Map: http://imgur.com/a/4vD2VZ3

Senior year, circa 2014. The first day of school in fact, September 7th, at charter school for preps 'Ume Academy.' … And also me, sticking out like a sore thumb.

I stepped out of my clunker car, it was a real old Subaru. Recently I've just been calling it POS on account of it breaking down.

I was making my way to the front building, the school had a reputation to uphold, so I had parked in the back.

I looked up at the four story mansion, for seniors exclusively, that's been 'converted' to a school.

Frankly, it was daunting. That was the only word for it. Well, the word vain also came to mind—but I didn't actually care about the vain things and people that are found here.

Far more pressing than that, I cared about the sheer intimidation given off from those marble pillars lining what's called 'the forum' and made up the front of this 'academy.'

The level of ludicrous lavishness here–I knew from stories–it downright frightened me.

It dawned on me as I walked up that this school year would be special, indeed. Just probably all for different reasons than you're expecting. Most people–what I'll speculate is a rapidly declining number–think of this year as inherently special because it puts you at the top of your respective food chain for once, among teens none are feared so much as a senior.

Even though you certainly have two more years of being a teen after this, the moment you are both graduated from high school and also over 18—you're on your own, good luck–effectively giving the mighty senior more freedom than someone who's neither.

If you play your cards right in senior year, you could get away with murder. And the smart people know that, which is everyone here.

The other part is fairly self explanatory: it was the last year of school before a lot of your friends (what're those again?) would split ways for god knows how long. You could think of this as the end of an era for most. And for the ones that thrived, it was just the very beginning of their life.

I wasn't actually rustled over any of this, mind you. I was too busy shoegazing, caught in hopelessly circular thoughts, like I'm not going to college, and I have no savings even though I worked my ass off all summer, and then to top it off I have no connections and a dead end job.

And so on.

Just brooding.

I regarded the low-light chandeliers that lit my way as I navigated through this labyrinth, literally using a map on my phone of the layout. The place had no consistency to it as far as I could tell, as I had made it to yet another vast white ballroom by accident. And I was just trying to find the main staircase.

I shoegazed again as I made it past a large group chatting, but seeing my scuffed skate shoes against the immaculate floors made my stomach upset.

I stopped dead in my tracks, making someone bump into me.

"Oh, my bad," I apologized. I got out of the way and admired the spiral staircase I was in front of. It was simply that beautiful. So much so that it seemed out of place for even this mansion.

I made a note in my phone: buy shoes for inside school. Only after I wrote that could I justify putting these dirty shoes on those majestic steps.

As I winded upwards I thought about what this school year meant to me. I'm guessing a growing number of people in society will agree—definitely every truant teen who's made it to senior year will understand—this all felt like a big waste of time.

Sure, before the ever presence of the internet at your fingertips there was really a reason to learn and memorize a bunch of useless shit in a class—that's not reflective of right now however.

What do I think? For me, senior year is just the end.

I already have worked a full-time job, and things are not looking up just because I got a stupid, near meaningless diploma.

Why don't I just get a GED…

Realistically, what does my future look like? Working at a retail-level job till I retire, like my mom?

Third floor. To the right Mosaic window panes of sun and moon reflected colored light on a cool background of blue tile. To the right was a soaking pool with a knightly theme.

I could tell I'd never grow old of this place.

The door was open to what should be my class. It was homeroom, and it was actually optional on all days besides today. There were no name tags, like the previous years I'd been here, so I sat in the back like I usually do.

Those words 'why don't I get a GED' were ringing in my head. I tried to focus on the people around me talking, but the ringing didn't stop.

After a couple minutes I just gave up and tried thinking about it.

Before I knew it the bell had rung. In disbelief I checked the clock… It really had been a full hour of me staring off into space, just thinking.

What did I conclude in that time? I could get a GED in a couple of months, and then I'd have to go back to full-time work at Krongers until I die or retire at a ripe age.

So why even get the GED.

Why attend any sort of school at all?

At this point I was in a foul sort of hopeless mood, if I wasn't already.

I got up and went to the counselors office, luckily just across the way on the same floor.

I opened the door. This office was all too plain after seeing all the extravagance everywhere else. Not that it was tasteless, it just seemed like I'd stepped into a The Office set.

Had I wandered into a parallel dimension?

Even sitting down you could tell the woman sitting behind the desk in this ordinary room was a tall and naturally beautiful type of model-esque woman… emphasis on the woman.

"That's strange," she said, looking up at me. "Usually nobody bothers me on the first day of school." It all sounded perfectly understandable when she said it, and I realized I hadn't knocked.

"What do you think of dropping out?" I blurted out, not exactly meaning to.

"I was just about to head into the soaking pool, why don't we go there together?" She flashed me a smile of sparkling white teeth and I noticed her overly sharp canines.

I simply nodded.

I got in first. A soaking pool is like a bath that's the perfect temperature, not warm but not too hot, either.

I smelt like lavender salt mixed into the water and when I looked up it seemed there was a hole in the ceiling in the roof, letting cool air inside and relaxing me all that much more. I tried not to think about the logistics of having a sky light like it.

The problem was definitely the counselor, if anything. I mean, she wasn't being problematic, it was just—that natural beauty I was speaking of earlier…

It didn't help that she was practically naked.

"You wanna drop out, Tayler?"

Was that me? I cleared my throat.

"I just realized how useless it is to graduate. Nothings gonna change just because I got a diploma, and I'm… I'm pretty depressed right now. And anxious. It's like someone sapped the strength from me."

"To be fair, a proper education used to be a very important thing. Not so much anymore, which is a real shame. It makes many people wonder why they're even in high school. Back when I was growing up, you couldn't get a job with a GED. They'd hire the high school graduate over you any day of the week, so it felt like you had to graduate to start life."

"That's what my dad told me once, I've heard that."

"What do you want to do in life?"

"If I could just pick, I'd be a writer. But I'm not confident in that."

"Let me guess, you don't know what you want to do, but you know you don't want to go to school?"

"...Yeah. You got it. Nothing interests me to do as a career, not without a lot of schooling that I refuse to do."

She was playing footsie with me, which again seemed the perfectly natural thing to do. I didn't second guess it.

"What'd you do if you could go to school?"

I paused. She was picking me apart, truly. "About that… I'm not even sure what I'd do if I was ready to go to school for another 8 years."

"So right now it seems to you that you're at a dead end with no exit."

"Damn. You've got me. It's not that I hate retail work, it just depresses me that this is gonna be my life with no other options."

"I'd like to remind you that you can work for a few years, maybe travel around, then go back to school. Since you made it to senior year you might as well try and finish."

"You're a good counselor, I can tell. I feel refreshed hearing that."

"That's just this water we're in," she laughed. "Go to class… and feel free to stop by anytime."

I thought about what she'd said in general, but one thing definitely stuck out to me: "you made it to senior year."

I really hadn't "made" anything though, I really hadn't. And I think there was some guilt there.

For starters, I barely paid attention in class, and I usually didn't take notes like everyone else—that's what it seemed to me, at least. I'd have to try in math class, but outside of that I showed up for tests without studying or doing homework or participating and still got a B on every report card…

It felt like I'd thoroughly 'slipped through the cracks,' as they say. Sometimes that's good, in this case it was making me feel guilty.

I hadn't "made it" to senior year, I just found myself here without any real thought about it.

I'd made my way to my second period, physics. I had entirely missed first. The room for it was a proper lecture hall, but everything was made of elegant color coordinated woods. All seniors in this district take physics senior year, I'd been told by a teacher, apparently that was easiest.

There were name tags in this class. Sometimes the teacher would use them to learn everyone's name, but even that was pretty rare.

I was assigned to sit in the corner in the far back as luck would have it. The name of the person next to me seemed to be 'Jaden,' but he or she was nowhere to be seen even after the bell rang.

Without realizing it I had put my head in my hands.

Get it together, I told myself.

Deep breath in through my mouth—slowly exhale through my nose. Until your lungs are completely empty…

The door slammed open and the room collectively craned their necks to the right.

The ringing in my head stopped at the sight of her. Holding a coffee cup that said simply 'coffee,' she had pretty plain features but… well, you know it when you see it. I had seen her somewhere before but… surely I was just imagining things. I immediately hoped she was the Jaden that was supposed to be sitting next to me.

I looked around the room. There were no other seats open, so I gestured her over to me.

She was wearing some striking shades and the tightest pair of jeans I'd ever seen, it was no exaggeration to say they may as well have been painted on. In the light I couldn't tell if they were dark blue or plain black, with a floral pattern in pink going up the sides of them to her matching blouse, and complete with a light blue sweatshirt tied around the shoulders.

I believe this is what you call fashionably late.

The teacher loudly asked, in a mock sincerity, "and did you bring any coffee for me?"

I couldn't really tell with her sunglasses on, but she seemed confused. "Ah, no, this is tea," she finally realized.

The whole room was turned around in their seats, staring at her, and then her coffee cup that plainly said coffee. The teacher exploded in laughter. A few kids laughed, too.

Must be some dad humor.

The rubber necks looked away, and class resumed.

I looked over at the cup myself. Kinda weird that it was a coffee cup, and not a mug with a lid. It was about half full with an olive in it.

She fished out a laptop from her messenger bag, the thing was a huge gaming laptop, the monitor was at least 20” and looked like it was 25 pounds. I tried to focus on class.

Wait… what’d I see?

I looked again, instinctually. An olive with a toothpick skewered through it.

She giggled at me, in that cute way that girls do, with her hand covering her mouth.

She pointed at her screen. Her laptop booted up faster than my desktop does. Pulling up Microsoft Word, she typed this:

Im Jade but please help yourself to my gin martini.

I grabbed the cup and took a swig.

Then grimaced. It took all my strength to not spit it out.

I don’t think you could make a worse “martini,” if that’s what this was supposed to be… also, that wasn’t using gin, that was vodka!

Just when I had given her credit…

I wrote in my notebook: whoever made that should be held for war crimes against all martinis.

I slid the notebook over to her, but she didn’t look. She was too captivated by her screen, using the arrow keys like playing a fast music piece. Peering over… she was playing Super Mario Bros?

It was, indeed, the original Super Mario for the NES. And it looked like she was having a hell of a time, too, but it was only the first level.

What possessed this girl so?

I tapped her shoulder and pointed at the note.

After reading it, she turned to me, aghast.

With a great fierceness in her movement, she pulled up Word and typed:

u think u can do better??

Oh, so she made it. I figured one of her friends gave it to her. To be frank, she didn’t look like the type to drink.

I could make a better martini with one hand and my eyes closed, I wrote.

if u can beat this level for me ill let u make me one

Wow, how generous.

I grabbed the laptop.

In about two minutes I finished the level. I just ran through, she didn’t say I had to get a high score or anything.

When I looked back at her she had sunk down to the floor. Very funny… no, wait, that’s an unmistakable sound.

The sound of a girl sobbing.

I chugged the rest of her horrible martini and put the cup in her bag, she’d have to clean the olive out later.

“Teacher,” I said loudly while I stood up, “I’m taking her to the nurse.” I wrapped her arm around my shoulder and practically dragged her out. If teach said anything, I didn’t hear it.

The moment we were outside the door though, I swept her off her feet, that’s to say I put her in a bridal carry and hoped nobody would see me.

She wrapped her arms around my neck eventually, no longer sobbing but obviously crying, even though those shades I could tell.

“What the hell happened back there?”

“What do you mean! First, you say I should be put on trial, then you beat the level I’ve been stuck on for weeks!” And now she was sobbing again.

Weeks? That was the first level!

“You must be some sort of hacker guy to be able to do that… Wait, are you? I could really use one of those right now!”

“What could you possibly use a hacker for… You’re in high school.”

“You’re so insensitive! I swear!”

She said that, but I felt her face pressed against my chest. We had made it to the parking lot.

“Where’s your car?”

She sniffled. “Aren’t you taking me to the nurse?”

I wanted to shout: hell no! But no, instead, I said, “so they can expel you and turn you into the police and take your license away?”

She pointed across the parking lot, visually sobering up. “It’s that pickup.”

I walked in the direction looking for a pickup. Then I nearly dropped her.

“Whoa! Please don’t drop me! I’m fragile!”

“Surely you didn’t just call that Datsun a ‘pickup.’”

“No, that’s it. I call her Shelly.”

What the hell had gone wrong with the world?

“I can walk from here.”

I set her down. “If you can walk, would you like to get some coffee instead of waiting in the car?”

She took off her sunglasses, folding them up. Her face looked like a “?” and even had a cute head tilt.

I paused when I saw her eyes… they were a gorgeous deep green and seemed to glow to me. Now that I got a good look at her up close, her black hair was obviously natural—she had the looks of a Native American if I'm not mistaken, and good looking looks, at that.

“We just drank. Neither of us can drive right now.”

Seems like she’s rushing to a red light, and I hate it when people do that.

“Okay, but you’ll have to make me a martini with your eyes closed afterwards.”

We started walking, the coffee shop I was thinking of wasn’t that far from us, being just a city block away.

“So…” she trailed off, uncomfortable with the silence.

I tried to pick my words carefully. “Why so emotional today? Ah, by the way, I’m Tayler.” I realized I’d never told her.

She gave me a smile, it was a pretty smile. “That’s a very difficult question, Tayler.”

“I’ve got plenty of time to listen.”

"True—I don’t know where to start, though. It's been a crazy summer break.”

“How about why you were drinking this morning?”

“That would be easier to explain. You see—I’m currently being stalked.” She nodded her head a few times as if to confirm with herself. "I have a feeling that I can trust you. Call it women's intuition."

"I'd like to say I'm a trustworthy person, but it sounds suspicious when you actually say it out loud."

We'd made it to the coffee shop, supposedly an all organic coffee shop—named so: 'Green Joe'—but I'd never understood what made coffee organic versus… What, inorganic coffee? It doesn't sound right.

Nobody was in the shop so we got to order immediately (I paid for both of us) and we sat ourselves down at a table in the back. The lighting in the place was low like most coffee shops tend to be, and low-key music played in the background. I believe the people playing right now are called The XX.

"Just start at the beginning. I don't care how long it takes."

She sighed with her head propped up on her hand.

This is Jade's tale.

"I was born in Minnesota to two parents that didn't particularly want me in the first place, or that's what I'm told. My parents… well, to be brief, my grandparents adopted me and I moved here to live with them when I was three years old. Growing up with them has been a blessing. I've had a fairly uneventful life, excluding this past summer. Sometimes I wish it was more eventful, sometimes it feels like I haven't really done anything and I feel really small. I see accomplished people doing so much more than me at the same age, I think, 'why can't I be more like them?'

"If there's one thing I've struggled with, it's been my identity. You see, my mom and dad—that's what I call my grandma and grandpa—they're old, old Republicans with old fashion ideals. Growing up with them has been great, I have everything I need, plus some. But when it came to parenting, they'd always tell me to fit the 'female role,' and I felt like I was being trained to be a princess. I wanted nothing to do with being a girl. Whenever I'd say I didn't want that girly thing like makeup and dolls they'd get angry, or worse, they'd worry about me… so I learned quickly and at a young age that I was female and I couldn't do what I was actually interested in. Then I hit high school, and suddenly I realized I wasn't limited at all… it came as a big shock. In a way, I'm still shocked and trying to figure myself out. I'd thought—because I'd been told—that I would marry a man and become a nurse–but not a doctor, that's a man's job—and eventually mother a couple of kids for him. That's been my struggle.

"Who am I? It felt like there were two of me—a fierce self and a helpless princess. Both of them were fighting for control. That was in freshman year. In sophomore year I made a radical change and started dating a girl. When she asked me I was initially reluctant, but I realized I was just scared to admit I really, really liked her. The whole relationship went nowhere though, and I felt like I was wasting my time so I broke up with her that following summer.

"The next year, junior year, I decided to try dating a guy. I just wanted to see what it was like. It was late into the school year before I found someone I thought I could stand dating. His name was Steven Ashley. There were signs along the way—red flags—but I didn't pay attention to them.

"I guess that's a summary of my life so far. The synopsis, like if I were a book cover. Now we get to this last summer… It was the start of summer break and it was an unusually hot, cloudless day. It was actually the day of the forest fire south of here if you remember that. Steven asked me if I wanted to go to the lake with his friends—I went, of course—but I was… raped. I know it was rape, even then I knew, but I was convinced I deserved it. I told myself I had it coming. I told myself 'of course that happened, I was turned on after all.'

"...Nobody ever told me how sex worked, school never prepared me for something so… horrible. I wish looking back that I went to the hospital. Now it's too late.

"The ashes falling from the sky from the wildfires were so symbolic of how I felt in a traumatic haze. Instead of seeking help... I sought out sex. And I got it. I got a lot of it. The next month I didn't come home once. The next thing I knew I had missed my period. Even I knew why. I was pregnant."

I was holding her hand over the table. I looked around to make sure nobody was around, since I'd lost track listening to her.

"You don't have to say anymore if this is hurting you." I squeezed her hand. She flinched and pulled her hand away.

"You've got it all wrong. This is helping me. It's good to finally tell someone."

"I'm listening."

"I tested positive for pregnancy with one of those home kits I got from a pharmacy. It all hit me at once. Suddenly I felt disgusted and horrified with myself, and all those times I had sex felt like another time I got raped. I was obsessively thinking of the baby inside me—I thought of it as something grotesque and twisted… I finally returned home and shut myself in my room. I starved myself—not eating or drinking for a week—hoping I'd just die. I was rushed to the hospital on the eighth morning by my parents. I was a husk. I didn't want to talk to the doctors about it, but they knew I must have been raped. A lot of people tried to make me talk about it—but I kept mum. All their speeches felt hollow to me.

"They finally sent in a specialist who talked some sense into me, not spewing empty words about 'justice.' Granted I wasn't being reasonable even then. I still see her. Not that I was all better, I was still far from it. She asked me if there was anybody I wanted to see. I said I wanted to see my biological parents. It just came out and I knew it was true, I really did want to talk with them.

"I got released from the hospital in two days’ time. I checked my phone after I got it back—I had gotten a text saying simply 'I got your number from your grandma, I'm coming to America.' I knew who it must be. I ran outside. I don't know how she pulled so many strings so quickly… but there was my biological dad. I got his eyes, clearly. It was a catharsis all by itself. He ran a construction business in Germany now, he even accidentally spoke to me in German a few times! It was great… all my worries melted away while he was here. I never knew it—maybe I never admitted it—but I desperately wanted to know my real parents.

"I told him everything and went to therapy every other day where I spilled my guts out and reset myself back to a functional human. He told me he wanted to see me dearly this whole time, everyday he'd think about me but thought he had no place in my life anymore. All he needed was the phone call that I needed him… and he came running. He wants me back in his life. Isn't that great?"

Tears streamed down her face, but with the smallest of smiles on her face, they were tears of joy. She grabbed my hands with hers and squeezed tightly. We sat in silence for a while.

"I want him in my life—after all these years without him, fourteen long years without his support… but now I have him." She sniffled, yet her lips were curled up in a bittersweet smile.

"That's great, Jade." I didn’t know what else to say, a few tears came to my eyes as well. I couldn’t remember the last time I had cried.

“That’s not the end of the story, though…” she let out a huge sigh, composing herself. “During this whole time, and even still now, I was having strange and extremely vivid dreams. I don’t know if you can relate… I don’t know if anyone can, for that matter. But I’m not able to tell these dreams apart from reality. Sometimes I would remember something that was actually in one of those dreams, and I’d confuse them thinking they were done in real life. They were completely and utterly indistinguishable from reality when they were happening. And I met my mother in them once. Not even I knew it at the time, but my mother is dead, my dad told me when he came, but that was almost a full week after this dream happened.

“I can still see it like it actually happened. It seemed we were on a bus, sitting and chatting side by side when we came to a stop and many people left and came on around us. It was so life-like. We were talking about our dreams, and my mother was telling me her regrets as a parent. She wanted to see me finish what she couldn’t, and have a happy life. All at once, I realized that I never could like I was, before I had met my therapist and father in real life.

“She said something along the lines of ‘I can make sure you get the help you need, but only if you can stay alive just one more week. In return, I must take something precious from you, although I cannot tell you what.’

"I readily agreed. Anything was better than this, I thought. I got drowsy in the dream and put my head on my mother’s lap. She stroked my hair and I woke up in real life, but it was the middle of the night so I just went back to sleep.

“The next dream that night was like a bizarre, hyper realistic nightmare. I’m sorry, it’s hard to explain. In the dream, I was talking to someone I knew to be my father. The man was cloaked in black, however. He was talking in a low voice about his regrets, which were very petty compared to my mother’s, and was as if he was talking to himself.

When I looked right at him he would get more blurry, not more clear. I could tell we weren’t alone. There was an outline of a… a monster, with a clipboard. The thing was blank like a silhouette would be, but in darkness. There was an... evil presence, in the far corner, I just somehow knew it was Steven Ashley gazing at me from the shadows. And there were some clothes on the bed being lit by a spotlight, however, no light escaped past the clothes, as if they were glowing. Before my eyes, the clothes expanded, and a life size rag doll filled them. My 'father' stopped rambling about his selfish regrets. He said, ‘It seems everyone has gathered. Let’s begin.’

“It’s hard to describe the rest, so bear with me. When he said let’s begin, I felt like peeing my pants. I was so scared, but I couldn’t, and my whole body began to tingle very intensely like my body was vibrating. The person who I knew to be my father ripped my pants open and I screamed. Another spotlight turned on, and I saw it… in the dream, I had a penis. It was painfully erect by this point. The man had his hands on my wrists, pinning them down to the chair, then he moved his head into the spotlight so that his shadow was over my crotch. There was the feeling of something horribly cold over my penis, and the distinct feel of teeth sinking in, painfully. But I didn't wake up. It was at that time that the walls came down like a prop. It was you, Tayler… clear as day, you were illuminated on all sides. But I didn't know that till I saw you this morning."

"Holy shit, Jade…" I was covering my mouth with my hand. I hadn't even meant to. Jade had my other hand in hers, they got entangled together at some point. "You're not even gonna believe me… but I've had a similar dream a number of times in the past few months. When I saw you, I thought I'd seen you before. You were the one in my dreams being hurt. Now that I've actually seen your face, I know you're in most of my dreams."

"It seems we're starcrossed, Tayler." She was giving me a big grin. "You're always protecting me in my dreams, always standing guard. But I need you to listen to the rest before… before you say anything else."

"No, I'm sorry, but I need you to listen to me. Nothing could dissuade me at this point, not after the dreams I've seen… I love you." The door clanged open just then, it looked like some of our fellow students. "Let's go somewhere more private. Does my house work?"

She nodded and stood to leave. I wasn't far behind.

- - - -

If an idea has no followers of it, does it even exist? Conversely, if an idea doesn't actually exist and is a fictional concept, but has many followers, does that make it real?

I'm speaking of true love. Jade said we were starcrossed, which is the same difference.

I think this is as answerable as a tree falling in the forest and making a sound. People in the Salem witch trials certainly believed witches existed in Massachusetts, so they did everything in their power to root them out. We can only speculate there weren't actual witches based on our knowledge that magic doesn't exist.

A surprising amount of people truly believe in soul mates and jinx and all sorts of supernatural phenomena.

At this point in time, I was wavering on these beliefs I held with absolute certainty.

I'll give you a glimpse into my thought process on this. Perspective is reality, and if you think you got struck by a bolt of fire, and you truly believe it, then you may as well have.

Even though I can get a whiteboard and teach that same person that they indeed were not 'cursed' by a 'witch,' if they believe they were it will start to become true to them, and have as tangible of an effect as anything else.

You’d figure that without sight, visual stimulus, that is, you wouldn’t be able to make a killer martini.

Think again!

Never underestimate mankind! The infinitely adaptable animal!

And of course using one hand wasn’t actually a problem from the start. That just meant I had to make it stirred, not shaken, but oh well. It’s not like I’m serving James Bond or anything.

I opened my eyes and gave Jen the finished product. She immediately took a sip.

“Wow,” she said. “Not only did you make it with your eyes closed, but its actually really good! Where’d you learn?”

“My mother is a bartender so she taught me how, plus she makes me make her drinks all the time, so I’ve got a lot of practice.”

"That's basically cheating!" She puffed her cheeks out, you could practically see her fuming.

"Alright, I waited as long as I could take it. Please give me this big reveal."

Jade looked at her feet. It was the look of an embarrassing admission.

"...I have—a…"

"Huh?"

"Have a—peeenn...eesss…"

"I'm sorry?"

"I have a penis!"

Ha! Yeah right! "I'll see it when I believe it."

She unbuttoned her pants and struggled to pull the tight fabric down… I couldn't believe my eyes. "Ha. Ha-ha-ha. Hahahaha!" I clutched my gut.

"Don't laugh! Oh my god!"

It took me a good 30 seconds to calm down. She had already buttoned up, but was now bright red. "Phew. You think that lil' thing would scare me? Cute. Listen here, Jade. I don't care about any of that shit."

"...Why?"

"Why? Because it feels like I've been waiting my whole life for you. I've never believed in true love or soul mates… but that was before I saw you."

She tackled me in a hug. "I feel the same way!"

I could feel her heart racing against me, and I thought in that moment that I could feel what she felt, as if her touch were transcending words, as if it made her feelings tangible and were floating in the air…

"I think we're meant to be together, Tayler. And here I thought that nobody could love me now…"

"I'll love you, Jade. I'll love you even if the whole world is against you." I rubbed her back. "Now, tell me the rest of the story. You said you were being stalked."

She sat back down "...Yeah, I am. I started getting creepy texts and phone calls around the time my dad left. They didn't demand anything, they were just saying purposefully creepy stuff. Then Steven started to appear everywhere I was, coming up to me and talking to me. Just trying to convince me to hangout with him. Its really hard to see him at all, under any circumstance. I realized that these weren't coincidental meetings after the third time I saw him, but actually him stalking me."

Jade took a deep breath, but all I could think of was how badly I was going to hurt this man.

"Then I got a bomb threat. I'm honestly not sure which is worse, being stalked or threatened with a bomb. At least when I was being stalked my family wasn't in danger… but I ignored them. Then the day before last I got sent an ultimatum. On the 10th this month I'm to either show up at a spot in BLM or I'll be killed. I've been drinking ever since that, and that's why I was such a mess this morning."

"You should stay here for a while until we can figure this out," I said.

"I can do that? Won't your parents say no?"

"Nah, my mom is really laid back. She will probably welcome you. I'll help you, I think I've already figured out how to take care of this."

"Really?" the way she said it made it seem she didn't believe me.

"Oh, yeah. Definitely. I'm going to beat the ever loving shit out of anyone that shows up at that spot, the one he told you to go to."

"How're you gonna do that?" She crossed her hands. Yeah, she really had no faith, huh? "I mean, you seem pretty strong, but what's your plan?"

"Its better if you don't know that, but I'll assure you, I haven't been in kendo since the start of middle school for nothing."

"That's a martial art, right?"

"The only dojo in this town besides the jujitsu one that recently shutdown. I was fourth dan, which is pretty good, just so you know."

She nodded her head, but I doubt she actually understood exactly what that meant. I wasn't about to spell it out though.

"Can I… ask you some questions?"

I think I knew where this was going, what with the bulge. "Shoot."

"How do you make this stupid thing calm down? It's always getting hard for no reason!"

"Hm—in all seriousness, there's not much to do—but I'd love to calm it down for you in my bedroom."

"Too cheesy, four out of ten score!" She made a thumbs down gesture.

"Gah!"

"If only you'd just carried me back there, after I take a shower, that'd be a ten out of ten…"

The large arm of fate worked a small miracle that day. I can speak for both of us and say that the biggest miracle was that both of us survived long enough in this chaotic world to finally meet each other.