For some of us High School is nothing more than a hurdle, a simple stepping stone in the grand staircase of life that we all climb at our own pace. Some of us climb higher and faster than others and I must be one of the fastest there is. Why? I don't party, I don't "hang out" or have friends for that matter, I am a ghost to the social aspect of high school all these other kids are engorged in. My name is Eric Stiles and I am the embodiment of anti social, I am only in tenth grade so maybe it's just a phase but I just find myself wanting to get through this year quickly and painlessly, without issues or problems. But from the moment I saw Elissa I knew something about this year, or my life for that matter, wasn't going to go right.

 It started early on in the year, about the second quarter, that Elissa had switched into our classroom and one look could have sent a man to the grave and back if the saying looks could kill meant anything. She was absolutely gorgeous, with skin that practically glowed and white as the winter snow, her long black hair being a contrast to her pale complexion, and the curves of her form carefully swerving this way and that like a cliffside road over the ocean. If you were to put her next to me it would look like a polar pair, I am lanky, not lean or skinny, lanky. My jeans have more rips than an animal that had been torn asunder by a wolf, and my love of all things long sleeve was sure to be my death in the arid heat. But aside from her looks something about her personality...her character it just seemed...off, as though the beauty was a veil hiding a secret...the skeletons in her closet were radiating from her but lord knows I am the only guy in the room that would pick that up.

 I'm not sure where my infatuation with trying to discover this girl came from but it was there and it was obviously not leaving any time soon. I should have left well enough alone but my curiosity...it was as if I was the cat and it was killing me to find out more about her. Everyday she seemed to just disappear after class and after school she was untraceable...how such a gorgeous girl could go unavoided in this school is beyond me and it slammed me time and time again as she would carefully escape my grasp. Time was against me it seemed but I knew I could not give up or else my downfall would be swift and the pit I had spiraled myself into would swallow me whole, never to be seen again as I sank into the deepest parts of my mind.