Empowerment. Engagement. Authenticity.
Foreshadowing - Played
On my twentieth birthday, winter dumped four feet
of snow on Toronto and brought the season-savvy city to a halt. The
streets seemed straight out of a holiday greeting card. Swaths of white
on evergreens and red brick, children in multicoloured pom-pom hats
building snowmen, making snow angels, dodging snowballs.
Funny how greeting cards never show brown slush under spinning tires,
windshield wipers battling zero visibility and frozen commuters cursing
full buses. I smirked. Discovered that when I disembarked a flight from
Trinidad seven years ago, ready to make Canada my home, and the -30
Celsius wind chill knocked me on my tropical ass.
At the moment, I was waiting for my boyfriend to arrive and for the
birthday fun to begin.
Thomas and I had been friends for two years before he asked me out,
chronicled our deepest confessions in daily emails to each other. His
careless, masochistic treatment of women had appalled me.
"Going to break up with her anyways," he'd scoffed of one girl."Might as
well introduce her to sex before I do."
But Thomas was different with me.
When we decided to date, he insisted on putting all our proverbial cards
on the table so there would be no surprises. He was the black spade to
my red heart, the Megadeth to my Celine Dion, the night owl to my
morning lark.
He made it his mission to rip off my rose-coloured glasses.
“Where’s your personality and wit?” he’d challenged after reading a
short story I’d written for a second-year university writing class. “Why
are you hiding behind such stuffy, formal language?” He’d given me a
subscription to “Writer’s Digest” and suggested we co-write a porn story
– in first person – to practice my skills.
Nope, no secrets hidden under pretty covers for us.
We were snuggled under a fleece blanket in my bedroom when he gave me
the pink envelope. I slid out textured ivory cardstock embossed with
pink roses and teal vines, flipped through gilt-edged pages. Brushed
script urged me to write new chapters in this new decade of my life, to
forge and strengthen relationships, to remember the past was only a
first draft of a best-selling manuscript.
“This was made for me,” I swooned, my heart swelling with a word either
of us
had yet to use with each other.
Thomas shrugged. “Mom picked out the card.” He pulled me on top of him.
“Enjoy this now. The next time you want my attention, you’ll have to
take a number.”
Foreshadowing
Foreshadowing refers to the technique of using hints throughout a story to predict an upcoming event or revelation. This encourages your reader to guess what might be coming and to keep reading to see if their assumptions are correct.
