I walked away from the building feeling confident. I am working to get my past out of my mind.  As I got in my car, I saw a few kids around seventeen to nineteen smoking around a corner.  I had a flashback.  My friend, Lizzie, and I were walking around the corner to go smoke. We would normally go outside behind the school.  We now are going to Mr. Smith’s classroom. We’ve been doing this for about two weeks now. Since he’s the science teacher, he normally has explosions with smoke so the cigarette smoke won’t bother the alarm.  So we quietly snuck into the room and went to the back corner and turned the lights off. Lizzie turned to me and handed a cigarette, and I took it naturally. I took out my lighter that I keep in my inside pocket of my Jacket. “C’mon Ashley. Hurry we only have five minutes,” Lizzie exclaimed. 

I light both cigarettes and put the lighter back to the pocket. She showed me a cool trick that she could do with the smoke. As the first bell rang Lizzie asked, “Do you trust me?” “I don’t know if I should.” I said with a weird face. “You should always trust me,” she said with a devious smile. “Okay, what do you have in mind?” Lizzie stared at me and walked toward one of the desks.  She looked at me then the desk. She put her hand under the desk and turned a dial. I then knew what she was doing. I walked over there and took another cigarette from Lizzie and held it over the burner it started to have lots of black smoke come up. Then once we were done we throw them out the windows. After we walked our we quickly went to class, not noticing that we left the burner on.

I head the fire alarm screech. I ran outside along with the other kids. The hallways were crowded with many people trying to get out of the building. I look around to find black smoke curling around the ocean blue sky. As I look around more, I see flashing blue and red lights of a police car and the fire department. I finally found Lizzie. I ran to her,“You know this is our fault,” I said in a whisper. She looked at me with sadness in her eyes “Yeah but I’m not ready to admit it yet. Let’s just wait.” I shook my head in agreement.

The next day, I over heard Amber Welsh talking to a football player in the hallway. “Rumor says, there were people smoking in the science class. The police found cigarettes outside the window, and the dile to a burner was left on. I don’t know who did it, but I want to put an end to it.” The football player laughed, “Who would be so dumb to go in there, everyone knows they have a camera in that class.” Amber smiled “Thank you, now I can put a stop to it.” Then she ran down the hall and around the corner. I went to find Lizzie, I found her by her locker. “Hey,” I said quietly. “They know about us.” She turned to look at me. “How we covered our tracks.” She looked worried. “Amber Welsh said they found cigarettes, our cigarettes, outside the window, and we left the burner on. There was a camera in the class.” I looked down at the floor. “Well I don't know about you but I’m just going to wait.” Two days later I got called to the office.  All I could here was the sound of the intercom “ Ashley Bennett and  Lizzie Green come to the office.” “Ashley, Ashley, Ashley.” My mind started to fade.

I woke up to Mrs. Jessica knocking on my window. I put the window down “Are you okay,” she asked “Yeah just had a dream about my past.” She smiled me, “You have had a not so great past, but I’ve seen you blossom from an insecure seventeen year old to a confident twenty year old. Over the years I love working with you. You need to remember to Look for something positive in each day, even if some days you have to look harder and that you are an amazing young woman.” I smiled at her, “Thank you.” she smiled back at me, “So I’ll see you next week?” “Yeah.” I said, then drove home.