Ever since my 13th Christmas, I'd loved My Little Pony. The Show was entertaining, and almost no one else liked it. It gave me a sense of security, because I hadn't had friends to begin with. While the Mane 6 were all amazing, I connected with Rainbow Dash. I don't know why a shy closet brony would connect with an outgoing and awesome pony like Dash.
Eventually, I made it through my eighth grade year and into my ninth. High School. We'd moved from Los Angeles to some random, nondescript town in Montana, and I didn't know anyone there. The only upside was the sixty acres of old farmland we bought. After a horrible forest fire had ravaged the area a century or so before, the place had been for sale. What was once farmland became beautiful meadows with tall grass and lots of privacy.
My parents were killed in a car wreck a few weeks after this. My brother managed to get himself signed as my legal guardian, so we didn't have to go and stay in a home. He had to keep two jobs going at once to pay for the house and gas, and the like. He worked from home, so the only gas was spent for school, and rare luxuries like going to a movie or a baseball game.
All of my mornings were the same. Wake up, get ready for school, ride in the car for an hour to the closest bus stop, wait for an hour or so, get on the bus, ride for another hour to school. During the school day, my day was always different. Somehow, they'd discovered I was a brony. No one else, in a school of seven thousand, was. Every day, it was a toss-up between staying out of sight or getting beaten up. I never knew what was going to happen.
One winter day, when things were at their worst, she transferred into my class.