Having lost everything, the rapidly aging woman ran around the forest in a desperate attempt to find the one thing left that would make her young again. After her "daughter" had discovered the truth about their relationship, Gothel was left to her own devices once again, with no idea what to do. Rapunzel had made it so that Gothel could never use her again, and while that was the right thing to do, Gothel was terrified of dying, hence why she was looking for a myth. But then again, the sundrop was also supposed to be a myth. Hearing footsteps, Gothel hid in a bush, hoping to evade the approaching guards looking for the woman who kidnapped the princess. As the footsteps began to grow quieter, Gothel let out a small sigh of relief and turned around to see what she was looking for: the Fountain of Youth.

Getting ahead of herself, Gothel paid no attention to the aging of her body and how rapidly it was increasing, as she ran to the fountain and tried to drink from the water. Ignoring the inscription on the neck of the fountain, which clearly said to drink from a goblet, Gothel tried to use her hands to pick up some of the water. When she touched it, however, the water evaporated, and the fountain disappeared before her eyes. Having no idea what to do after that, Gothel quickly turned to ash, as she was at least a couple hundred years old.

Perhaps if she had been a bit more patient and read the inscriptions along the fountain, she would have known what she'd been doing wrong all her life. Perhaps she'd have realized that greed won't get you anywhere, except the one place you never wanted to be, that is.

Sitting in my final math class at the high school I attended, I couldn't stop thinking about how lonely and isolated I felt, a teenager with no friends who felt like she had nowhere to belong. Just then, I felt my phone vibrate inside the pocket of my hoodie, so I took it out to see what all the commotion was about.

Let me explain, I've never been the popular girl, people don't really care much about my few social media posts, and the friends I do have, are all in another state. I am not, in any means, well-known where I now live.

So, when my phone was blowing up with Instagram notifications, I didn't think it had anything to do with me. I turned my phone off and stuck it in my back, trying to turn my attention back to factoring logarithmic equations.

For about twenty minutes, I focus on what my teacher is saying and don't think anything of the Instagram notifications I'd been receiving. As the lesson ended, I pulled my phone back out to put on some music while I attacked my homework; when I noticed the number of notifications had just doubled in such a short amount of time.

Sighing, I opened my phone and pulled up Instagram to see what was going on. Clicking on the little bell to get to the bottom of this strange occurrence, I noticed that I had hundreds of likes on a post from 4 years prior about some random story I wrote that wasn't even cropped appropriately for the post.

Confused, I noticed that someone had messaged me, so I went to my messages next to see that I'd in fact received tons of messages. Clicking on the top conversation, I quickly skimmed the long text and my jaw dropped when I saw that a famous author wanted to talk to me about a book they're working on for her next series. Even more shocking was they wanted MY help!

Quickly typing back, I said I'd love to know more about the project before I commit to anything, and she'd responded immediately with all the information. As I read the description of the mystery novel, my interest peaked and before I knew it, I was helping write the book that would go on to be the single most popular book in America, beating out every single other book in the world for the coveted title.

And to think that it all started in a math class.