I walk away wondering what exactly just happened. Was that sexy biker really hitting on me?

My body feels like it’s been energized with electricity as I make my way back to the bus stop at the end of town. I’ll catch the bus, then get off at a stop just a block away from my prison—better known as the Sacred and Pure Hearts Learning Academy of Bantam, Georgia. Bantam is in the next county over from Raven Hills, and there’s really nothing there. In fact, the only thing in that place is the private Catholic high school that my stepbrothers Matthew and Colin sent me to when our parents died. I hate it. Then again, I don’t guess anyone actually likes being shipped off to boarding school, especially an all-female one. It’s a fail-safe way for the board to make sure the sacred and pure part of their school stays that way.

My life has never been one where I could truly enjoy dating and have a normal teenage lifestyle. The other girls gripe about it constantly. With no boys around, there’s a lot of girl-on-girl experimentation. It’s either that or Ryan, the school’s janitor. I’m not going to say having a little “experiment” hasn’t passed my mind, but then again, I’ve never really had time to think about sex with males or females.

Until now.

The guy at the coffee shop was unlike anyone I’ve ever met. Covered in piercings and tattoos, he looked sexy and deadly at the same time… the ultimate forbidden fruit for a girl who hasn’t had much time to think about any of it.

Will he really be there tomorrow? Or was he toying with me? I saw his buddies waiting for him outside the shop. I can’t help but wonder if they’re all just laughing at the stupid schoolgirl.

The guy didn’t seem like that type, but I don’t know many men to gage him by. He’s older than me, and he’s definitely a man who knows more than I will ever know about… life. I doubt a high school student who’s been sheltered her entire life could keep his interest. Then again, I doubt he realizes I’m even in high school. I look older for my age, plus I’m wearing makeup today. We’re not allowed to wear it at school, and when I paid Ryan to help me sneak out today, I insisted that I’d wear real clothes and makeup—no uniform. I even had my hair fixed. It’s been one of the best days I can ever remember having. It was a big risk, I knew that much, but it was well worth it… even before I met the biker.

And to top it all off: today’s my birthday. Not my actual birthday, because I won’t be twenty for three more months. Today makes eighteen months that I am cancer free. I don’t know how to describe what happens when a doctor looks at you and delivers the words that you won’t ever be able to truly wrap your mind around: I’m very sorry, Beth, but you have cancer. I still wake up in a cold sweat at night hearing those words.

They’re not something you can forget.

But I beat the odds, and here I am. No one remembered what today is. Not that I thought they would. I don’t really have anyone who cares. My mom married Edmund and that gave me an instant family, but I don’t really know my stepbrothers. Last Christmas, mom and Edmund were in a plane crash coming back from the Cayman Islands. I wasn’t really close to my mom, but she was probably the only person left in the world who cared—at least a little about me. Matthew and Colin? To them, I’m just a responsibility, since they pay for my education and give me a monthly allowance. I guess there are worse things in life, even if I am a bit lonely.

Then, the biker showed up and disrupted my coffee, and the part of me that’s filled with loneliness and isolation morphed into something else. I feel excitement. I feel happiness. I feel… pretty.

That’s another thing you take for granted, you know. Feeling pretty. Where you might have thought that about yourself once, cancer finds a way to steal that from you. It ravages your body, leaving you with black bruises, flesh that sags from your bones, and eyes that are so dark and shadowed, you wonder if they’ll ever go away. You lose your hair. I’m not a vain person, not really. But each morning, waking up to another small clump on my pillow, or brushing my hair and seeing more in my brush than what was left on my head, killed me. It killed something inside of me that made me feel young and carefree. It killed something that made me feel… pretty. Trust me: no amount of wigs or pep talks make it better.

Late at night when I was alone in bed… late at night when I was cramping from the medicine and the hunger, knowing that there was no way I could eat—and not wanting to anyways… that’s when I really felt it: ugly. All the way through. Ugly. I hated the way I looked. I hated the disease inside of me that I had no control of.

I hated… me.

The nights were the worst. They were so much worse than the day, because that’s when the fear and the doubts crept in. I would get weak and go into the bathroom, stare into the mirror, and cry. I’d cry for losing parts of myself, cry for not knowing what would happen next, and cry because I felt completely and utterly alone.

With memories like that hanging on you, feeling beautiful even eighteen months later is not an easy feat. You grow your hair back, and it’s thicker and a slightly different shade than before. Though you like it, you’re afraid to trust it, because somewhere in the back of your mind, you’re afraid it will leave you again. Even as you watch your body heal and the medication work its magic, and after you’re no longer a rack of bones… even then, rarely do you feel beautiful.

Today in that coffee shop, I felt beautiful. I felt that way because this large, scarred, tattooed and pierced biker looked at me in a way that made me feel like my skin was on fire. I felt beautiful because he made me feel that way.

That’s why I am determined to find a way to sneak out again and return to the coffee shop. That’s the real reason I will risk the wrath of Sister Margaret, because today, a man who was unique and gorgeous in his own right made me feel beautiful.

As I board the bus to go back to school, I do the one thing that might even make Sister Margaret proud of me: I pray. I pray that the biker is there tomorrow and I’m not just being naïve.