She is golden in my minds eye. She is an angel, a godsend. I was dying inside my self built prison, sweltering inside my glass enclosure. She is a breeze. I do not know what she is to me. A friend, maybe. It dose not seem like a strong enough word.

I have seen what others in this place, my school, do to their friends. Such betrayal repulses me. They are like flying vultures, willing to prey upon one of their own should it fall.

Soon, we are eating lunch together. I learn to laugh, to smile. I am not happy, not really, but where I was drowning before, I can breathe now. I feel something in me changing. When I see her, I am filled with a joy so intense I am scared to put a name to it.

She tells me one day before we part ways to go to class that she thinks I am beautiful, that I shouldn't let them get me down. She tells me that I was meant for more. She tells me to be happy. More, she Tells me that I deserve to be happy.

I stand in the hallway until the bell rings, speachless. I learn nothing in class that day. My mind is a battle ground. I am elated, and confused, and fee unworthy and guilty all at once. Everything is a riot of colors and sounds and noises, from which one fact emerges clearly; I think that I love her.

I do not know if that is what I am feeling, but I can think of nothing else that fits. My heart is exploding. I cannot find her after school lets out. I know that I have to tell her, regardless of her reacting. If it is not acceptable, so be it.

She is not there the next day. Or the next. A week of days without her follows. I do not know what is going on, until two weeks go by and they gather us together in an assembly, to tell us about the tragic death of one of our classmates, who was killed in a car accident. She didn't suffer, they say to us. There was no hope, she died almost instantly.

She did