"Where are we sleeping?" I ask Nick. He shrugs, "A hotel maybe? If we can find one." I bite my lip, "No we can't go to a hotel." he helps me up and I feel a little pain in my scratch. "Why not?" he asks as he's helping me walk.

"Because look at what we are wearing. And the scratch on my thigh. They're going to know somethings up and then they'll probably call the police or our parents." he sighs, "Ah shit. Well I have an idea of where to sleep but it's kinda crazy." he says. I chuckle, "Well wasn't this plan crazy and we still tried it?" he nods, "Yeah you're right. And I was thinking we could sleep at the beach."

I give him a look, "The beach?" he nods again. "Yeah, theres a beach close to here in like two miles or maybe more. We'll call a taxi and they can take us there."

"Ermm, well I guess that's good. But what if there's no taxis available?" he looks left and right as we cross a lonely street and we walk over to a public telephone. "Are you kidding me? Taxis are always available." I watch as he takes some change out of his pocket and looks for a taxi number in a book. It's cold outside and my knees are shaky.

~

Ten minutes later a taxi does arrive. The first thing the man asks us if we have money, Nick says we do and when he doesn't believe us he pulls out some bills. "Where are you going to?" he asks. "The beach." Nick says, the man gives us a weird look and I don't blame him. I mean its midnight and we are asking him to take us to the beach.

When we arrive there, Nick pays the man and he drives away. I can hear the ocean pretty clear. "Have you ever been to the beach?" he asks as we walk up some steps. "No, have you?" he nods, "Yeah the last time I went to a beach it was two years ago." he says. We step in the sand and I take off my shoes. The sand feels cold yet warm. "Who did you come with?" I ask him.

He keeps kicking sand with his feet, "Her." he whispers."Ohhh." is all I say. Its dark and even though I can't see the ocean quite clear I know it's beautiful, because it sounds beautiful. He takes off his jacket and lies it in the sand far away from the water. "We don't have any blankets or anything, sorry." he says. "Its fine." I say touching the scratch on my thigh, I wince at the pain. "Here you can lay on my jacket."

"Where are you going to lie down?" He sits next to the jacket, "Right here." I hesitate to sit down and he pulls me down. I sit on the jacket and he looks at me, I can barely see his eyes with the moonlight.  "Can I?" he points to my thigh and I nod. He slowly touches it and I groan. "How bad does it hurt?" he asks. "Not much but I'm afraid sand is going to get in and it might get infected. He takes off his shirt and I gasp, "Don't worry I have another shirt under."

He rips the shirt he took off and wraps it around my thigh. "That should make it feel better." he says. We lay down and stare at the stars. Its relaxing hearing the waves. "Who is he?" Nick asks, I turn my face to look at him. "What?" he doesn't answer for a while, "The boy you love." Oh. He means Anthony. "Why do you want to know?" I ask. he shrugs and keeps staring at the stars, "Because you always write good stuff about him, and how much he made you happy and I'm just curious."

"Well who's that green-eyed girl?" he licks his lips and gulps, "Will you tell me if I tell you?" he asks. "Yeah." he sighs and takes a few minute to talk, "Her name is Jessica," her name comes out like a choke. "She's gorgeous, her eyes are so, so, green and so beautiful. I met her my freshman year. I was fourteen about to be fifteen and she was eighteen about to be nineteen. We had chorus together, we got teamed up to do a duet. She didn't like me at all, because I was the weird freshman. But somehow over the time, she learned to like me. At least a little bit. But she didn't admit it. Everyday I'd get made fun of because they knew I was so madly in love with Jessica and that she'd never like me in return. But nobody knew about the kisses, nobody knew about the words, nobody knew about the holding hands.. until-" he stops and takes a deep breath.

"Until one day, Mike a popular football player caught us kissing. He threaten to tell the whole school about Jessica Stone, the hot popular senior cheerleader kissing a weird lame fourteen year old freshman. Jessica of course couldn't offord that so the next day, during lunch while I was walking to a table to sit down Jessica walked up to me, she told the whole school how much of a loser I was. She said I was a stalker, who followed her everywhere, who was obssessed with her, and that I kissed her. She insutled me and called me hurtful names, I felt like my heart was being ripped out of my chest. She destroyed me inside, she made me do things I never thought I would. After that she kept bullying me along with her gang, can you believe that? The girl that supposedly "loved" me bullied me to be popular. Because of her I started cutting, my parents caught me and forced me to stop. Its been five years and I still can't let go, I've turned cold, I've turned harsh. All because of her. She was my first love, my first kiss, my first heartbreak, my first at everything. But I'm not cold because I choose to. I'm cold because of the past. I just want to be loved."

I feel tears in my eyes and sit up. He was also bullied but by the person he loved. I coudn't imagine being bullied by Anthony. That would be a nightmare. He sits up too and hes staring at the sand. "I'm sorry." I whisper, "Its not your fault." He says messing with his curls. I lean over and hug him. He stays still but after a few seconds he lays his head on my shoulder.