The first day of senior year. This was it. This was the year. The school was owned. You have the cheerleader, the jocks, the outcasts, the pot heads, the smart ones, and the club joiners. Most of the kids at this school have been a class since the very beginning. Sure, you pick up a new kid here and there over the years but that does not happen very often in a small town like Paris Arkansas. A school that has a graduating class every year of less than fifty students. You know each other's first and last name, their parents, their grandparents, their cousins, what subject they are totally terrible at, every girl or boy they have ever dated, and what they want to do after high school. Statistically, about two percent of the entire graduating class will go on to be the thing they always wanted to be. And the rest? Well they end up working at the truck stop on the other side of the over pass or living pay check to pay check, marrying someone that they settled for rather than someone they were head over heels in love with, having a baby or two, and never getting out of the small town life they grew up in.

Some people would tell you that the small-town way of life was a pretty good one. Of course, most of those people were farmers and they had no issue at all paying their bills and putting food on their families table. The others though knew the struggle of worrying about money and raising their kids all on their own. Paris was filled with single moms and dead-beat dads. If you didn't play football or work on a farm, then you were pretty much a nobody. Most people had to go to the next town over to find decent work. Hell, you had to go to the next town over just to go to Wal-Mart.

Paris Arkansas population 246. It's true. Small. Town. Life. Two restaurants (if you don't count the Subway and Chester's Chicken in the truck stop), 6 churches, two stores that no one can afford to shop in, a co-op for the farmers, and the pride and joy: the football field. I don't even understand why that is the case anyway. The football team is terrible. The quarterback throws more passes to the spectators than he does to his own teammates. They hardly ever win any games. And yet, the school treats the football field as if there is a gold mine under it somewhere that must be protected at all costs. Ridiculous.

The teachers at Paris High School are mostly graduates of Paris High School. More people that couldn't manage to make it out. You have Mrs. Wilson the counselor who was by far the best addition to that entire school. She didn't try to be hip or keep up with the latest slang. She was grounded and did her job. She helped the kids try to find their path to the future. She helped the kids who were troubled and needed someone to just listen to them. Then you had Mrs. Lee the history teacher. She was the best teacher as far as classrooms were concerned. At the beginning of the week she would put notes on the overhead projector for the students to copy down and that is what the test was at the end of the week. She literally gave you all of the answers and all you had to do was study those notes. Coach Barber was the assistant football coach, the head softball coach, and he taught science. Which his version of teaching was looking In the storage closet to see what chemicals he could find that would cause some sort of explosion. Principle Williams was pretty cool too. He actually cared about his students. He took a great deal of time getting to know them as individuals and by the end of the year, he was a big part of their lives.

Of course, there is always the flip side to the good parts. The student body. Bullied because you were different, made fun of because of the clothes you wore or because you dared to break from the regularity of everyday life. That was me. See, I'm very different. I was more different than anyone in that school had ever seen before and to be honest, I do not think that they were ready for me when I got there. But, I showed up and they had to swallow every bit of my uniqueness and my oddities. Get ready Paris High School because here comes Emma Swan.