So there is this girl. She is very average, she has golden brown hair that goes right below her shoulders and deep brown eyes. She is on her boarding school soccer team and is one of the leading players, but her heart is never in it when she plays. She feels that because of that she does fit in at Westwood Academy. She spends most of her time in her room, on the third floor, alone doing homework. Her roommate rarely even acknowledges that she exists, if she even bothers to be around.
Deep down the girl’s deepest passion is singing and that is all that she wants to do. She knows that if anyone knew that she sang, she would be the laughing stock of the school. If only she could talk to her parents and have them understand, but they only see her as a gifted athlete with so much potential to be a star. They are continually reminding her how fortunate she is to be going to Westwood Academy, the best athletic boarding school in the country. Because of their athletic focus, there is no room for the creative arts. Most of the wall coverings in the school are pictures, pennants, and framed articles of the students’ accomplishments and last she counted she was in close to sixty of them. No matter how many titles she won, she was never truly happy. She longs to sing and she felt that it has been her calling since she was little and in a local choir. Community members were always telling her how gifted her voice was but at the same time she was playing soccer and her parents noticed that she had a natural talent for the sport.
They were very excited and decided to invite Westwood soccer scouts to come and watch one of her games. A little while later, they received a letter from Westwood saying that they were interested in having her come play for them and that she would receive a very substantial scholarship. Through the whole process her parents never thought to ask her about what she wanted or thought about leaving her school and friends and going to a boarding school. They just decided for her and accepted the offer. When they told her about what they had done, she started crying and her parents, being oblivious to everything, assumed they were tears of joy not actually sadness.
She dreaded having to go to the school up to the day they moved her in. Her dread multiplied by twelve the day they moved her in because she realized she would not be able to sing while at this school. The only sound she heard were coaches yelling and blowing their whistles. She originally thought her roommate was nice and would be a great friend, but once her parents left, she saw another side to her and realized she wrong.  She was actually rude and quite mean. She once overheard the girl humming while doing homework and made fun of her for it for close to three weeks. That reassured her that there was no singing of any kind at Westwood Academy. It was a hard habit for her to break because she had been singing for most of her life.
Because she was not happy to be at Westwood it was hard for her to make friends. Often she would try and sit with classmates in the dining hall, but they would either say the seat was saved or somebody else would slide into the seat before she was able to sit down. Other students would often purposefully bump into her in the halls. Some of the guys would also make an effort to let a door close right in front of her rather than holding it for her. She often wished that she could just go and find some place to sing where she wouldn’t be heard but above that she wanted a friend.
One day as she was heading to practice, she was walking by the biology labs when she heard some odd humming coming from one of the rooms. She tried to go in but the door was locked and the humming stopped. During practice she was so distracted by the thoughts of the humming that her teammates got really frustrated with her and gave her such a hard time that she told the coach she didn’t feel well so she could leave early. Instead of going to the nurse like coach said to she just went to her room and cried. She never even wanted to come to this school in the first place, but her parents didn’t care enough to listen. She ended up falling asleep and dreaming of being able to freely sing, but she wasn’t alone, there was someone else in her dream but she was awoken by her roommate throwing her school books loudly onto her desk before she could see who it was.
The next day at practice her coach approached before and asked how she felt, but before she could say anything coach said she checked with the nurse to see how she was and the nurse was clueless. She knew she was in trouble, so she started packing up her stuff ready to be sent out of practice when coach told her she would be filling in as goalie since the regular goalie was actually sick. Being goalie gave her team a free pass to make her miserable because they all knew that goalie was her weakest position and they made sure to kick the ball as hard as they could directly at her. There were a few balls that were coming so fast she had little choice but to duck and avoid them which just made coach so mad she ended up sending her out of practice and benched her for the next game. At this point, she wanted nothing more than to be able to go home and just be in her own room.
Soon she started thinking again about the humming she had heard earlier in the bio lab and decided to look and see if she could find who or what it was. When she got there it was quiet and empty, but the door was unlocked so she went in and looked around. On one of the tables in the sixth row she saw a notebook and went over to see what it was and who it belonged to. There was no name in it, but there were about twenty-four pages of lyrics. Not wanting to take somebody else’s notebook she left in on the table. Every day after that she made sure to walk by the lab to see if she could hear the humming and it gave her hope that there was someone like her at the school. Soon six weeks passed and she didn’t hear anything and she was starting to lose hope. She was also becoming more withdrawn than before and some of her teachers had noticed and asked her if she was okay, but she never told them what was wrong. She just made up an excuse that she was tired or stressed about an upcoming soccer game and they always told her that their doors were always open if she wanted to talk. She would nod then leave.
In one of her classes she was paired up with a boy she had seen in the halls for a project. They agreed to meet after dinner in the library to get started before he had to go to lacrosse practice. After their first meeting he left for practice and she stayed to do some homework, but she noticed he left his notebook so she looked in it to see if it was something he would need really soon or if it could wait until their next meeting. When she opened it it was the same one she had seen in the lab that was full of lyrics. She packed up her stuff then went to the lacrosse field to wait for him so she could return it to him. When he came off the field he was really surprised to see her and when he saw the notebook in her hand he turned white as a ghost and when she said she looked inside he went even paler. He quickly pulled her aside before any of his teammates noticed and told her how she couldn’t tell anybody about the notebook or lyrics in it. She had to go to soccer practice so they agreed to meet in the vegetable garden behind the dining hall the next afternoon.
When she arrived, he was pacing around the peppers but as soon as he saw her he sat on a bench and she joined him. They sat in silence for a little bit until she said “you’re not alone.” When he didn’t respond she went on and started to share her story. She started with how before Westwood she would sing all the time and was in a local choir but the only thing her parents noticed was her soccer abilities. So far, up to this point, neither of them had looked at each other. When she quickly glanced over she sees that he is looking at the ground but listening attentively so she continued. She talked about her experiences at school, on the soccer team, and with her classmates. As she was finishing she started to cry because she never really realized how sad it all was until she said it aloud. There was a brief pause of silence and he reached over and held her hand and began his story.
It turned out he had an older brother who had been a huge lacrosse star at Westwood and his parents are forcing him to follow in his footsteps but after an English assignment he realized he had a knack for writing song lyrics. He really loved to write as a way to express himself and share with others but he was scared of coming across as weak to the guys on his team. He really wanted to hear her sing and also to hear his lyrics sung by someone else, so he tried to convince her to sing but she wouldn’t do it.
They continued to meet in the garden every couple of days for a while and became really close. He would bring up singing fairly often in hopes that she would sing, but she never would. Until one day when he tried a little harder to convince her and she finally agreed. So he pulled out his notebook and let her pick the song and she sang. When she finished they both cried out of happiness and it became a regular thing for them to sit in the garden and sing. Not only would they sing, but they would also just talk about their daily lives and what was going on. He would often ask if she had talked to her parents about how she felt about being at Westwood and she never had.
One day he pulled out his phone and told her to call her parents. For a while she sat there and looked at the phone not moving, but she did dial the number and call and while she talked to her parents he held her hand. She told her parents how she had been so miserable at Westwood and what she wanted to was sing not play soccer. Also, that it's been hard since they haven’t listened to what she wanted to and always assumed they knew what was best. They told her they would come up this weekend so they could discuss it further in person. When she hung up she gave him back his phone and thanked him and hugged him tight so relieved she finally shared her feelings with her parents.
When she let go she remembered the dream and told him about it and they both laughed and joked around saying she was psychic and could predict the future. When her parents came for the weekend and they talked in more detail about how her passion is singing not playing soccer and she would be happier in a public school where she can sing rather than a private school where she is stuck and miserable and forced to focus on athletics. Through the whole conversation her parents seemed to be listening intently to what she was saying and said that they would let her know what they decided soon. After they left, she headed back to her room to do homework and ran into her friend and tells him about how well it went with her parents and that she’ll know their decision soon. He said he was really happy for her, but she could see in his eyes that he was upset and worried about her possibly leaving. She understood that he was worried about being alone, so she said “you won’t be alone,” in hopes of reminding him that even if she isn’t actually there, he still has the memories and she would only be a phone call away. 
They remained close for many years to come and unconditionally supported each other along their individual paths towards their dreams.