Coming-of-age narrator: Layla

Coming-of-age narrator, tender, nostalgic, and wise

Prompt: A warm, reflective female coming-of-age-narrator voice that looks back on youth with tender wisdom. Her gentle alto narrates the ache and wonder of growing up with hindsight's clarity, finding grace in awkwardness and meaning in small heartbreaks. There's nostalgia and hard-won peace in her tone. The voice of the bittersweet memoir. That summer, I was seventeen, and I believed—truly believed—that nothing would ever change. Everything did.

Script: There is a particular kind of light that only exists in the summers of your 17th year. You don't notice it at the time. You're too busy being desperate and certain and gloriously, catastrophically wrong about everything. I thought that summer would last forever.