The Spirit Who Lived

Chapter Two

Believe it or not, I love school. School is pretty much the only place where I'm not the princess, well, except for the forest behind the castle. I have actual friends at school, and they don't even know I'm the princess. They treat me like any other person would treat their friend, and I love it.

I don't really want to be the princess.

I pulled a notebook out of my not-really-organized locker, listening to my friend, Tabatha, talk about her cat. Tabatha wasn't very tall, just a little bit taller than I was. She had two red-head pigtails, red cat-eye glasses and a face full of freckles. Tabatha always talked about her cat; the thing was practically a goddess to her. She claimed that her cat helped her get through a lot of stuff, just by sitting in a room with it and talking to it. It's not like I can call her crazy for it, since I do the same thing with Epona.

Tabatha said something about a red cat collar, and I just nodded. I was a little out of it, mostly because of the conversation my parents had had with me yesterday.

"Zoe, we think it's about time we brought this up," my mother said, her dark hair as perfect as usual.

"What is it?" I asked, genuinely curious.

"We're going to pull you out of school next year, so you can be home-schooled through highschool," my father said.

My eyes widened in shock, "W-What?"

"You need a better education than what your getting. You're a princess, you need to learn how to be a princess and the history of the royal families. The school you're going to will never be able to provide that."

"No! No way, you can't make me leave!" I cried, my green gaze burning. "I love that school. I have friends there, you can't make me leave!"

My mother glared at me. "Zoe, it's not your choice to make."

"It's my life!"

"It may be your life, but we are your parents and we make the difficult choices until you take over the throne."

I slammed my fist on the table in front of me, tears building in my eyes. "You can't make me!" I yelled, standing up and turning on my heel in one swift movement. Tears blurred my vision as I ran up the stairs to my room.

"Zoe? Earth to Zoe?"

I snapped out of the memory, shaking my head slightly. "Huh, what?"

"You were out of it, are you okay?" Tabatha asked, her face wearing a worried expression.

I shook my head slightly to help clear my mind, "Yeah, yeah, I'm fine. I was just thinking."

"Oh, okay. C'mon, we gotta get to class," my friend said, grabbing my hand and dragging me to first period.

We have first period science together. Tabatha loves science, but I could care less about it. I don't like the idea of dissecting something that was previously alive. Our teacher, Mrs. Merri, told us that we're going to dissect a frog next week, which had put me in a bad mood for the rest of the day. Tabatha pulled me into the classroom, then let go of my hand. We didn't sit together, sadly, because of the assigned seats we had. No other class has assigned seats, just Mrs. Merri's because she likes to be organized.

Anyway, I sit with a boy named Blake. He has chocolate brown hair and the deepest blue eyes you could ever have. He's never actually talked to me, though. According to Tabatha and Ally- my other friend- Blake is mute. I can believe that, but I don't really know if it's true. We manage to communicate pretty well, though; I'm pretty good at reading expressions and hand gestures, and so we get by. Blake seems nice enough, but I can't really know.

I sighed to myself before taking my usual seat. I looked to the lab stool to the right of mine: Blake wasn't there. That's odd, he's usually on time. I ignored his absence for now, concluding that it was traffic or something of the sort that kept him from being here. Mrs. Merri started her lesson, talking about the elements and chemistry and stuff I really don't care about. After a while Blake's absence started to bother me. It was almost time for second period and he wasn't here. I stared at his lab stool, drowning Mrs. Merri's voice out as I thought.

"-oe? Zoe, are you listening?"

My attention snapped back up to Mrs. Merri and I blushed, feeling embarresed for having let myself zone out.

"Sorry Mrs. Merri. . .," I apologized, sagging in my seat.

Before our teacher could go back to teaching, the door to the Science room opened and Blake stepped in, quietly closing the door behind him and quickly walking over to his seat beside mine. He sat down, and I glanced at him with a questioning look. He shook his head slightly, giving me an 'I'll tell you later' hand gesture. I nodded to him, looking back at the teacher as she droned on. Luckily, we didn't have to sit through too much as the bell rang not even ten minutes later. I waved goodbye to Blake as Tabatha grabbed my hand and started dragging me to her locker so she could talk to me about some nerdy science stuff.

I sighed, getting lost in my thoughts and wishing I could be in the forest with my beloved Epona.