I'm With You

Chapter One: Marcella

Chapter One: Marcella 

My best friend was never meant to be kidnapped. She was beautiful and successful. People like her aren't supposed to go missing four days before their high school graduation. They aren't supposed to go missing for five weeks.

She is just not that kind of girl.

She got straight A's through all high school, and was voted most likely to succeed for three years in our yearbook, and for our senior year she was voted most likely to become the President of the United States. Moreover, she played on the girls' lacrosse team and was vice president of the SGA.

She was the queen of our school, and because of that she had few close friends.

Some of our fellow students couldn't fathom how she managed it all, but I did. I knew her better than anyone else. I knew that when her mom and step-dad's constant bickering got on her nerves she would find anything to get her out of the house. She was damned determined to do anything she could to keep busy. I also knew that secretly, as much as she loved her mom dearly, she didn't want to end up like her: a mom of 19 who dropped out of college after one year, and manages to pay the bills by working a mind-numbing job at the local grocery market.

And I knew that when she felt the daunting pressure of success and expectations weigh upon her, she would only need one thing to get her through: chicken tenders (as many as she can possibly eat in one sitting.)

I didn't know the version of her that everyone else saw: the perfectly put together, proud Latina girl, who wore her hair in a high ponytail, and strutted her long legs down the school hallways without seeming to care what anyone else thought of her.

I knew the girl that would wake up in the morning with her hair in a messy (and definitely not cute) bun, little sprigs of dark hair shooting from the up-do. She'd have the mascara she wore the day before smeared under her eyes, and with a thundering yawn she'd ramble to her fridge and pull out left over chicken tenders for her breakfast. Cold chicken tenders. . .not something a perfect kind of girl would do.

But she wasn't perfect. She had a temper and a prideful nature that often only helped to spur her temper along. She would get so angry with me sometimes, and she'd never shy away from telling me exactly how she felt about my decisions in life (particularly how stupid she thought they were.)

But I loved her like a sister, and she felt the same. We talked about growing old together as grouchy old maids. She promised to save me a room in her house when I become broke in the future and need somewhere to crash. She promised a lot of things.

But now she's gone. She's been gone for weeks, and I now face my first July without her around to bug me about going to the beach. I won't ever get to feel embarrassed as she lounges next to me with her beautiful cocoa skin and I blind passer-byers with my perpetually pale skin. I won't ever get to see her laugh as I try to shake the sand from my tangled frizzy blonde hair, all the while she would be elegantly shaking her sea-salt coated thick black curls. I won't ever-

"Marci, helllllo?" An annoyed voice huffs right in my face, and with a few blinks I'm out of my own head and focusing on the frustrated girl in front of me.

"Oh, right, sorry honey," I mumble, trying to shake the chills that had raced up my arms.

The seven-year-old merely glares at me from her spot directly in front of my line of sight of the tv. Her thin obsidian black hair is pulled into a tight ponytail, and her almond shaped eyes squint at me.

I feel a sigh build up inside me, but I hold it in knowing that with my sigh she will only get sassier. If that's possible.

"Yan, wouldn't you rather watch Scream from the couch?"