Stay Strong

**This has not been edited or proofread.**

Cassidy

There are some things in life you can’t wait to escape.

For me, that was home.

When I started high school, I put every bit of my focus into my school work. I got straight As, graduated at the very top of my class, and I got a full ride to the school of my choice.

I had no particular college in mind. All I knew was that I wanted to get as far away from home as I could. Which was why, when school was starting, I packed up what I could, took the very little money I had saved from babysitting gigs, and I took the Greyhound all the way from the small town I lived in Georgia to Seattle, Washington.

I would have gone as far as Alaska, but I wasn’t sure if I’d survive the cold, to be honest. Georgia winters were mild, rarely dropping below freezing anymore, so I didn’t have clothes to survive an extremely cold winter. Seattle was going to be hard enough; I knew that, and I was willing to deal with it.

My mom was neglectful. She was so lost in her head that most of the time, there was no food in the house, no dinner cooked, no breakfast to eat. And it wasn’t a matter of there being funds. My mom got food stamps each month—a whole 500-something dollars’ worth. But she just didn’t go shopping because she didn’t feel like it.

Dad left us when I was seven—got tired of my mom. And honestly, I couldn’t blame him. I used to be sad that he left, but when I saw him a couple of years ago with a whole new family—well, I lost that sadness and became angry.

It fueled me even more to get out of that small town and as far away from my family as I could get.

My alarm blared from beside me, though I was already awake. I was normally always awake before my alarm went off.

With a sigh, I reached over and shut it off before sliding out of bed to go get a shower. My long-sleeve shirt slid up, revealing the white, raised lines that littered my forearm. Clenching my jaw, I forced my eyes away from those scars.

I was away from all of that pain now—hadn’t harmed myself in two years since I left home. I was working now, was still excelling in college, and though depression still dragged me down some days, I was better than her—I was better than both my parents. And unlike my mother, I got help for my issues. I was on medication.

Sighing, I grabbed my clothes and my toiletries basket and headed for the showers a little down the hall.

I was better than them.

~*~*~

Alan

My muscles ached from practice.

After our loss on Saturday night, I knew practice Monday morning was going to be brutal, but I hadn’t expected it to be so bad and tough.

We’d lost to an easy team—a team we should have beaten with no issue. But we’d lost so fucking easily. And not only had we lost, but we’d lost by fifteen points.

I rolled my shoulders, looking down at my phone when it pinged with a text from my best friend, Drew.

Feel like skipping? Because after that, I feel like sleeping for the next century.

I snorted. As much as I wanted to skip, I couldn’t. My first class of the day had a professor that loved to surprise us with quizzes and random tests because in his opinion, if you were serious about school, you studied all the time and not just right before a test.

I slammed into a body, and I groaned at the same time a girl squeaked in alarm. I dropped my phone and quickly reached out to grab her upper arms as her books fell from her hands, her legs knocking out from beneath her. I barely managed to keep her from falling, but somehow, I did.

The largest pair of blue eyes I’d ever seen were staring up at me in alarm. Her lips were softly parted, red and plump, just how I liked them.

“I’m so, so sorry,” I apologized as I set her back upright. I ran my eyes over her, making sure I hadn’t seriously hurt her.

And that was when I saw the white, raised scars on her arm—scars I recognized.

Drew used to suffer from depression before I went to his parents and told them my fears. Because I’d found him bleeding all over himself one day I accidentally walked in on him in the bathroom. There’d been bloodeverywhere. He’d begged me not to say anything, but he was my best friend, and I was terrified for him.

She quickly ripped her arms from my grasp, her sleeves falling back down. Without a word, she knelt down on the floor and began to gather her thing. I crouched down as well, helping her after I grabbed my phone, thankful my screen hadn’t shattered.

I opened my mouth to say something to her—maybe even introduce myself—but before I could, she was off the floor, her books stacked haphazardly in her arms, and she was scurrying off faster than I could stop her.

I narrowed my eyes at her retreating back.

I was going to find out exactly who she was, and she wasn’t running away so easily from me next time.