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Looking ahead

Sixteen felt like it was supposed to be more magical than this. Halie had imagined this birthday a hundred different ways. Some were loud, some were sparkly, most of them involving her dad standing in the kitchen pretending not to cry when she blew out the candles. Instead, she spent the morning walking around the city alone, earbuds in, the soundtrack of her life bouncing between riotous guitar solos and soft acoustic refrains. She hadn't talked to Adam in almost a year, not since he'd missed her last school showcase and sent a lame "Sorry, kiddo" two days later. There wasn't a big fight. Just silence. And distance. And eventually, resignation.

But she didn't want today to be about him, about the man whose name blended with her mom's to create her own. Sixteen didn't need him to feel meaningful. She still had her mom - her weird, wonderful, fiercely honest mom who left sticky notes on the mirror that said things like "Don't let anyone dim your ridiculousness." She had her grandmother and her mountain of a grandfather, and her aunt and her uncle - her uncle who finally made a move on the woman he'd loved since before Halie was even born - a solid family that had enough love in its roots to grow through anything.

She had herself, and that was starting to feel like enough.

What surprised her most was how excited she was. Excited about who she was becoming, about what she might do, and about everything she didn't yet know. There were sketchbooks under her bed and notebooks full of lyrics she'd never shown anyone. She didn't know if she'd be a writer, an artist, a musician, or something else entirely, but she knew she'd do it her way. No edits, no apologies.

Just Halie.

So she bought herself a cupcake and sat on a park bench as the late winter sun filtered through the trees and made a wish. For courage. To be bold. To take up space. To make sixteen the beginning of something entirely her own.