Fighting For His Life

CHAPTER 1


The day I found out that Archer Morales committed suicide, I didn't know what to think.
I stared at Mrs. Anderson, the slightly batty and graying- haired German teacher, with a blank look on my face, not really believing what I'd just heard.

" Come again?" one of the girls sitting beside me- Kayla Bradfield- said in a light airy voice as she sat upright in her chair.

Mrs. Anderson sighed heavily as she took off her glasses and polished them on the front of her polyester suit.
" Archer Morales committed suicide yesterday evening".

I swallowed hard as I slouched backwards in my seat, feeling the color draining from my face. That's what I thought Mrs. Anderson had said. Normally the woman was so lost in her own little world and babbling things in German that I thought I could've passed off what she'd just said as another bit of nonsense. But I knew that this time that wasn't exactly the case. The more I thought about what she'd said, the more I realized that it sort of did make some sense.

When I'd first walked into the school not twenty minutes ago, I couldn't help but feel like something had gone wrong, like there was this massive cloud of depression hovering over the place. I'd seen bits of the staff clustered together in the hallway, their heads together as they talked quickly in furious whisperings.
At first I'd just assumed that maybe there was a leaked pipe in the building or something. But did a leaked pipe really cause looks of sorrows and horror to be on teachers' faces?

" Who's Archer Morales?" another kid from the back of the classroom shouted, sounding duped.

Mrs. Anderson's tired looking eyes sparked with anger as she glared at the offender in the back of the room.
" A very important member of this student body, Mr. Rosedale, and I do suggest you refrain from speaking like that again".
The entire class sucked in collective breaths of air.
Mrs. Anderson never talked like that.

I listened only half-heartedly to what our homeroom teacher said next, explaining how psychologists from town offices would be coming to school everyday for the next two weeks to help people cope with what they were feeling. She kept talking about how it wasn't good that we should bottle up our emotions and how we should remember Archer with glad, happy memories instead of what he'd done.

Well, I'd enough trouble sharing my emotions and I wasn't about to change that anytime soon.
When the first period bell rang, piercing through the tense atmosphere in the room like a knife, I leapt up out of my chair, grabbed my things, and bolted from the room before anyone else had realized it was time to leave.
I really didn't know why I was feeling like a complete and utter mess.
It wasn't like I'd been best friends with Archer Morales or anything. On the contrary, the guy is-was- the school's social pariah.

He was insanely tall and had dark, unmanageable hair, along with a pale, sharply defined face that would have looked highly aristocratic on anybody else. Actually, Archer Morales was a pretty damn handsome guy, which made it all the more confusing as to why he was such an anti-social outcast.
Maybe it was because he just didn't like anybody. Or maybe it was because everyone else just didn't like him.
It had always been so hard to tell what the guy was thinking because he usually always had his hood down and his hair was so wavy, it nearly always fell into his eyes.
Oh God, his eyes.

The one time, I'd gotten a good look at Archer's face had been in Freshman year, in English 1. I sat in the desk across the aisle from him and he'd accidentally knocked his notebook off his desk at my feet sometime later on in the year. When he'd leaned over to grab it, I couldn't help but look at him as he moved and was more than surprised when I actually saw his face, and more importantly, his eyes. God, his eyes were amazing. They weren't exactly blue or green, but they weren't hazel either. I didn't really think the color of his eyes had a name, but I'd instantly fallen in love with them.
Archer Morales had the eyes of an angel.

When Archer had caught me watching him, his eyes had