Savin' Me

The grin on my face was just not wiping off my face, no matter how hard I tried. "What in the world are you so happy about?" Lily questioned, raising an eyebrow. "Did you and Pony...ya know?"

"Will you shut up about Pony?" I laughed. Normally, I would have flipped out, but I refrained. "I'm not interested in Pony like that. I just...I'm excited about my paper."

The only response I got at first was a look that clearly questioned if someone had eaten my brain in my sleep, or maybe switched my brain with someone else's. Finally, Lily said slowly, "You are in a good mood because...you like your paper that you wrote...? Since when do you enjoy doing schoolwork?"

I shrugged. "Since it actually came out okay. We're reading them to the whole class, right?" This was the first time that I was actually looking forward to being able to share my work with the students in my class. This time, I didn't care what they thought, not at all. It was more about what I felt, and how the people mentioned felt.

"Yeah... God, you're acting strange. Are you sure that you didn't take any drugs?"

"No drugs," I promised. We walked into our English classroom, and I immediately went into my bag to pull out my paper.

It didn't take long for the rest of the class to arrive, chatting about things that had absolutely no meaning. I couldn't help but think that most of the people in my class had no idea what it meant to have a hard life. Their ideas of hardship were a simple bad grade or maybe their girlfriend or boyfriend breaking up with them for someone else. Sure, that stuff sucked, but it didn't matter as much as the stuff that had happened in my life. It wasn't like the stuff that I overcame, or that I was working (or being forced) to overcome.

"Alright, settle, everyone," Mrs. Houston announced, clapping to get the students' attention. "We're going to start presenting our papers now. Anyone want to volunteer to go first?"

My hand was up like a rocket, while the rest of the class yawned and whispered. "Alright, Zoe. Come up."

I made my way to the front of the classroom, paper clutched in my hand. "Of course she's the first one to volunteer," someone sneered. I ignored them before taking my place before the class.

"Start whenever you're ready, Zoe," Mrs. Houston encouraged.

Taking a short breath, I started to read. "Friends," I read, watching the faces of everyone in the class. Noticing that some more people were starting to pay attention, I continued with an eye roll. "Oh, how new, right? A teenager thinking that her friends are the most important things in the world. Well, it's different for me than for other people."

By that time, everyone, including Lily, who usually blocked out everything that was said in class, was listening to me. "Friends are my only support block, the only things that are dependable. My dad..." I stopped, looking around the class and feeling my face flush. I laughed a little to cover the mistake before starting to talk again.

"My dad works a lot. He's a workaholic, and sometimes, it gets hard to be alone all the time. If I didn't have friends around me to help me through it, help me stay on track, then...my life would be even more of a train wreck than it already is." Some of the eyes of the kids widened, so I hurried to cover it up.

"Everyone has hard times in their lives, right? Who would we be to go through these times without friends by our sides? In some cases, those people that you hold close to you that may not be blood, actually feel like they are relation. They can help you through stuff that maybe your family doesn't actually care about."

"You ended a sentence with a preposition there," Mrs. Houston intervened.

"Sorry," I mumbled. "Anyway, my point, basically, is that my friends are the most important things in the world to me because, without them..." This last part, I knew, was going to be hard to say, so I just took a shallow breath before finishing, "I might not be standing here in front of everyone."

Before anyone could question me, I sat down in my seat, my eyes observing the different cracks and pencil marks in the desk.

"That was very good, Miss Preston. You get an A."

"Yes," I congratulated quietly to myself, fist pumping subtly.

"That was amazing," Lily whispered to me as a group of students in the front of the room argued about who was going to read first. "But...what did that last part mean? About you not being here?"

I shook my head with a smile. "It's a long story that I'll have to tell you sometime, but not now. Not even today. How about tomorrow?"

"Sure," Lily nodded. Then, she turned and pulled out her notebook to start drawing doodles.

I closed my eyes for a second, absorbing the fact that I had basically just laid out all the details of what had happened in my life in front of the class, minus the dad situation. Did I go into detail, saying that I cut myself? No, I didn't have to. It wasn't anyone else's business.

There was only one thing to do now: Read the paper to the people it was about specifically. They had a right to know.