Samantha is having the worst time trying to keep hope alive as her husband is deployed in Afghanistan. He not only is deployed after they got married but was deployed right when they started their new life. Phone calls, Letters and Skype are the only thing keeping Samantha and Nick's lives together at this point. [Letters Back Home has reached #675 in General Fiction on September 27th, 2014] UPDATE [Letters Back Home is now #407 in General Fiction on October 3rd, 2014.] [2016 and still going strong! Letters Back Home is #796 in General Fiction on October 13,2016.] [HAPPY NEW YEARS!! 2017 and Letters Back Home is still in spot #796 in General Fiction on January 3, 2017.]

"Are you... lost?" Someone asked, her tone impatient. I stopped scanning the room to find the woman behind the voice. I blinked. She had the most luminous blue eyes I had ever seen. Even in the dim glow of the bar they glowed brightly, like her pupils were some type of smooth stone at the bottom of a clear blue ocean. Within her blue there flickered tiny speckles of silver, which gave her an icy, somewhat stony appeal. But it was her slight, lopsided smile that erased any signs of wanting to be alone. No wonder this bar was so popular. "Uh, no," I said, holding up the Help Wanted sign I had snagged from the front window. The woman's cool eyes flickered between the sign and me. She didn't say anything, only looked slightly thoughtful as slender fingers raked through her long blonde hair. "What can you do?" She finally asked, definitely not expecting me to be able to do much of anything at all. She'd be right. "Anything and everything," I answered-lied-instantly, hoping I didn't look too desperate, didn't sound too eager. To be perfectly honest, I hadn't worked a day in my life. My hands were used to weekly manicures not hard labor. But desperate times call for desperate measures. The blonde appeared thoughtful again. Those magnificent eyes gave me a once over, slow and steady. You could see the cogs turning in her head as she considered it. I decided to try and sound more convincing. "I have many skills," I added. Okay, so I stole that from Xena, but I was hoping it worked as well for me as it did for her. The blonde lifted a sculpted brow and the smile was, once again, back on her lips. She seemed amused. Maybe she was a Xena fan? "Alright... I'll start you off cleaning the bathrooms, sweeping the floors, doing the dishes..." Crap.

Valerie Greco, the school's notorious troublemaker, stopped bothering to show up to detention weeks ago. In a desperate attempt to get the problem student in control, the principal instead sentences her to be a slave to Ms. Sterling, an English teacher known for having a ruthless, 'no-bullshit' attitude. But can Ms. Sterling figure out an effective method of keeping the student in check? Or will Val's out-of-control behavior finally get her expelled? == > This is my (winning!) entry for the one-shot contest hosted by the GirlxGirl library. - > It is NOT in any way connected to the story 'Alex's Girl', it simply uses slightly tweaked versions of the same characters - >It will not have a continuation or any extra chapters/parts. This is it. - ==