Nikala's Secrets

Prologue

Prologue

"Riley? Come down here!" My mother screamed from the kitchen.

I followed her voice downstairs, "What are you screaming about? It's six in the morning."

My mom nodded her head towards the television that was displaying the news. My heart dropped when I read the caption scrolling across the bottom of the screen.

That couldn't be true.

The body of local missing teen, Nikala Thomas, has been recovered from the lake

I was going to be sick. I ran to the bathroom and dry heaved over the toilet. Nothing came up. How could my best friend be dead? She was just here a few days ago. I always assumed she had ran off with some boy and she'd be home soon. She had used me for covers before to spend the weekend with her unknown lovers. I never knew who they were.

I wish I had.

What if one of them killed her? What if it's my fault for not telling her parents? Or not telling mine? I should've made her stay. I should've drove her home myself and made her talk to her parents about whatever issues they were having.

"Sweetie, are you okay?" My mom asked me from the bathroom door.

She walked in and squatted besides me, running my back in soothing, circular motions to calm me down. There was a lot of things I was, but okay was not one of them.

"She's gone." I whispered.

My mom opened her arms, "I know."

I gulped down air until it burned my lungs. I hadn't even realized I started crying until my mom started wiping away the tears pooling out of my eyes.

"She didn't deserve to die." I had said, clutching onto my moms shirt.

My mom didn't respond and instead she rocked me back and forth. I was sobbing into her cashmere sweater, but that didn't bother her.

"It's okay baby, it's okay." She kept whispering until I had managed to fall asleep on her lap still on the bathroom floor in front of the toilet.

I should have known something was up when Nikala disappeared. I mean, when did she ever disable her location? I just thought she was running away from her parents after their big fight and going to see one of those boys. I really didn't believe she wouldn't come home. I never considered how dangerous it was for her to be lurking around in the night with unknown boys. I still had no clue why they were fighting because she refused to talk about it when I came to pick her up the night of their first fight. If only I had been more suspicious then maybe she wouldn't have ended up in the bottom of the lake.

Maybe she'd be right here with me watching the news anchor talk about some other poor girl instead of her. But that wasn't reality and this was.

Nikala was gone and she was never coming home. She was never going to call me up and ask me to sneak out with her. She was never going to walk in my house with a bag of chips and a stack of movies. She was never going to gossip to me again.

My best friend was dead.