde hair that flows like silk, and her complexion couldn’t be any smoother if it was a baby’s butt.  Her eyes are crisp, autumns’ day blue and her body is so perfectly curved it would make an hourglass jealous.  She and I used to hang out at my house after school and play Halo or Call of Duty for hours, always stopping to rant to each other about that days problems and how beautiful we each thought the other one was.  However, the biggest improvement to my move here was actually an entirely beautiful coincidence.  It was beautiful in that it was unplanned, unforeseen, and unknown....but yet that was what made it perfect.  I am an artist, naturally, just like my parents; I signed up for Studio Art I at my new school, ready for all the excitement of drawing and painting, my two preferred medias. On the first day of school, the teacher gave all of us assigned seats in the classroom, and since I was the new girl, I was already nervous to sit down anywhere, let alone be assigned to sit by live human beings. I arrived at my new seat thinking all was decidedly gloomy in the world, and that’s when it happened; Unplanned, unforeseen, unknown, he walked abruptly into my life.  It was an earth shaking, soul splitting, time stopping moment in the uneventful history of my life. The day I sat in my assigned seat at my new school was the day I met Connor Larkson. He was a complete stranger to me;  I wouldn’t have known him if you flicked me in the nose and threatened to take all of my candy from me.  He was a stranger to me, but he was a beautiful stranger that I would very much have loved to know.  His hair was the color of of a dark night, and his eyes shown with the purest form of happiness I have yet to encounter in any other person.  He emitted such radiance, such light and warmth, it felt like I could curl up to him for hours, days even, on the coldest day in the north pole and still not feel even a nibble of the biting cold.  I was lucky enough to get to know him, oddly, incredibly well throughout my sophomore year because I had him in Studio, and then in Digital Photography as well.  At some point between all the laughter and the jokes, I fell in love with Connor.  He was just so nice and sweet and caring, and he didn’t care about my freckles or quirks, my awkwardness or my excitability; He just saw me for me, made me feel like one of a kind out of seven billion. He made me feel absolutely beautiful, something I have yet to feel from anyone else I know, even my other friends and family.  Falling in love with him was like learning to run; I had to get on my feet, learn to balance and walk slowly at first, then suddenly I was sprinting full speed to a place I could only imagine to be as incredibly beautiful as I dreamt it must be with him. Being with Connor was the happiest I had been in my entire life; I felt entirely free with him, like my whole existence had been witnessed from inside of a jail cell, and he had the key to free me from it for the short time I happened to spend with him each day at school.  Not even gonna lie, we were a pretttyyyyy adorable couple like for reals though, we were flippin adorable alright? Anyways, moving on from that like I was saying Connor made me happy, and I loved him and I knew he loved me right back.  We used to sit together sometimes, just him holding me while we sat on a couch or laying in the grass, and imagine a life away from this town together; We dreamt of moving away to live in an adorable log house in the mountains of Colorado.  We had dreams the size of elephants, and they just kept getting bigger each time we brought them together. It was like for each elephant I brought to him, mine would fit right into his and conceive cute little baby elephants that would grow and grow, and go on to produce more elephant dreams.  So you see friend, for the first time in all of my exactly fifteen years of existence, because of Connor, my life seemed to not be a great lollipop that I could never open; It seemed like, finally, I was able to peel back the wrappers, and stop drooling and just eat the thing without having to be miserable and wonder what it would truly taste like. I let myself imagine I was being allowed to be the caterpillar who could finally live the life I had always inexhaustibly wished for, the life of a butterfly.  Once again though, I tend to not always get what I wish for. 
Okay, now that you have heard all of that (I know, it was long, but I needed you to understand the Clementine Rose that I truly am), I can tell you the events I said that I would but have yet to relinquish to you.  Now, before I tell you, I need you to understand something very important: What I’m about to tell you isn’t exactly what you would be expecting. Yes, like I think you know already, I am about to tell you an extremely awkward teenage life crisis, but that’s not the point. This isn’t something any normal teenage girl would tell anyone; Trust me, I know this isn’t something(I really would hope anyways)that any other girl would have to be put through.  It’s like experiencing the extremely mortifying transformation from awkward little girl to even more awkward teenager all over again, but in an even more intensely confusing and weird way.  So, with that being said, here goes nothing: I don’t remember the events that have magically transpired over these last few days. I’ve literally got nothing, not a single clue or even a tiny little piece of a bread crumb that could lead me back to remembering what has happened to lead me to where I’m at now. I know it must seem like I built all of the wonderfully imagined hype and suspense for nothing(I know if I was someone else listening to me right now, I would wonder what kind of crazy psycho would allow me to even learn english).  I know I was supposed to explain an overdramatized, overly complicated teenage life crisis like it would so seemingly fit into the normal existence that I so unhappily occupied...but see right there, that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you! Still not noticing it? Alright fine, let me grab your attention by the cheeks for just a tiny splash of a minute and allow you to notice something: I said “the normal existence that I so unhappily occuPIED;I used past tense to describe my existence.  You see, this is what my teenage life crisis happens to be, and why I can’t remember anything that’s happened to me in the last few days: I wouldn’t exactly say that I’m enjoying a seasons pass to the amusement park of life anymore. In fact, I’ve been forcefully admitted into a new club that tends to be more closely associated with psychopathic, spooky horror movies.  I died about seven days ago.  Yup that’s right, I am Clementine Rose, your very own friendly neighborhood ghost (I prefer spectacularly awesome person with amazingly spooktastic abilities, but you know whatever's clever).  I’m dead, and I don’t remember a speck of how I got here or how I died; The last thing I remember was being with Connor, being picked up by my parents and then bam! total blackout with a side of migraine packed with enough of a punch to leave me hurling far into the next few years.  Don’t worry though, I didn’t actually throw up because apparently ghosts don’t possess (heheh get it, you get it?) that one disgusting ability.  Anyways, so at the moment I have revealed pretty much my entire life’s history to you, I happen to be standing in the one place I avoided at all costs during my career as an awkward sophomore girl; I am standing in my high school cafeteria. I was jumping up and down, but I quickly stopped that on account of one very hard learned lesson that I didn’t ever want to learn back at my house about an hour ago.  Okay, just real fast, let me explain that whole fiasco. Despite being dead, possibly murdered, and being left here without even a tiny clue as what to do (seriously whoever runs this ghost world is just rude, a girl would at least expect a ‘What to Do If You Suddenly Find Yourself to Be Dead’ guidebook or something!), there is one plus side to this whole situation: I. Can. FLY!!!!  I only found out this morning too! Although, being able to do that is partly what caused my fiasco to happen in the first place, but oh who cares, right? I can actually, honest-to-God fly! I’m like a majestic whale of the sky...no, wait, that doesn’t sound right...a majestic dolphin of the sky.  I found out I could do this, after several straight days of just walking everywhere like a boring little ghost, when I was at my house and I was in the middle of attempting to gain my parents attention.  I had tried everything from knocking down furniture to just chucking random objects at the walls, and nothing had even sort of worked because everything I touched I just went through.  Having become very frustrated with my stupid ghostly power of just passing through things, I did something next that, in that moment, I perceived to be the only logical option that I had left; I began to jump up and down and scream for my mommy.  I only jumped up a little at first, but with each hop I got more and more just sick of this whole scenario. It was like I was five years old again, had broken something, and was crying for my mom. It began to get that bad, yes. So, jumping with more and more force, screaming louder and louder each time I unshockingly (sarcastic tone) failed at getting my parents to even open their eyes and turn around in their bed, I got very exasperated.  I tried hopping one more time though, just in the way of hoping that they would at least wake up, and oh man did they get the alarm clock of their lives. What happened to me was that I simultaneously received the excitement and the scare of my life by jumping right through the ceiling. The reason for all of my giddy excitement was in the impossible, yet inescapable observation that I was, in fact, flying; To my great dislike though, I received the scare of my life thanks to a temporary glitch I had experienced with my spooktastic abilities.  I had been trying to grab, throw, and just poke everything in sight for the last hour and a half and, having passed right through everything I attempted to touch, I had given up all hope of ever being able to just not go through things. However, of course, my awesome ghostly powers had picked the moment I accidentally jumped too high to fail me; Instead of just passing through the ceiling, I hit it with the full force of my jump and rocketed right through it out into that decidedly gloomy night sky.  I skyrocketed right up in some fluffy white clouds; It was as if they were just waiting for a young girl, fifteen years of age and recently deceased, to come and join their party. So, I want to admit something kind of saddening, but at the same time really flippin epic that I did when I got up to the clouds.  I didn’t have anywhere to sleep(technically ghosts don’t need sleep according to pretty much everyone, but you know what I do what I want), so I used my awesometastic new powers and just slept in the clouds. Now I don’t know about you, but I don’t know of any other girl ever who is just amazing enough to sleep on clouds, so I feel pretty spectacular about that one simple fact. Then again I am dead sooo...anyways, moving on yeah that was my surprise midsummers night fiasco.  It was a very unnecessary lesson on how to rip a hole in a ceiling with my face; I wouldn’t recommend learning it, honestly it sucked pretty bad. Anyways, so like I said before I decided to tell you about my depressing night, I am standing in my high school cafeteria. I used to avoid coming here every day, every minute and every second of school whenever I was still alive because, I’ll just be honest, this place reeks. Imagine if the little old woman in the shoe had invented a new form of foot fungus and combined that with a very muddy wet dog.  If you can imagine ever breathing that kind of toxic fume into your nose, then that’s what the cafeteria smells like(even though I’m a ghost, I can still smell it!). The whole place has this sort of old, abandoned for an obvious reason kind of feel to it, and there are impressive colonies of some weird tufty mold growing out of the cracks in the walls and floors.