Best Friends Forever

Chapter 2: Lost Girl

The warped metal door requires slamming. She barely has the energy. The flimsy locker rings like a bell when she finally gets it right. Her forehead descends to meet the cold, thin panel, fingers fumbling to close the lock. The world moves on around her, laughter, voices, but it's only muffled white noise.

Her battered backpack digs into her shoulders as she turns and makes her way down the busy hall. The masses part, no one meeting her eyes. They couldn't if they tried. Hers are locked on the floor where they have been for four long and hurtful months. The blur of people is just that, a wash of color, light, and darkness which surrounds her, but never touches her.

She knows what the therapist thinks. Has heard the whispered conversations between the older man who smells of wood smoke and peppermint and her anxious parents. Words like 'depression' and 'medication' and 'hospital' mean nothing. They register, but she doesn't care. None of it matters. Not anymore.

She failed them, failed herself. Let fear sever the sisterhood.

It's her own fault she's alone.

Class is droning hell. She gets the desk with the broken chair, the one no one else wants. It's cracked on the left side, the sharp plastic digging into her thigh through her jeans. She ignores the discomfort. And the stares. It is too much, this living, faking, pretending to care about anything. She isn't sure how much longer she can go through the motions. Life isn't worth it without them.

She has known Sam since they were in first grade and is the only one who witnessed Sam's dad's special interest in his little girl. She hid in a closet in the dark and cried to herself as Sam cried, her drunken father not knowing she was having a friend for the night. Sam's mother was passed out and unable to tell him.

Sam joined her in the closet when it was over and hugged her and hugged her until the morning.

She never slept over again. But, then again, Sam's dad wasn't allowed to live there either or even see Sam anymore after Emily told her parents all about it.

Tara she met in junior high, an unlikely friend for a loner and a Goth banger. Her rich parents were never around. And beautiful Tara liked them far more than the pops and jocks despite her expensive wardrobe and perfect blonde good looks.

It was about Sam, of course. It was always about Sam. And how much Tara loved her. Another night in a closet, this time listening to the girls. Blushing, embarrassed when she was invited to join them.

Madison was as much an anomaly. A Chinese orphan adopted by American parents with a brilliant mind but no desire to fit the mold her mom and dad created for her. Again, it was Sam's charisma, her shining light and utter darkness that drew Madison to them.

The perfect fit.

This is the hardest part. She has never been alone. They are with her still, but echoes of them, echoes making her heart ache and the rumbling pain rise. She clings to them, needing them, but does her best to drown them out for a moment of peace.

Just a moment.

She wakes to screams some nights. It's then she feels the most alive. Dreaming of running and running, knowing she has to get to them, that she's responsible and if she can just reach them in time... those nights she crouches next to her bedroom window and breathes the still, quiet air, hoping for a breath of smoke or whisky or Tara's expensive perfume. And when she is disappointed yet again, she ponders the kitchen knife she keeps under her mattress and wonders how much it will hurt when she finally works up the nerve.

The bell jolts her from her private limbo. She waits for the others to leave, gathering her strength, forcing herself to get up, to move, to walk into that bustling hallway again where life goes on without her.

Something touches her shoulder. She is so surprised by the physical contact she spins and actually looks up.

"Hi, Emily." He towers over her. His light brown eyes are so melty warm and concerned she feels for a heartbeat all the sadness and fear and loneliness rise up in a wave, cresting in her throat, pushing against the gray place where she exists. Unable, unwilling to let it out, not yet, if ever, she drops her eyes.

"Hi." She forgot the sound of her own voice.

"We haven't really met. I'm Todd. Brandsom. Transferred this year."

What does he want from her? She needs to leave but can't make her feet work.

"We have a couple of classes together." She never noticed. Until now. Doesn't know how to ask him to leave her alone.

The uncomfortable silence is like a sharp razor to her wrists. Exquisite pain.

"Anyway." His feet shift on the worn plastic tile. A sound like his throat clearing. "I think you dropped this." His large hand extends toward her. Sparkling pink lips on a key chain dangles from his fingers.

Panic. Tara! She snatches it away, cradles it to her chest, shaking. How could it have happened? She almost lost Tara. Are the others safe?

But Todd is speaking and she can't check. Not in front of him.

"I wanted... I wanted to tell you." He pauses, running his hands through his hair. There was a time she would have thought Todd beautiful, when she would have giggled secretly over the new guy's broad shoulders, his chiseled jaw line, long, thick lashes. Out of Sam's hearing, naturally.

None of that matters now.

She stares at the floor between his sneakers and waits for it. The sympathy she can't live with. The words driving madness into her heart.

"I wanted to tell you how sorry I am. About your friends."

He didn't even know them. They died before he transferred. Somehow, it makes it easier.

"Thanks." Tara's pink lips warm in her hand.

"I guess I'll see you around." His feet shuffle, pause. Retreat.

She watches the place where his sneakers were long enough to be sure he really is gone then hurries to the bathroom.

She finds an empty stall, slams the door, then the toilet seat over floating cigarette butts and small plastic bottles empty of their vodka. She carefully examines her backpack, heart thudding an uncomfortable rhythm in her chest.

The pocket where she keeps them. The zipper. It's open. Somehow. Someone has... she chokes on her terror as she pulls it open and looks inside.

And sobs, once. They are there. Safe. Madison's diamond earrings glitter against the square of black velvet. Sam's gold skull ring rests next to them. She sags against the wall and draws a deep breath. She gently kisses Tara's mouth and slides her home, back with the girls, safe and sound.

She has been foolish to keep them in so obvious and vulnerable a place. But she wants them with her, is that too much to ask? Wearing them is out of the question. She has already lied about having them at all. Their parents would never understand her need to keep them close.

Time to find them a new resting place. The thought of someone seeing them... touching them... the image of Tara's lips dangling from Todd's fingers is a punch in her stomach. It is several minutes before her hands stop shaking and the pressure in her throat dies away.

She failed them once. She refuses to do so again.

She has to keep them safe.

***