After the necessary parental questioning and tearful reunion, Angela ran up to her old room. It was the same from her high school days.

The walls were still a lilac purple, yet lightly faded by age. The bed still had her comforter decorated with the daytime sky over her dark purple sheets. Porcelain dolls still adorned her dresser top, and plays lined her bookshelf. The lavender memory box decorated with a large decal of a golden retriever that her grandmother from Syracuse made still held its place on the top of her bookshelf. Speaking of the loyal breed, her own golden, Diamond came bounding in, licking Angela’s face when she knelt down to pet the dog.

“Hey there, girl. Have you been taking care of those two for me?” Angela rubbed Diamond’s belly as the dog gave an enthusiastic bark. It had torn Angela in two when she realized there wouldn’t be enough room in an apartment for the sweet tempered quadruped, but she had to follow her dreams. Now, the animal seemed to love her as much as ever.

Standing up, Angela walked over to her bookshelf. In one bottom corner, there sat a few books that weren’t normal ‘books’, but nor were they scripts. They were writing books of all shapes and sizes. One was a small spiral notebook covered with soft, light yellow cloth, another, a red and white marble composition notebook. The third was of a pale turquoise and was built like a diary. The fourth was just a black folder, filled with papers. There was also a fifth folder, sitting in with the plays. It was a bright shade of red that looked to have faded. It was covered with drawings, and the inside had all the scripts/music from every play she’d ever done since middle school. The other four were her notebooks from high school, each from a different grade.

Taking these folders/notebooks off of the bookshelf, Angela plopped herself onto the bed and set the books down next to her. Turning on the light next to the old alarm clock, she picked up the spiral notebook and began to remember her freshman year.

That year was full of ups and downs. Being an average student, her grades were alright, nothing like the one girl who was in her grade that got sky-lined grades they were so high. Everyone thought that Laura Anderson was going to rule the technological world someday. But Angela, having been Laura’s best friend since kindergarten, knew that the girl loved to write. Laura was another friend that Angela had to check in on while she was home. Angela wanted to know if Laura ever hooked up with that one friend of theirs’, Kyle.

The biggest down of that year was not making the second musical her school did. Her saving grace, however, was her drama class. She made a bunch of really good friends in that class, and choir. One couple who she became really close to was in her choir. The boy, Andy, was in her drama class as well. Cara happened to have worked with her in the theater club in middle school. Angela, admittedly (for most of her freshman year) had had a crush on Andy and had worked with him often. Angela figured to ask someone when their wedding was next time she saw someone who knew them.

Suddenly, the feeling of something cold and wet against her foot shook her back to Earth. She realized then that she almost began thinking about IT again. IT, the thing that made her life a piece of slime back in high school, the thing she acted out every time she went on stage in AGYG. IT, the l-word.

Continuing onward to her sophomore year, Angela remembered introducing Laura to Kyle, her level two drama class, and all other things encompassed in that year. She proceeded to read her poetry, rants, songs and everything she wrote down about those years that were long past.

Her thoughts then turned to the red folder. In it were not as many scripts as she had once hoped there would be, but the ones there were now to her more precious than the Ring even was to Gollum. Chuckling as she realized that was the one series of books she had in her room, Angela opened the folder.

Attached into the clips of the folder was the play it was originally for: Snow White. On either side were various scripts and scores. Looking through the folder she found herself truly immersed in her past. Late night rehearsals, going next door to her old high school for dinner and/or lunch, pizza nights back in middle school, finally feeling accepted/important, all that now was a part of her whole being had started with these pages.

Slowly, she remembered past those pages. She remembered when she got her first taste of the stage in elementary school, when the disappointment of being picked last for the sports she loved and not making the ‘cut’ finally was too much.

Now, every circumstance that had led her to where she was hit her. Was it really so long ago that she had left these roots behind? In all honesty, she never had left them. They were with her every time she went on stage, every time she was recognized on the streets in NYC.

“That’s what I worked for all those years. Every disappointment, every year without a lunch, every week of taking Echinacea when my throat was scratchy and I wasn’t feeling well just so I could get to school, all led up to me finally making it. Maybe, I’ve devoted too much of my life to the theater. Maybe I needed this break to discover that, perhaps… theater isn’t everything”