CRASH (Emma and Carter)

1. The Important Stuff

Her name was Emma. She was tall and she had long, wavy golden blonde hair and baby blue eyes and she was the best thing that had ever happened to me. We used to joke that we would live together forever; grow old together, and someday, we'd be sitting in our white wicker rocking chairs on our front porch wearing ugly sweaters and drinking hot tea in the middle of the summer, reminiscing on old memories. She was my best friend; my other half. Until it happened. Last summer, Emma disappeared, and nobody has heard from her since; not even me.

My name is Carter. I am seventeen years old now, a junior in high school, but it doesn't feel like that. Nothing has felt right; nothing has felt "normal" since she disappeared. We met on the playground in kindergarten; we had both enrolled at Oak Hill Academy, a "prestigious Christian elementary school for children to learn, grow, and succeed" and I, being a huge klutz, managed to trip on the basketball court and skin both of my knees, ripping my uniform in the process. Emma was sitting in the nurse's office when I got there; she had just fallen off the monkey bars and scraped up her arm. We compared our wounds (and the stories of how we got them) and we've been best friends ever since. 

Emma lived down the street from me and we spent more time at each other's houses and outside at the park nearby than we spent with our own families. As we got older, we began to spend more and more time at my house--Emma's mom is owns the local diner and works around the clock while struggling to pay the bills--something she's been doing since Emma's dad lost his job at a law firm and left the house one day when we were in third grade and never came back. Emma had to withdraw Oak Hill by the time we were entering into fifth grade due to the financial strain, and a few weeks later, I withdrew too, because I couldn't live without her. We both transferred to the local public elementary school, which was fine because the people were nicer--less stuck up--and it was a five minute walk from each of our houses instead of a fifteen minute drive. In our free time, we climbed trees to read books in them and we biked around the lakes in the summer, and in the winter, we'd build snow forts and snowmen and have snowball fights with each other, and then go inside for a steaming mug of hot chocolate. Emma made the best damn hot chocolate I've ever had in my life, and she was so incredibly humble about it. We were inseparable, which is why I can't stop thinking about that night.

It was Nellie Olson and Chad Lindstrom's end of the sophomore year party, celebrating that we were officially upperclassmen, and it was at their families' summer homes on Bear Lake. Emma and I went, thinking it would be fun. She disappeared during the fireworks; she said she needed to find a bathroom, and she never came back. I regret every decision I made that day; deciding to go, not insisting that she let me help her find the bathroom, not searching for her enough after she didn't come back. I'm sorry, Em. I miss you and I love you; I always have and I always will.