I remember the exact moment of terror I felt when the notification from the school's web page appeared on the screen of my phone. After reading the post, I realized how a small sentence could ruin my entire life. How the question, "How can Hazel carry on with her smile while I'm left so distraught?" would haunt me for the rest of my life. Ben looked up from his phone at me with worried eyes and asked, "why didn't you tell us?" I thought of a million responses, but no words escaped my mouth. I just stared at the ground and let my bangs cover my lifeless eyes.   
    When I was younger, I had moved from place to place and from country to country. Every place I had ever left stole a piece of my life that I could never get back, and truthfully I didn't want it back. But Japan was different, I could tell that things would be better here. And I believed that for a while. Thankfully I did and along with that belief came friends, Irene being my closest. Irene Rose is the perfect collection of anything anyone could ever want in a person. She is the perfect daughter and student, she lives up to her parents and the school's expectations of keeping straight As her entire life. What more could you expect from a genius? Irene would never do something this cruel, but of course everyone has their secrets.
    So many thoughts pressed into my mind in the quiet music room with Ben, who was now trying to comfort me to the best of his abilities. Ben would have never done such a thing, he was all too sweet and loving to be so mean to me. "Hey it's okay, I have a plan," Ben's said, his voice now filling the empty room. "Okay, shoot." My voice was still shaking from the shock of the trauma, but I tried to mutter the words without a stutter or choke. "It involves fire." I could tell he was trying to cheer me up by making a stupid proposal, but I smiled anyways.
    "Hazel," He paused for a minute to really comprehend what he was going to say, then he started again. "Hazel, can you tell me what is going on?" His tone was sweet and sincere, you could tell that he really cared for me. For some reason that hurt, it hurt a lot. But, I focused on what was at hand: trying to explain what the heck is happening. "Well," that one word would be the one to unravel all of my deepest and darkest of secrets to Ben and eventually, he did that with me too.
    I was born in Honolulu, Hawaii into one of the most loving and understanding families anyone could ask for. My parents were travelers, they liked to see the world and try to fully understand why someone would create such beautiful things for the eye to see, but when it came time for my parents to settle down and have me, they decided that Hawaii was an exotic experience to grow up with. So, I lived in Hawaii for most of my life, I enjoyed the surfing and the school, along with my very close friends who stayed by my side through the years I stayed there. That was until I lashed out at a young boy at my school. He had been teasing me for years on end so I decided it was time for it to stop. I don't know where in my mind I thought it was okay, but I just screamed at the top of my lungs for him to stop. The next day, he vanished.
So my Dad thought that after this disturbance it would be best for me to get therapy due to my low self esteem from all of the so called "Jokes" that were constantly thrown at me. So instead of Honolulu, I then on lived in upstate New York by a psychiatrist and the right medical care to help me improve my mental health. Now that I look at it, I was frequently paranoid and anxious of someone finding out that I had yelled at that poor girl. Because, the way I looked at it I had done something wrong. The reason that my parents took me to therapy wasn't because they were trying to fix me, it was because they wanted to help me. But, at the time I didn't really get a grasp on that concept. From then on, I started lashing out on everyone. I believed that no one liked me for who I was, I thought that everyone hated me because I was some freak.
When I told Ben this, tears had started to stream down my face. I was truly disappointed that I couldn't see how everyone was so kind to me, but my view of everyone had become distorted. I thought that everyone was against me, so I never gave anyone a chance. So, from then on I had traveled school to school to find myself a better life and I found it here. That was until some anonymous person decided it would be funny to leak this little mishap that I had caused. My phone buzzed beside me, but before I could reach it Ben took it in his hands.
"This little thing has caused you too much trouble." He then looked down at the screen and I saw his eyes widen and his eyebrows raise, which shifted the freckles on his face. He turned the screen to me to show what had popped up, it was a text from Irene: "You're welcome."
The more I thought of it, the more the puzzle pieces fit. Irene, the smartest, most wonderful and perfect person you could ever meet. But of course everyone has their dark sides. I then remembered something from my long days in Hawaii. I remembered how the sun set on the long summer days and how the stars would appear in the sky. On one night like that one, I remembered a young girl with long black hair and pale skin say to me
"They all die at one point." Of course as a young child I was quite shaken up at such deep thoughts. "What do you mean," I was simply confused at best. "All stars burst out and create room for prettier and better stars to come and form again, then the cycle repeats itself," she took a choked breath "That's what my mom said before she died, but I haven't found anything prettier than her yet." I was extremely scared, sad, and shocked at the same time. She had opened up to a stranger simply because we were both looking at the star, Irene was that young girl.
"No one is perfect," I said while shifting in my seat due to the epiphany that came upon me. Ben fixes his gaze to someone behind me and I get out of my seat to see sweet yet horrible Irene crying. Irene was a mess, tears were streaming down her face along with mascara. I knew that tears were the broken heartbreak that slowly let the dam crack open inside, so I hugged her in my arms and forgave her. It's hard to know that someone so dear would do such a thing, but forgiveness can be hard like that. You have to learn to forgive sometimes, even if it hurts.

This story does not make sense