but Joe was right - it was impossible for her to see him and go to all the games to take pictures—so she dropped it in October. She hoped that freeing up more of her time would make the relationship better, back to the way it used to be.

The thing was, she felt like he was intense all the time now. It was so easy to set him off. She just wanted him to relax, to be the way he was in the beginning. But he lost his temper every few weeks, and he had been getting more and more aggressive, like that first time in the car. Once, when she was late to meet him to go to a party at Sara's house, he just lost it. He started yelling and screaming at her, and accusing her of cheating on him. She told him it wasn't true. But he was so mad, he reached over, wrapped his hands around her throat and started choking her. She couldn't believe it. He lifted her right up off the floor.

He was really sorry about it afterwards. He even started crying, which she had never seen him do. She wanted to figure out what she was doing wrong, what she was doing differently, to make him act this way. She didn't know what to do. If she left him, she knew he would just fall apart. And everybody loved him so much—all of their friends, their teachers, her parents. She felt like she was the only one who knew how he could get sometimes, and she had to stick with him. He needed her more than anything in the world.