#goodfxrm

One moment, she was in his arms, holding him tight with tears streaming down her face. The next, she felt a searing pain where her heart was. It was in that moment that she became painfully -- very painfully -- aware of the blade he'd stuck in her chest. It hurt to move, it hurt to speak, it hurt to breathe. And what she couldn't understand for the life of her was how could it have been him? 

Finally, it was senior year. It was quite an accomplishment, in Emma's opinion, that she even made it that far. She'd considered just dropping out when she turned sixteen and finally got away from the foster system, but something told her to stick with it because if she was going to have any semblance of a future that didn't totally suck, she'd need a high school diploma. College was out of the question, of course. There was no way she could afford it, nor did she want to do four more years of sitting in classrooms. It was hard enough being homeless and trying to cope with high school but university? Hell no.

A couple weeks in, she was already falling behind in physics. The teacher wanted homework every other night, and Emma was too busy with working under the table at a diner to actually read her book and figure out what was going on. Physics was second period, after study hall first, and she normally ended up sleeping through most of it. She'd been choosing to take her study hall in the music room because there were no classes in the morning, and it allowed her some peace and quiet…most of the time. She'd taken a liking to Mr. Jones, who was normally milling around, asking her what she was working on and how her week was, that sort of thing. He was younger, seemed to get when she didn't want to be bothered, and talked to her like an adult unlike most of the others at the school.