PART I - HELEN

I was awake before Taylor Swift started singing about her Romeo.

I had dreamt badly, and even though I could not remember exactly what, it had been about the play and I could feel that Sofia was responsible.

I peeked at my phone to find out what time it was. 5:37 am.

Joder, I thought. I smiled, amused by the fact that this was the first thought that came to my mind. After the summer in Spain, this and the tan lines were the things that stayed.

"Joder," I said out loud, trying it out. It sounded weird in the silence of my empty bedroom.

I felt more confident talking to my family than in class. In my family, I was an equal, no matter how good - or bad - my Spanish was. In class, the teacher tried to find every single one of my mistakes. It was exhausting. Also, he said that my Spanish accent sounded fake. I raised one eyebrow until I realized that it was just me in my dark bedroom.

I stared at the ceiling. My eyes slowly got accustomed to the dark and I could make out the shapes of the glow-in-the-dark stars that decorated my ceiling since my childhood.

My dad had gone to Spain for a semester during his studies. After coming home, he'd stayed exactly as long as it took him to get his diploma, then went right back to marry my mom. Pretty romantic, actually.

During their - our - time there, my grandparents got custody of the twins. Because of reasons unknown and incomprehensible to me, we came back and moved in down the street from them. Thanks, Mom and Dad, for uprooting me completely. Of course, I loved the fact that I grew up with my aunt and uncle who were the same age as me (a nice anecdote for every occasion), but a six-year-old does not want to move to the other side of the world. Me - I was the six-year-old.

Though I should probably be thankful that it hadn't been later than that.

In my first week, I was terribly homesick, and my mom took me outside at night to look at the sky.

"Las estrellas que tú ves," she said, "son las mismas que las de allá."

The stars you see here are the same as over there.

When we got back upstairs, Dad had put up glow-in-the-dark stars on my ceiling.

While I was going downstairs into the kitchen to get a glass of water, I replayed that story in my head.

Was it heartwarming enough to be in my memoir?

Would my life be interesting enough to deserve a memoir?

I most certainly hoped so.

Just because I wanted a stable life didn't mean I had to give up exciting moments, right? I felt like somewhere between "Going to college, marrying Jamie and having two children" and "Having an exciting life", there was an uncrossable line. Something told me I couldn't have both.

I sighed deeply.

It was way too early to be thinking about that.

It's your senior year. When if not now? A voice in my head imparted.

I meant that it's six in the morning, I silenced myself.

I was standing alone in a dark kitchen, having a discussion with myself. Great.

Damn Sofia for stealing me one hour of valuable sleep.

Upstairs, I opened my diary and wrote in it:

Things to rethink:

- my life choices.