Sally

Sally was a poor girl. She didn't have much, but for what she did have she was truly grateful. She was a quiet girl. One who sat in the front of the classroom, did all the work, never spoke unless spoken to. She had friends that no one else knew existed. They were heros from her favorite books and from the stories she wrote in her room at night under the covers with a flashlight. She wrote stories of dragons and princes. In them the fair maidens were the ones who came out of the woodwork just when you expected something else to go wrong. She imagined that she belonged in this world, instead of the world in which she lived. She loved the way she could escape and suddenly be dressed in her favorite ivory ball gown when life got hard, or when life just wasn't working out the way she wished it would. She was a poor girl. She didn't have much, but for what she did have she was truly grateful.
One day Sally's life changed. It wasn't the day she met the charming boy in her physics lab. She wasn't swept off her feet. No, that wasn't it at all. She talked quite frequently with that lad but he wasn't what changed her life. One day Amber asked if she wanted to go over to her house to make s'mores in her backyard and have a pillow fight. Sally knew from all the stories she read and mostly from the story she'd written that a man was not what made all the difference in life. One day, Sally imagined a boy may indeed sweep her off her feet and they would live happily in the now and then in the after. But for now, it wasn't a man that Sally was looking for. She didn't need a man to save her from anything. Amber was her first friend, and for that Sally was truly grateful.