All On My Own

Chapter 1: Handsome Marius

"Shut up, Colette. Your voice irritates me." Katelynn told me coldly. I looked back down at my math work sadly. I was just humming. Quietly. Ally glanced over at me quickly before turning back to her work, and my best guy friend, Aaron, turned around in his seat to face me. He gave me a sympathetic smile, and handed me his French folder. "Help me study?" he asked with his adorable smile.

I blushed slightly, even though this was our routine. We both had French next hour, me in French II, he in French I. "What's the subject, my friend?" I asked with a smile. "Colours!" he answered. I laughed quietly and closed his folder, knowing the colour list by heart. "Rouge et noir." I asked. "Red, and black." He answered. I raised my eyebrows at him, waiting for him to get the reference. "Oh!" he exclaimed and we both laughed. He was my musical buddy. Our favourite was Les Misérables. We saw it together last year with choir, and this year with Drama club.

"You make the best references Col. Maybe we can be in a production of Les Mis together someday!" he said excitedly. I nodded, "Me as Eponine, and you as Marius, right?" I asked with a grin. "Sounds good to me!" he answered as the bell rang. We gathered our things and walked to the language building. All communication arts, and foreign language classes were in here. We walked to our classrooms, right across the hall from each other.

We were watching Les Mis in my class this week, so I sat and tried my best to not sing along. My phone vibrated about five minutes into class, I took it out and read it. Aaron had texted me:

- Rouge! The colour of desire!

I smiled and replied:

- Noir! The colour of despair! Lol, that song just came on! :)

- Haha!

I put my phone back and watched the movie happily. But, the scene that gets me every time...Eponine's death.

I know she's the character that all teen girls say they relate to, but I have always felt, this strange desire to be her. To be able to sing 'On My Own' and truly mean it, to fight with the men of the barricade, and to "die" in the arms of a handsome Marius.

I smiled, thinking of my Marius, right across the hall. We've known each other since Pre-K, and now we're seniors. The bell rang and I grabbed my bag quickly and met him outside the door so we could walk to study hall together. "How was French class?" he asked with a totally stupid French accent. "Trés bon, monsiuer!" I replied with a smile. We walked together to study hall and sat in our usual seats, near the back of Mr. White's classroom.

"So, how far did your class get in the movie?" he asked, getting out his math homework. I sighed and frowned, "Eponine's death." "I wish she would have lived, fallen in love with someone else." he told me. "Like Grantaire?" I asked excitedly. He laughed because he knew my strange obsession with the ship. "Yes, like Grantaire." he answered with a smile. I returned the smile and went to work on my homework.

I finished about halfway through the hour, and took out my iPod to listen to music. I pressed the shuffle button, and the first song to pop up, 'A Little Fall of Rain'. I skipped it. I finally settled on some "Next to Normal". I laid my head down, and rested for the rest of the hour.