Ali.

She was still recovering from the incident only a month ago. The wounds still fresh in her heart, and the aches not gone away. The scars not yed fading, and the stitches ragged from being worn. She sat in the back of the new classroom that smelled of bleach and cinnamon. Listening to her favorite song, favorite black hoodie with one of those sayings she hated to see but loved to read was printed on the front, hanging loosely over her slim body. Black hair framing her face and ice blue ices that looked as if they could pierce your very soul staring straight down, no expression visible on her pale face. The second on the clock ticked dimly by, the sound fillin gthe silent room, echoing, seeming to grow louder with every second that passed. The bell rang. She was startled but sat still in her chair. She jumped when she heard the voice next to her, smooth as velvet and warm as summer, it melted her from the inside and yet she didn't move, didn't breath, didn't blink. She simply kept her gaze down and answered his previous question of "Is this seat taken?" She said no and was startled by the sound of her voice. It was different than she remembered. Higher, and sweeter, yet raspy with the long weeks of going unused. He sat down and she chanced a sideways glance at him, and in the instant she did so, she wished she hadn't. He was the most handsome boy she had ever laid her eyes on. His eyes were like liquid jade, his face was so perfect it would make the moon shy away with shame, his hair was the deepest of chocolate brown and edged so very perfectly. And then she snapped her head back to it's previous point of focus. Staring straight down and trying not to look back at him. Class started much the same as any would on the first day. No work, just mindless dribble about expectations, and curricular, and blah, blah, blah...The teacher, having just said something about an essay, caught her attention. She looked up in just enough time to hear the last measure of his sentence. "You will write an essay based on the most traumatic experience of your life." Great. Not even a month after the incident and she already had to reveal to her new clasmates that she was a freak? An outcast...someone who had no place, or business with them. And then she realized..she had no pencil. She had been dreading this very moment and yet..she wsa so very glad for the opportunity to have his eyes locked into hers, to coax that sweet honey voice out into the bleach tainted air. "Do you have a pencil I could borrow?" She asked shyly. He smiled at her and she could feel herself slipping. She quickly caught herself and looked down, blushing a deep red. He handed her the pencil and said, still smiling "I didn't catch your name. Mine is Dustin by the way." She looked away and said "You didn't catch it because I didn't throw it." He laughed quietly to himself and retorted "Well then I guess you'll have to seeing as how your so obviously interested in me and because I am so flagrantly wondering as to why you've been staring at me this whole time and haven't said a word to me." She stared into his jade eyes and stammered over her words "I..I...Well I..." He laughed a laugh that would make the angels ashamed to sing, and she smiled so wide she felt as if her face might start to crack.1

She told him everything, of how when her father had died and left her with her junkie of a mother she became depressed, of how bullying at school ran so much deeper under her skin than the other kids would have ever dreamed..and she told him of how exactly a month ago that day, she had taken a butcher knife to her skin and downed three different bottles of her mothers pills. He accepted this, and chained himself to her heart, he vowed to help her, and give her whatever she needed, no matter what the cost, or the sacrifice. Because that day, when Dustin met Ali. A miracel happened. Mafic wound itself upon two young hearts and captured a love so completely true. It couldn't have been real. 2

Her alarm clock went off louder in her ear than she would have expected. All of her dream gone. All the magic faded away from under her eyelids, and she was up. Another dream of what could never be. She could already hear her mother and Joseph..or was it Anthony..fighting down the hall in the kitchen. She heard a loud slapping noise then a crash. She slipped away under her sheets and closed her eyes, trying to capture the magic, trying to bring it back and make it real if only for a day. She slipped away back into her dreams and never wanted to come back. She wished she could leave it all behind, the pain and the tearsm the fear and the lies, but at least she knew, that somewhere, somehow, she would find her magic. She would find every dream that ever fluttered underneath her sleeping eyes and make it come true. She would find a miracle in every day. Even if it meant never coming back home.