Beautiful Sky

Introduction

You know how some days are so bad that you wish you could just home go and start over? Yeah, that was the kind of day I was having. I overslept because my alarm didn’t go off, and when I got out of bed that morning, my foot landed right on my brand new cell phone and I cracked the glass and I was pissed! I had been talking to my boyfriend Seth late the night before, and I was too exhausted to charge my phone so I just dropped it on the rug next to my bed. Not the smartest thing to do. I was addicted to my phone so I planned to call and have it fixed later that day.

As I got ready for the school day, I tried not to think about my phone and focused instead on buying my graduation dress after school. Graduation was two weeks away and I couldn’t wait to be done with high school. I had been saving up for months and I’d found the perfect dress at the store where my friend Carrie worked. I had basically been stalking the store, waiting for it to go on sale, and Carrie called me the day before to let me know that it had been marked down to final sale and she put it on hold for me. I shifted my focus to my new dress instead of my broken phone, and I couldn’t wait until school was over that day so I could go buy it.

As I rushed down to our kitchen, I had just enough time to shove down a bagel and slam my orange juice. As I poured the juice, it splashed all over me and I had to go change my clothes, which made me miss the bus which also made me late for school. As I rushed into my first period calculus class, my teacher, who I think never really liked me, handed me the pop quiz that everyone was taking. Really? There’s only two weeks of school left and you’re springing a quiz on us? Great. I sat down and somehow was able to focus enough to complete the test, hoping that would pass.

The rest of my day kind of fell in line with how it started: Seth was busy helping the graduation committee so I barely got to see him, my best friend Bethany ditched school that day (again), and as I was leaving school I felt waves of cramps and knew that my period was about to start…one week early. It had always been irregular so my mom and doctor wanted to put me on the pill to help regulate it but I had resisted that idea, until that very moment. I decided I was going to call my doctor the next day to get a prescription. I rushed into the bathroom just in time, took care of it, and breathed a huge sigh of relief as I walked out of the doors of my school so happy that my school day was over. I rode the bus to Michigan Avenue finally feeling relaxed for the first time that day, so excited about my dress. It was there waiting for me, just as gorgeous as ever, and I finally felt like my day was turning around.

It was unseasonably hot for the beginning of June in Chicago, and I could feel beads of sweat gathering on my upper lip, the hot wind whipping through my long brown waves, as I made my way over to Bethany’s house. We went to each other’s houses almost every day after school. She lived two blocks from me and I wanted to give her a hard time for ditching again and show her my new dress. Bethany was not the most responsible person, but always made me laugh and feel better, so when I bounded into her parent’s house after the cleaning lady let me in, I was looking forward to whining about my day to her. I walked up the stairs to her room and knocked on her door calling her name and opened it, as I usually did.

“Bethany, I bought my dress! Seth is going to love it! I can’t wait for you to see…”

It took a minute for my brain to register what was going on. Sheets were being quickly shuffled and I saw panicked looks on two faces, the two most important faces in my life, aside from my family. This is not happening right now. I