Learning to Live by Kira Adams

Ciera:
All I wanted was to be able to make it through my senior year. I didn’t need the stares, the jokes, or the bullies. I thought I could do it all on my own, but I was wrong. He filled my veins like a poison, the kind you can’t run from. Harsh and uncaring, he was broken, but somewhere along the way he seeped into my pores. There was no way out, so that left me with one choice: to open his eyes to the beauty around him–to help him live.

Topher:
She wasn’t on my agenda; it was fate’s cruel way of telling me I needed to get my shit together. To be fair, my head was so far up my ass, I’m not sure how we extracted it. I knew the power I held over my peers, and I exuded it daily. I could have had any girl I wanted at the snap of my fingers, and yet I found myself fantasizing about her–someone so far off my radar it wasn’t even funny. She helped me understand that sometimes you need to let go to really live. Sometimes being alive means taking risks.