One breath. Then two. This slid into three. It was a nervous habit of mine, counting my breaths. Like someone chewing their fingernails or playing with their hair. I'm sitting on an old, classic, bench in central park, my favorite book of all time resting open in my lap. Wind snaps at my hair and colorful, fall, leaves fly by me as my eyes skim over the words I have read thousands of times. Yet even though I know what's going to happen and what secrets that will soon be spilled from the pages, my heart can't help but beat seconds faster than it should. To have my breathing becoming shallow and soft. Eighteen, nineteen, twenty…

I read as the main character, Katie, is pushed from a large stained glass window. Falling to her certain death. Thirty one, thirty two, thirty three, thirty four. The protagonist grasps onto the ledge, dangling above a huge, deep chasm. The river that ran through the middle of it looked like a piece of blue string. "Please, Sara it was an accident, Please! I don't want to die!" She screams as her fingers slip from the ledge, but quickly grabs it with her other hand so tight her knuckles turned white. Sixty six, sixty seven.

Sara stands, towering over her and laughs at the fact, that Katie killing her mother was most definitely not an accident and now Sara was going to exact her long awaiting revenge. Then just like that Katie's fingers slip from the cool concrete ledge and—

"Hey Hanna, whatcha reading?" I look up quickly at the perpetrator. The one person that stood between me and the answer to whether or not Katie lives. Even though I knew the solution (spoiler alert-she lives). An eighteen old girl with silky blonde hair and familiar grey eyes that sat behind thick, black glasses stands over me and my shoulders relax. An easy smile comes to my face as I look up at my best friend in the world. "Hi Shiera," I say and she sits beside me, dropping her brown backpack as she takes the worn book from my lap. She laughs as she reads the title and replies "Are you seriously reading this book, again?"

I grab my book from her grasp and tuck it safely away in my bag that's lying still next to my feet. "I like it," I say defensively, "and anyways shouldn't you be in school?" She shrugs and says, "I have calculus right about now and I can't stand it! It's like they aren't even trying to make it hard."

That was Shiera Bells for you. The smartest eighteen year old anyone would meet. Let me rephrase that, the smartest person and you could count on her to point that fact out to you, every time. But besides her unearthly intelligence, Shiera is sarcastic beyond measure and of course, her favorite topic? Whether or not Taylor Launtner looks better with or without his shirt. Basically the anti me.

I'm smart but nothing close to Shiera and I can be sarcastic when I want to be. But talking about boys? I guess you can say that's not really on my forte. I'm more of that sweet, friendly, and funny kind of girl that everyone feels is too fragile to walk. And, for a long time I thought that's how I would always be seen.

Then one day when I was about twenty two and working the cash register at the beautiful, little bookshop that I just bought. This girl about fourteen comes strolling in, confidence practically glowing off of her. For a while she walked along the book cases carefully assessing each book that took her eye as I read one of my favorite comics, Thanos issue # 1.

All of a sudden the girl comes up to me and said something about the comic I was reading and just like that we became friends. She was the first person to not treat me like I was this porcelain doll that had to be protected all the time. Instead to her, I was this exciting young adult who loved to read. The girl, Shiera, would come to my bookshop every day after school and we would talk about books and all sorts of movies and over the years we ended up doing everything together. It didn't really matter to either one of us that I was eight years older than her. She was like the little sister, I always wanted. To this day, four years since we met, we are still closer than magnets.

I give her a pointed look but she doesn't notice. She's busy picking at a splinter that sticks out from the bench, lost in her thoughts. My hands flinch towards my bag, begging me to go and grab the book that laid waiting for it to be flipped open. But then her head snaps up and she asks, "You want to go get some coffee?" I hesitate. Not even a beat goes by when she continues with, "Come on, I want some, I'll pay." She says the last word in a singsong voice and I can't help but laugh a little.

"What can I get you, girls?" Says a familiar strawberry blonde cashier with cherry red lips. Shiera and I stand, lazily as we stand in front of the girl at our favorite coffee house in all of Manhattan. Shiera speaks first. "Hey, ya, can I have a vanilla blend mocha, extra vanilla creamer, iced, crushed not cubed. Oh! With extra whipped cream." I smile at her incredibly detailed order. "Sure thing sweetie and for you," the girl asks me not looking up as she typed in Shiera's order. I smile slightly at her as a small piece of curly brown hair falls to my face from my messy bun. Tucking the piece of hair behind my ear I say, "Hi. Yes, hot chocolate, extra whipped cream and cinnamon on top, please?"

Shiera stares at me through her glasses, "I thought we talked about this?" She asks and I look at her, confusion most undoubtly surrounding my face. She rolls her eyes as she shakes her head so her blonde hair swishes across her shoulders. "You are not having hot chocolate!" She exclaims, "Yes, I am." I say simply and turn toward the girl behind the register whose waiting patiently, "Hot chocolate please, thank you." She smiles and rings up our orders and Shiera gives her a ten dollar bill. "You're twenty six, Hanna! Its time you order something that is more…grown-upish," She says as we take our drinks and head towards an empty table. But I just shake my head and take a seat. Hot chocolate will be my love, till I'm eighty nine!

"You're so difficult sometimes! It's time to open up to new things." She tells me and I give a soft laugh. "I'm the difficult one?" I say as I raise my eyebrows and point an index finger at myself. "Yes, yes you are," She says it halfheartedly and her smile grows to a frown and she stars off into space again. Her eyes glazed over as she silently thinks.

"What's up?" I say finally and narrow my eyes at her. Her head snaps up and asks, "What do you mean?" I look at her like I always do when I know she's not telling me something. Shiera sighs reluctantly and leans back in her chair, her right hand still cupping the bottom of her drink. "Coffee is bitter." She says. To most people it means nothing but to us, it was everything. It was our own little lesson of life.

I lean towards her and reply with the "always" response, "All you need is two packets of sugar." Life is hard and it brings you down but as long as you take the good with the bad, you'll be alright. Shiera takes a drink from her coffee and says, "Well, I didn't actually ditch calculus…"

My ears perk up as I listen, "You see, there was this incident in class a couple weeks back and I may or may not called the teacher an idiot. Then one thing led to another and in the end, I sort of got kicked out." "You what," I exclaim and the door to the coffee house chimes as two men in black suits come walking in. "What? It's not like it's my fault Mr. Simons is a complete idiot." She says and glances over at the men in the suits. A shiver runs up my spine as I watch the men look at us over the tops of their coffees'.

Shiera keeps talking about Mr. Simons and calculus but to be honest I stopped listening. The men kept starring and I feel my stomach churn. "Hanna? Hanna, are you listening to me?" I look back at Shiera her face swelled with worry. "Hanna?" I gulp and the men sit up from their seats from across the empty room. Shiera follows my gaze and I see her shoulders tense.

One of the men with dark brown hair leans forward so both of his hands rest on our table. The other stands behind him, his hand resting on a gun in his holster. The man leaning says, "Now, ladies, I will like to do this without making a scene." "What, WH-who are you?" Shiera says, her voice shaking. The man smiles and my blood runs cold. "I'm Jim and this is my associate Sam." I stare daggers at them both and finally ask through gritted teeth, "What were you talking about?" What was this man, Jim; going to do that he felt he had to tell us to not make a scene? "We work a company called-" Sam cuts Jim off. "Jim. You know our orders." "What does it matter, it's not like it'll matter once they're there." Jim says, his voice covered in a layer of irritation and I clench my fists under the table. "We're from a company. A company called Hydra. And ladies, you're very interesting to our employers." Jim says once his attention turned back to us. "Interesting how?" Shiera responds her voice before soft and shaky but now was hard and restricted. As if she was holding back the urge to yell in his face. I know because I feel the same way.

Jim stands straight and replies, "I'm afraid that's information I can't indulge you in." Sam clears his throat and Jim continues, "Now, are you two going to come peacefully or are we going to have to use force?" Then, without thinking I push out of my chair, Shiera doing the same seconds after. I stare at him, trying to make myself seem tough and ignore the shaking I feel in my hands. "Not until we know, why." Says Shiera and Jim's smile quickly leaves his face and he cracks the knuckles on his fingers and responds, "Force it is then."