Chapter II / The Yellow House 2D anime film
Sarah Wade arrived by cab into her home town of Boone, North Carolina. It was a warm, breezy August day and the smell of the ocean evoked memories she'd long forgotten. Having traveled the world as a photo journalist, Sarah's realization that "there's no place like home" hit her hard and she began to smile as she wiped away the tears from her eyes. These were tears of joy as her cab ride took her back down the streets where they used to play "Kick the Can" and "Ghost in the Graveyard", past the old elementary school, filled to the top with hand drawn pictures filling the windows, past the church where she was baptized as a little girl and around the corner to her house, next to the Andersons'.
Sarah had always been "the girl next door" in Ethan's eyes. Never had he given one thought to her as anything else, but Sarah had. Secretly in-love with Ethan since junior high, Sarah watched painfully as Ethan took other girls to the proms she didn't attend and out to the movies she'd never seen. When something would go wrong or Ethan didn't understand why "girls do that", Sarah was the shoulder Ethan leaned on. He had no idea that deep inside, just underneath the surface, Sarah wanted to hold him and never let him go. The pool parties were the worst! Ethan never took "No" for an answer when the neighborhood kids would swim all afternoon and grill hamburgers in the evening. He wanted her there. Her awkward body long and slim with no shape whatsoever looked horrible in a bathing suit and when her hair got wet, Sarah's ears, while not overly big stuck out away from her head in a way that made her look like Dumbo the elephant. How she dreamed of being the object of Ethan's affections. Still nothing special, as an adult, Sarah had learned to take car of her appearance and, as her partner Jacob mentioned multiple times, she had a glow about her from being outdoors. The long mousy brown hair she donned in high school was now shoulder length and her bright eyes were the color of coffee beans. Your typical "late bloomer", after high school Sarah's body caught up with her chronological age, not that it mattered. Sarah was not the type to get caught up in appearances, unlike Whitney and Celeste. He two friends from high school would certainly show up for the reunion…don't all high school cheerleaders come back for their reunion?
Miles Timson and Lou Riley…what characters. Having an on again-off again relationship in high school, Sarah was convinced that throughout their separate lives as married people with kids, they had secretly arranged "meetings" to accommodate their off-again relationship. She smiled as she thought about how eager she was to see everyone, to hear what they've been up to and, as she dropped her bags in the hallway of her parent's home, she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. "Not bad" she thought and wondered what Ethan would think.