To say I've taken forever to update would be an understatement seeing as it's a whole new year lmao but my laptop broke but I managed to get the chapters I had written and upload them to my house computer before it fatally died. So, as I always finish my stories, I will finish this! Updates may take long (cause senior year basically kills my free time) and no one probably reads this anymore but yeah I will finish so here's where we left off...

"Drew, I'm okay. I highly doubt he'll say anything to me again."

Drew was walking me from lunch to English after I had told him about what happened in the hallway. He was more worried about it than I was actually.

"I just wanted to make sure you were okay."

"Drew, I'm fine, I'm completely okay. If anything, now I'm even better than before. I guess that's what punching Luke Baker will do to you." I laughed.

Drew chuckled along with me, "It is a quite great experience."

"But I appreciate you being worried about me."

He wrapped his arms around me, pulling me into a close hug, "I'll always be worried about you cause I'll always care about you."

I put my head on his shoulder as we hugged and looked to see Eli standing there, staring at me. I had never seen so much anger in his eyes before. Because of both Eli and the fact that the bell had just rang, I pulled away from Drew quite quickly. I still stared at Eli as I did. Part of me wanted to go over and apologize to him but I knew I didn't have anything to apologize for. That didn't help me to not feel guilty about it. Drew followed my stare over to Eli, who went into class angrily.

"Now, I'm going to have to deal with this and it's the day of presentations too." I sighed.

"It's okay, class will be over before you know it." Drew said, walking me to the door, "And I'll be here when it is."

I walked into English feeling the clothes on my back being burned by the stare of Eli. I wanted to look at him but I was scared that his stare might burn my retinas. I sat down as Ms. Dawes stood in front of the class with a smirk on her face.

"Alright class, it's the day you've all been waiting for, essay presentations." As we sighed, her smirk grew. It was like she fed off our pain, "There's a twist now, instead of just presenting, you'll present with your partners and like you were going over your essays together, you'll do it in front of the class."

Everyone in the class sighed, but I guess my sigh was the loudest and filled with the most fear which made Ms. Dawes sixth sense for pain light up, "Ms. Mitchell, you seem eager to get up here. Mr. Goldsworthy join your partner."

Eli and I walked up to the spot where Ms. Dawes was just standing. My hands started to shake from not only being next to Eli for the first time in who knows when but also my complete fear of standing in front of the class, with everyone's eyes on me.

But I figured that once again, the band-aid method was the best to work, the quicker the better, "My essay was on the fear of being surrounded but being alone. It's like when you're in a room and you have everyone around you but everyone is engaged in a conversation and you're just sitting there. You're by yourself but surrounded. It makes you that more conscious of yourself and what you're doing wrong and why you're alone when everyone else has someone. I've always had a fear of keeping people in my life just for them to leave. I hate investing trust in people and then them deciding that they're done with me because they're doing fine and I'm just alone and by myself and that forces me to think about everything I don't want to think about."

"You don't seem to have much trouble being alone." Eli mumbled.

In the blink of an eye, I felt my anger zoom all the way up the scale but because I was in front of Ms. Dawes and this would be over soon, I decided to ignore him and continue, "When you're alone, you're only stuck with two things, you and your thoughts and depending on the kind of person you are, it's either hell or you can deal with it. I was the kind of person who thought about all the things I could've done or should've done even though we all know you can't go into the past. It scared me to be alone and be stuck with all those thoughts of only wanting to go back into the past, not wanting to go into the future."

"You forgot to add an addition to that list that you're stuck with when you're alone, you have guys. Your neck proves that."

I looked down at my shirt which so unluckily happened to be a v neck that heavily displayed not only marks from Drew but also from Luke. I suddenly wanted to wrap myself in an invisibility cloak but I was stuck there, exposed and bare and it was all due to someone I thought would never scoop that low.

"You don't even know what that's from."

"A guys mouth, we're not dumb Summer we know where hickeys come from. You're trying to act all innocent, like you're so alone and so helpless when you clearly have some kind of company to hold you at night."

"Mr. Goldsworthy-" Ms. Dawes broke in, obviously seeing that this was changing from our projects presentations to something personal. But I had to get this over with, I had to address it now before it never got addressed.

"No, Ms. Dawes it's okay." I turned and faced the class, "You know what, I have another fear. A fear that's shared not only by myself but by girls everywhere. The fear of being called a slut. You kiss a guy, you're a slut. You kiss two guys, you're a whore. You kiss more than two and the names that get thrown your way are too much to handle. But no one knows anything about those guys. Maybe you met him six years ago and suddenly had the courage to kiss him or maybe you just met him and wanted to kiss him or maybe he forced himself onto you and didn't care that you didn't want him to kiss you. Regardless of what happened, you're now a slut to everyone and that guy is a legend among high school guys. But that's ridiculous and honestly, it's bull crap. Unless you're that girl, you shouldn't say anything about whatever is on her body because it's not yours and you only know what you think you know. But going back to the original purpose of me standing up here, my essay was about being alone and what I've found out is that if people want to leave, they will leave. They'll leave you in shambles and then blame you for the mess. And you know what, all you can do is just clean it up. Without their help, maybe with someone else's, maybe not. But in the end, you just have to clean your lawn because we don't have maids in our heads. Thank you."

And with that, I went to my seat and sat down. I didn't know what Ms. Dawes thought about my outbreak and I honestly, in that moment, didn't care. In that moment, all I wanted to do was go over to Eli and ask him why he hated me so much to the point that he would embarrass me in front of the class like that. And then I'd want to explain the marks on my neck because for some reason, I still loved him and still wanted his approval and still didn't want him to be angry or upset with me. I still cared about what he thought of me and I hated myself for it more than I hated him at that moment.

"Well, for the next essays, I'd like us to stay on topic. Stick to what's in your essays only." Ms. Dawes said, mouthing to me that she wanted to see me after class. That meant that English class was now just a countdown to my murder.

After about six pairs of partners presented their project, without the drama that Eli and I started the class off with, the bell rang and instead of rushing out as I always did, I sat in my seat, watching the rest of the class run out.

When the class became empty, I walked up to Ms. Dawes' desk, nervous and scared.

"Summer, I know that something happened between you and Eli and I know that it's been hard to work together but you can't bring that into the classroom."

"I know and I'm sorry but I just had to say something."

"You're not the kind of person to want to start drama just for the hell of it, so I'm not going to hold it against you. Plus, I saw some reasoning in your argument. But I can't do this all the time, so if you could please find a way to keep this tension out of the classroom, I would greatly appreciate it."

Suddenly a weight was lifted off my shoulder and I had the urge to hug Ms. Dawes but held it in because that would've been weird so I settled for a "Thank you, I'll try." And walked out of class.

As I walked out, Drew walked up beside me, "You made it out alive, that's a good sign."

"Yeah after getting into a huge argument with Eli in front of the entire class."

"About?"

"We were talking about our projects and Eli decided to point out my hickeys in front of the class, not knowing where they came from. So, despite my very well kept temper I ended up going on a rampage to the class about how the marks on girls chest don't define anything and that people should stop talking about things that they know nothing about." I said, thinking it over in my head, "Oh gosh, I overreacted. I completely flipped out on Eli and even the entire class for no good reason."

"Summer, you did the right thing. You did the same thing any person who has been in your situation would do."

"Then why does it feel like I did something wrong?"

Drew opened his mouth like he wanted to say something but didn't have the courage. And I felt like he knew what he wanted to say because I had the same thought in my head. Because for reason, I'd always long to make Eli okay with my decisions and that hurt Drew as much as it did me.