Buzz! Buzz! The alarm went. Molly woke up and smacked it off the bedside table. Then she groggily rolled out of bed and gracefully fell off it. Suddenly, Molly couldn’t breath. “Help!” she cried, “I can’t breath!”
“Relax honey, it’s just your hair,” Molly’s dad said as he walked into the room . He turned on the light and laughed. “This is the seventh day in a row that has happened,” he said.
“Ugh…” Molly tossed her hair and turned it into a lazy bun.She turned on her phone and stared at it while walking down the stairs. Molly opened up instagram and rummaged through some pictures and looked for something to post. Then, she tripped and nearly face planted at the bottom of the stairs.
“Molly,” her dad glared, “I feel like I’ve seen this happen before. Oh wait! I think this happened last Saturday, Sunday Monday Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and today. I think this is turning into a problem.”
“Yes I understand.” Molly turned off her phone and shoved it into her pocket. She stormed off into the kitchen and put a burrito into the toaster oven. Then she went to sit down at the breakfast table.
“Molly!” Dad exclaimed, “You know you’re being very lazy lately. You’re always on your phone, never cook anymore, and always look disgraceful with that bun.”
Molly felt anger boiling inside her. “Well, maybe I wouldn’t be so depressed and lazy if you didn’t make mom mad and leave!” Molly screamed. As soon as she said it, she regretted it. Not wanting to talk to her dad, she went back upstairs and changed. A couple minutes later, she ran out of the house crying like a child who’s lost her mother.
When Molly got to school, she went to the bathroom to wash her face. Then, she walked into her first period math class and started solving the problem on the board.
“Wow, Molly,” Ms. Alexa said. “Back to normal now, huh? I’m guessing you’re already done with the problem on the board?” Ms. Alexa walked to her desk and started shuffling through the papers that were not yet graded.
Suddenly, a student Molly didn’t recognize walked into the classroom. He was roughly her height, maybe an inch or two taller. He wore all black, and had his hood on, concealing his whole head except for his face. On his shirt was a skull with two bones sticking out of its head.
Creepy, she thought. She caught herself staring at him for too long and quickly turned away, blushing. She hoped he hadn’t noticed.
“So, Nico, how’s school going for you so far? I hope you like it,” Ms. Alexa said. She looked at him, eager for a response.
Nico glanced at Molly and looked back at Ms. Alexa.
“Oh, she’s a good student and a friend of mine,” Ms. Alexa said.
Nico fiddled with his ring, which he did a series of complex patterns, and put the whole ring back together in the form of a dragon, only to disassemble it again. Nico said, “School is fine, Ms. Alex, however, it’s hard to stay focused when I’m all the way in the back of the class, with nothing to do.”
“My bad,” Ms. Alexa said.
Molly couldn’t restrain herself from asking Nico, “What’s that ring about? Were you born in the year of the dragon?”
Nico replied almost immediately. “Personal information, lady.”
Ms. Alex asked if Nico wanted to sit up front with Molly since no one was sitting there.
Nico replied, “Sure, as long as I get to work.”
During math, Molly couldn’t find her eraser. The tiny one at the tip of her pencil was rubbed clean off. She asked Ms. Alexa is she had a spare eraser to borrow.
“Sorry, Molly. I don’t have one on me right now,” Ms. Alexa said.
Molly waved her off and looked around. She didn’t see anyone who would lend her an eraser without making her pay them back. She looked back onto her desk and saw an eraser on it. She saw Nico smiling.
“Use it well,” he whispered and went back to the test.
At lunch, Molly sat with Nico. She pointed out all the disgusting foods on the menu, which was pretty much everything.
“Not many options, huh Molly?” asked Nico.
“Nope,” Molly replied.
They talked and talked throughout the whole lunch, sucking up every minute. They laughed and Nico fell off his chair, which made them laugh even harder.
Molly escorted Nico to the final period of the day, which was science. Right before he walked in, he told Molly, “Thanks for being friendly. ” 
After school, Molly met up with her usual gang, which included the bulky teenager Daniel, the nerd Ryan, the popular boy Carson, the video-game nerd Ethan and Nico. Daniel urged them to go into Safeway and then told them the plan.
Daniel said, “Ethan, Ryan, Carson and Nico, you guys distract the cashiers. Molly and I will grab all the stuff I can fit in my bag and we’ll bolt through the door. After that, you guys leave and we meet at Lincoln Park. Everyone should be perfectly fine since we have extra peo…”
“First of all,” Nico said, “I’m not stealing anything from anywhere. I thought you guys were just a hangout group, but this is stupid.” He grabbed Molly’s wrist and tried pulling her out of the store.
“Where are you taking her?” Daniel asked. “She’s our fastest runner. We need her.”
“Nobody wants to steal stuff for you, Daniel. Why don’t you let Molly choose for herself?”
“Okay,” Daniel said. He lead everyone out of the store and asked Molly if she wanted to leave.
Molly thought for a while. Daniel and this group were her only friends. However, they were terrible friends in general. She told Daniel that she was leaving with Nico.
“Why? Is it because you’re scared? All girls are scaredy cats anyways,” Daniel said. “Also, they are class pets and all they do is listen and obey like dogs. Sit, dog, sit,” he said.
The next seconds came in a flash. One second Daniel was standing, the next he was on the ground, the left side of his jaw swelling into a bruise.
Daniel got up and the air suddenly felt colder and the grass stopped swaying. He walked toward Nico, eyes red with rage, pulled his hand back and punched Nico in the gut.
Molly whispered, “Stop.” When they didn’t hear her, she kept repeating it until she was screaming her lungs out. Both Nico and Daniel backed away from each other, giving each other the evil eye. Then Molly and Nico left.
After a couple of blocks, Nico asked, “Where are we going?”
Molly stared at him, worried. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. Just a couple of cuts.”
Then Molly asked Nico if he thought Daniel was okay.
“He should be fine,” Nico said. “He probably won’t be able to have babies though.”
Molly laughed. It felt good to laugh because she hadn’t known how to tell Daniel that she wanted to leave and that he was an idiot.
Nico asked where they were going again. He looked left and right, making sure no one was after them. Molly said they could go to her house, which was down the block.
As Molly and Nico entered the house, her dad peeked his head out of the kitchen. “Who’s this guy?”
“Just a friend,” said Molly. She led Nico upstairs to her room and went inside. She sat on her bed and said, “You were crazy to kick Daniel like that.”
Nico laughed and said, “I nearly peed my pants.”
Molly laughed. Her dad called her downstairs to make dinner. She went downstairs and told her dad that she didn’t want to cook dinner tonight. He asked her why and she said, “I’m sick and tired of you treating me like a maid. From now on, you can cook your own dinner.”
He looked at her in shock. His lowered his face and looked at the ground. “You’ve made it through school and half your life without your mother. I’m sorry.”
She raised an eyebrow. She realized that her dad was apologizing to her. She said, “Everything has been really frustrating. I’ve had lots of trouble with school lately. I’ve also lost a couple of friends, but at least I made a good one.”
Molly’s dad said, “I’ll make dinner. You can go hangout with your friend.”
Molly thanked her dad and went to sit down in the living room with Nico, who had crept downstairs during the argument. Nico looked at Molly with newfound respect.
“What?” Molly asked.
“It’s hard telling your parents the truth. That was brave. Even braver than kicking someone in the no-no area,” Nico replied.
Molly laughed. “You were my knight in shining armor. But, without the armor and with more kicking.”
Nico blushed. Molly thanked him for being such a great friend and she asked if he wanted to stay for dinner. Nico thanked her but said that he needed to finish his homework.
Molly watched him walk out of the door and down the street until he was gone from her eyesight. “See you tomorrow,” she whispered.