He Needs Me

*a story about a girl who saves a life and falls in love and discovers happiness (not necessarily in that order)*

It's junior year-I'm stressed out, my friends are stressed out, teachers are stuffing information into our ears and parents are forcing us to study for hours for standardized tests. And on top of all this we just want to have some fun, because, you know, we're young and beautiful. So my life right now is pretty hectic, and I have a lot of work and a lot of stress. Sometimes, I'm not sure how I'm going to make it, but I tell myself, "Kennedy, just get through this week, you can do this.", and somehow, I have. We are in the last quarter of the school year, and I've managed to get through with minimal nervous breakdowns. It helps that my parents are quite supportive and are constantly encouraging me.

Another thing that gets me through the week is my English class. It's one of those super chill classes with indefinite due dates and an awesome teacher. I also have my best friends in that class. The only bad thing is that the class is kind of segregated, not in a racial way, but in the way that my friends and I are on one side of the classroom, and on the other side is another group of friends. The two groups don't talk to each other, not for any good reason besides the fact that we have our friends near us and have no desire or need to talk to the people across the room.

The only thing is, I have been making eye contact with this boy on the other side for a little while now. He wasn't exactly friends with the other people, but his friends were not in this class and he knew the other people better than he knew us. I would catch him looking at me when I turn to look at the clock behind him. Our eyes would meet for a second before he would look away, or I would glance at the clock. My friends concluded that he liked me when I told them about what was happening and questioned whether I liked him back.

I had to admit that he was not unattractive. What am I saying? He is beautiful. He has full lips, and medium length, dark hair that slightly hangs over his big, green eyes which calls attention to a sort of wisdom and sincerity, yet still innocent look inside them. They seem to have something else in them too, kind of darker, but not in an angry way, in a way that says he's seen a lot for his age. But I do not have time for dating drama or even the ever-existent question, 'does he actually like me?'. This is junior year, and I need to keep my grades up and improve my sat scores if I ever want to get in to the college of my dreams.

And to improve those sat scores, I have been going to tutoring. It's not my favorite thing to do, in fact, it is one of my least favorite things to do. It adds an extra two hours of school-like activities during which I should be doing my astounding amount of homework and on top of that, there is more homework assigned from tutoring. But there are only six sessions, and according to the tutors, my score is guaranteed to increase.

Today is the third session, afterwards I can tell myself that I am halfway done, and that will make it a little more bearable. The class is awful because I have no friends taking it with me, and the rest of the students are the annoying, overconfident and rowdy "cool" kids from my school. The downside is they never shut up, but the upside is I "get" (AKA: am forced) to hear all the gossip about the couples cheating on each other and who is getting fake IDs.

I get get there ten minutes early, because it's my thing. I'm always about ten minutes early to things, maybe it's because I spent my entire adolescent years being five minutes (or more) late to everything because my mom thinks that it is socially acceptable. And maybe it is for some people, but not me and now I overcompensate by being early. Anyway, by getting to sat tutoring early, I get a couple of minutes of quiet to mentally prepare myself for the next two hours. Where you sit in the classroom is one of those things where wherever you sat the first time is where you sit for the rest, so I turn the corner expecting to sit in the seat in the second row, against the wall and relax in the empty classroom for a few minutes.