I'm Not the Main Character 1020Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2v7HtXw0Ek
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Prologue 1020Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡirayYS1iQd
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Envision this. Or not. I’m really not forcing you to do anything, but stick with me here. Draw back the curtains of your mind, whether those curtains are magenta, midnight blue, or whatever you choose, the imagining is purely up to you. What I really want is for you to see the two figures standing on the wood lacquered stage with big, bright lights shining down upon their perfect faces. The faceless audience sigh with longing as they gaze upon the lovely couple. They’re a couple, of course. How could they not be if they’re standing directly under a hot light professing their ever lasting love to each other? It’s a no brainer.1020Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ8qB2VNo0M7
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So, did you think of your favorite couple to fill in the faces yet? Maybe you just read a book about a dashing immortal, obviously tortured and brooding, who just so happened to be caught up in the grace and beauty of a human teenager. Female, male, take your pick. It’s all the same. There’s the "chosen one," or a hybrid of human and something just not human doing the hula and blowing party favors in your skull, hand in hand like some happily ever after conjured from the deepest of childhood wishes. A mated pair. An unbreakable bond. Fasted forever. That’s fine. That’s okay. Really. 1020Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡwZi3x2pdrx
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You’re not far from the truth. The couple on stage are indeed the children of that over used genre of magic mixing with the mundane. One is a boy, almost a man. He’s one fourth selkie and the hidden grandson of some far off royal lineage based deep within the Antarctic Ocean. He’s around six feet tall with dreadlocks that reach down to his sculpted shoulder blades. His body was made to swim against the swiftest of currents, even those created from the ocean itself, which explains the wonderfully shaped abdominal muscles out on full display. The boy has dark brown skin which accents his angular cheekbones, thick lips, sharp chin, and hazel eyes. He’s, for lack of a better word, perfect.1020Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡiMQvnjG63E
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The girl he’s holding hands with is delicately small and her head only reaches to top of his collar bone. Just one quick look at her tells anyone that she is not what she’s masquerading as; a weak and demure human. Her creamy white skin has an iridescent glow. In fact, she projects at least seven different hues of blue, green, and gold. Her eyes are that of a seal’s, big and black, but they somehow seem right on her, wrapping her in an eerily attractive light. The pale yellow hair wrapped into a crown at the back of her head changed colors in just the right light, mirroring her skin. Despite her tiny features, her body is fully developed. Definitely a woman. She is breathtaking. 1020Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡhli57DfJlq
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And that girl standing behind the brilliant couple brushed aside by the lavish curtains out of sight from the audience, you know the one kind of shifting around in the darkness tugging at the grizzled ends of her shoulder length brown hair, that one is me. 1020Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7jocJxosqP
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Halt! Wait, what did you think I was going to say? Did you think I, yours truly, was the girl in the selkie boy's embrace? And the boy in question? Oh man, I’m sorry to disappoint you. I’m not that glamorous enough to be cast in a top scale love triangle. See, the boy there is my best friend (or he was my best friend) Zeike. The girl he is suction cupped to as if their skin is somehow sewn together, is Brenwyn. A selkie. The type of seal creature that turns into a human once they take off their enchanted seashell necklace. And I am their, more specifically Zeike's, Helper…or should I call myself the Sidekick? I guess it’s all interchangeable. Either way, I am the best friend who is there no matter what to guide her friends with anything supernatural, especially in the romance department. 1020Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4nZOe1p0k9
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I'm not the main character.1020Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡwyvjjBSDGt
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I can practically hear your gears whirling. Yes, yes I’m that girl. 1020Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡRvXKgicome
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The girl who searches the internet and damp library corridors for information on the latest new kid on the block when her companion is too a flutter with avoiding destiny. The girl who always lends a sympathetic ear to the hero when the parental figures are gone for the month, won’t believe their child, or are, as in most cases, mysteriously dead from unknown circumstances that will later be revealed. (By the way, I research those very same big reveals, too.) I'm the girl who stands back and watches as all of her best friends find their eternal life partners and leave her. Friend after friend. They always leave, and I suppose that I should just get used to it. It’s the curse of being a Sidekick. Nah, I like Helper better. 1020Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ733zU7VP6D
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Yeah, I did say curse. I do fall into that trope, at least. Being a Helper isn’t all sunflowers and exciting encounters with hot supernatural men and women. The gig leaves a girl lonely. Especially when all of my friends have up and left to live bigger, and better lives. Magical lives. And so you’d think I’d notice the signs of an impending departure when finally venturing out and find friends, and boy howdy I got all the signs I needed after Zeike left. That was why, after I graduated high school, I moved from gloomy Washington, Illinois to super summer St. Augustine, Florida. I was trying to protect myself, but I inadvertently put into action my first and second mistakes, right there in the Sunshine State.1020Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2cr3NgIiyg
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Mistake Number One: You see, because Washington, Illinois is right in the middle of a great, vast cornfield dotted with farming towns and tractors galore with the only entertainment outside of your home being a gutted shopping mall and discount movie theater, the location was a high grade breeding ground for supernatural shits and giggles. Come on now. Where have you heard in a young adult romance novel where a fairy or vampire went into a big city trying to show off? No. Those ilk like to keep under the radar, and little ol’ unknown Washington was just what they wanted, not the stalks of corn.1020Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMJU70JCip0
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Mistake Number Two: I had just completed my senior year of high school. I was out and away from one of the most dangerous containment areas imaginable, and I’m not saying that for the obvious reasons of letting teenagers with unstable brain compositions interact and calling the mess socializing. No. High school is the prime target for someone to run smack dab into a werewolf or witch or elf who had a secret mission that would ultimately save or destroy the entire planet (and their damned missions never could be a safe middle road, no no, there was always an ultimatum.) (Pardon the second parenthesis, but now that I think about it, how the hell do you save and/or destroy the world from a high school? I never understood it, and yet here I am, a witness to at three foiled plots to reduce the Earth to rubble all originating from Washington High School.)1020Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ5M8lmi1j2c
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Conclusion: So I thought that with my being out of high school with the added bonus of leaving Washington for a relatively well known city, I would be safe. Safe from bumping into a genuinely kind person with big ol’ doe eyes and a sweet disposition who would then promptly fall in love with a selkie and throw me away after my duties of Helper were completed. Safe from anyone who told me I could rely on them. I was seasoned by the time Zeike scadooted, and I had moved to study at Flagler College. I knew what to be on the lookout for: 1020Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSEji0WIEzE
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1. Anyone with an odd name.1020Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡUa95Ky80Kd
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Odd as in, Adrienne Waters Applegate. I really should have figured out who she would come in time to fall for. I mean, her last name included a fruit for goodness sake, but she was kind and I was always weak when it came to people who treated me kindly. I knew her since we were seven, and she was the only one who said my name like it wasn’t as plain as worn tennis shoes: Emily May Smith. She’d whisper it fully in her deep, raspy voice and I’d grin like a fool at her, buoyed by her confidence in me. But, yeah, whatever. She’s gone now, so it doesn't matter anymore. 1020Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2CriCzOUSl
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2. Someone who was clearly beautiful but denied it vehemently.1020Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡf2vJ2T4LiL
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Like Dandris. You see, Dandris was so gorgeous, she could have competed with Aphrodite in physical appeal alone and won at least ten times over. Heart shaped face? Check. Large, oval eyes glittering in all colors of emerald green? Check. Hourglass figure topped off with full breasts? Check. A sheet of straight black hair to compliment her light brown skin? C-Check! Heck, even her toenails emitted a rose-like perfume. And no, I didn’t bend down and sniff em’ myself. He told me when he listed Dandris’s attributes that he fell in love with, the vain beast. And Danris? She told me from day one that she was as homespun as medieval peasant garments. She could never see herself as pretty, which always frustrated me. If I was beautiful as her, I would be proud of my body for once. As humble as a saint, that one.1020Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ04ZforQl74
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3. Anybody that was too good at doing something.1020Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2l1hPLftFb
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A good example is Zeike. I should have turned around on my foot and galloped out of the gym once I saw how graceful Zeike swam. How he cut through the water of the high school’s pool like a hawk soaring through the blue of the sky. How his body was so fluid, he became the water, or the water turned into him. It didn’t matter. I could not stop watching him, letting the acrid smell of chlorine burn into my nostrils so that this memory would remain forever within myself. I should have known, from how much I was ogling him, that he wouldn’t stay with me either. That he would be the quickest to depart no matter how much I wanted him to keep his charming hazel eyes locked with mine. 1020Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡIDQMapr31W
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I thought that since I had been through so much, struggling to consistently be that happy and helpful friend for those three airheads, that I had done my duty. That my term as Helper had been satisfactory to whoever appointed the lame position to me. No high school. No unknown town. And I had deemed that there would be no friends. Can’t have people run off on me if there aren’t any people to begin with. Right?1020Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡYO7Hw16N4d
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Oh, how utterly, no, devastatingly wrong I was.
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