I lay back on the couch, my head resting on one arm and my feet propped up on the other, with a light brown fluffy blanket keeping me warm. England was starting to get unbelievably cold, especially for someone who lived in Southern Arizona, where it never gets close to snowing. I lay there motionless thinking about how England – and Europe in general – was tremendously different from the US. The slang had so far been the hardest thing for me to grasp, typically using context clues I could figure out what people meant, but other times their accents were too heavy to decipher. I let out a deep sigh, while my mind wandered around the world and back. My thoughts were always somewhere else; perhaps this was a contributing factor to my terrible grades back when I was in school. I tried not to think about it, but that only made me concentrate harder; why is it when I want to forget my brain suddenly focuses so hard? I smashed my eyes shut, and laid my arm over my head.
I heard someone enter the room, most likely Dan by the way he stomped about carelessly, Phil always made a lot less noise when he walked. I removed my arm from my face and opened my eyes, Dan stood over me.
"What?"
"Move over," He motioned for me to move my legs.
I sighed and sat up, while he sat down next to me. He draped the other half of the blanket over him and we sat there for a couple minutes in complete silence. He turned his head to me and blinked a few times, before asking, "What's wrong?"
"Just thinking, nothing's really wrong." I gave him a blank stare.
"Oh, you looked kinda sad, are you sure nothing's wrong?" He patted my leg awkwardly through the blanket.
I leaned my head back on the couch, "I don't know, I was thinking about life and stuff."
"What kind of things in life?"
"Oh, you know the fact that I'm a huge failure and unlike you and Phil I'll never accomplish anything." I blinked back tears.
"You aren't a failure, Leia! You're happy aren't you?" He looked at me with his big puppy dog eyes.
"Most of the time, I guess." I wiped at my eyes, "What are you trying to get at?"
"If you're happy, then you're doing great in life! Your value isn't measured by the grades you got in high school." He looked at me to see if his pep talk helped any; it did.
I smiled and he wrapped his skinny arm around my chubby shoulders, Dan was an amazingly supportive friend. He let go of me and sat back on the other side of the couch. He grabbed the remote and turned on the flat screen TV, switching it to a random channel. We both sat and stared at the weatherwoman giving the forecast; I was finally feeling better, until my thoughts started wandering again…