Stay with me

-Will you stay with me? My best friend Lila asked me when we stood outside our school.

It was after the summer break, and we had just walked to school together, the last time we did that for the first day. We were entering our last year of highschool.

Next year we would go separate ways, to separate colleges. Even though we could go to the same school if we wanted, we had different dream schools, and with our stars we would most likely get into them.

I was scared, scared of leaving the school soon, scared of what college meant, and scared to know that one day I would leave this school-forever.

But I had to shove that away, what mattered was that Lila was with me, that neither of us would be alone.

I turned to her, took her hand in mine and smiled.

-Yes, no matter what happens I'll always stay with you Lila.

Hand in hand we walked through the gates of our senior year-together.

Many years before that when we were in middle school, I walked through the gates and saw her, sitting alone in the classroom. She was looking out the window, her gaze far away. When I saw her through the window I felt less alone, like only her presence made my anxiety better.

When her eyes landed on me I looked away, embarrassed. But instead of judging me she waved at me and smiled.

When I stepped my foot in the classroom she stood there, in front of me. With her ridiculous pink dress she insisted on wearing thru all that year and her two ponytails with pink ribbons. -Hello, I'm Lila! She said, i was surprised by her sudden appearance. -I'm Dine.

From that moment on we never left each other's sides, from the age of 11 we had got each other's backs.

When her parents fighted the most she basically lived at my place. We spent countless nights staying up talking about boys, school and what we wanted with our lives.

-I want to get into med school after college! It's always been my dream to be able to help people that need it. After med school I'll move to LA with my partner-if I have one. Get three kids, one boy and two girls, work at the hospital. And I'll have a dog named Piggie! Like my old dog was named! And... we'll buy a house, a nice old comfy house with rooms for everyone. And when I grow old my grandkids can come play in the garden, I'll set up a swing for them in an old apple tree and I'll sit there on my porch, smiling and remembering when I was that little!

She told me one night, we were sitting in my garden, the only light was the moon and I could only see the light in her eyes when she talked. I smiled as I nodded when she was talking.

One thing about Lila I'll always remember was the fact that she hated being alone. It wasn't until she told me one day why I finally understood her.

When Lila was happy she was the sunshine in everyone's life, the teachers shining up when she entered the room, everyone greeting her and joking with her. No one really saw what was underneath that mask, that sometimes she would show up in the middle of the night on my doorstep, with tears in her eyes and blood and bruises on her body.

Even when I told her to talk to someone, tell someone what was really going on, she refused. She said it wasn't that bad, and telling someone would only make him angrier.

The summer we turned 16 she lived with me for three months, she didn't tell me why but i knew that he had hit her so much one night that she was afraid to go home.

The summer after that we told my parents everything, and when they saw the terror on her face when she told them she couldn't go home they agreed to become her legal guardians. It had been a tough process, but three months after that she was safe.