It was right before first period when it happened.

She was beautiful. Her hair was curled, but she had loosely tied it behind her head because of the boiling spring heat that roamed throughout the halls of her high-school. He watched her from far away, as she laughed with her friends and skipped around in her purple sundress. He loved her smile; her glistening white teeth and her single dimple on her right cheek.

“Drew.”

He snapped out of his daze, and turned around. His good friend, John, was holding his math book at glancing at the clock. “Man, you gotta move on,” John said, obviously showing that he had caught Drew staring at the girl. “She’s not worth it, bro. Let’s get to math.”

Drew glanced behind his shoulder once more, hoping that she would look over too. But no, she was too absorbed in a conversation with some boys off the football team. Behind her, Justin, the boy who she had been flirting with for the past month or two, was walking towards her. Drew turned back around and started heading down the hall with John.

“So, you gonna hit the weights after school?” John asked, slapping his friend playfully on the shoulder.

And then it came.

The gun shot echoed down the hall, knocking students down like dominoes. Papers and notebooks flew across the hall, and kids started running into classrooms and ducking their heads. Drew was knocked to the ground, and his first reaction was to turn his head to make sure she was okay.

But she wasn’t.

She was on limp on the ground, lying on her side. And Justin was standing over her shaking, with a gun in his hand.

Drew attempted to get up, but John tackled him onto the ground. “Don’t do it man!” He shouted over the chaos. “He’s gonna shoot you, man!”

“Get the f*** off of me,” Drew muttered. He scrambled to his feet, and charged Justin. But Justin lifted the gun to his own head, looked Drew straight in the eye, and shot himself in the head. Everybody screamed, ducking for cover, but Drew kept running. He fell to the ground next to her, grabbing her hand. Her eyes were shut peacefully, but blood was pouring from her right shoulder. Her face was blue and bleeding from the fall.

Suddenly, everything he had hoped and loved for, was slipping away with a single blink of a tearful eye.