"Hey, Christi!" I whirl around to see one of my acquaintances from school: Garcia Chase. Her bright eyes calm my heart, and I respond to her welcome.
"Oh! Hi, Garcia. It's just that, you startled me!" I try to sound cheery. She nearly rolls her eyes and heads to her locker.
I straighten my posture and go on my way. Forget it, Christi. Just forget it, I say in my head. I want to forget that Sabrina's gone. I want my life to be normal.
Closing my eyes to halt the tears, I turn my lock. 38-16-0. I open the locker, revealing an assortment of colors. I sigh in slight happiness, remembering the decorations Sabrina hung in my locker on my birthday. Not only are they my favorite colors—blue, green and purple—but they are the colors that remind me of her. I bite my lip, holding tears back from wetting my cheeks.
I lean against the locker beside mine. Dreaming of the next time I'll see Sabrina. Where is she, anyway? Wherever she is, I must find her. Turning around to face my locker, I pick up my books. My favorite colors always brighten my day. Not today though. Today is just awful.
✦
"And that's how you find the area of a polyhedron." I look at my math teacher, feeling the disgust of learning. I'm so mad, I could scream. I just want to find my best friend and bring her home. Listening to lectures and learning about darn shapes is the last thing on my mind. Is there anything wrong with that?
I put my head on my desk, trying to forget about any incident. Then and there, a brilliant idea sprouts in my head like a bulb blooming.
Looking sick, I trudge up to Mr. Gordon's desk while the rest of the class works on a precalculus worksheet.
"Mr. Gordon, sir," I say, sounding as polite and decent as possible, "I don't feel too good. My head hurts." Suddenly, it does. I grip my temple, the excruciating pain like a serrated knife digging into my head. I yelp, and Mr. Gordon looks at me weirdly.
"It hurts, Mr. Gordon. I'm telling the truth." A wave of even more intense pain comes from my other temple. I hold them both, the second one is like a needle inserted into my brain.
"Go on, Ms. Brandon." He says nothing more. I yelp again and wince when a shock hits my foot. Limping, I hasten towards the nurse's office.
Once I reach the office, I collapse on a cot. The nurse looks at me as if I'm dead meat.
"Do you have a pass, honey?" I shake my head, nearly screeching through the affliction and throbbing of my head. Just give me some magic potion or SOMETHING!
"That's all right," she says, and I sigh in relief that I don't need to go back. "Just lay down, and I'll call your parents. You really look like you need to go home." I nod vigorously in thanks. Oh, sweet home.
I roll over on the cot, hoping the torment will stop. Then, I have a vision.
"Christi! Christi!" Sabrina wails. Her cries echo through my head like a pitch in a cave.
"Sabrina? Is that you?" I yell out. I spot her, screaming next to a boy around Easton's age.
"Sabrina, I'll help you!" I exclaim in horror, tears falling to the cement ground.
"Help Kase first!" she pleads, pointing to the boy. Words flood from my mouth.
"Sabrina, I can't! I've never done anything like this in my whole entire life! Do you expect me to do this alone?!" Sabrina's eyes widen, and she shrieks.
"Christi! Move out of the way!" I turn, but I'm too late. Pain comes into my head once more. I feel drops of blood seep down the sides of my cheeks. A metal rod slams down on my foot, and I try to hurry over to Sabrina.
"Sabrina, I'm coming!" I howl through the pain.
"Christi, don't!" she calls, and I feel my heart stop.
My eyelids lift and watch a bead of sweat dribble down my face. My parents are watching me. Mom comes over and speaks to me slowly.
"Christi, honey. Are you all right?" I gaze into her eyes.
"Mom?" I close my eyes. Mom freaks out, and apparently, she thinks I'm dead. Who knows. I just want to go home.
"We are taking you home this instant!" She quickly speaks with the nurse while Dad looks around the room, patting my hand now and then. I want to tell Mom to chill, but she'd just ground me. I lay still on the cot, hoping the pain will go away.
Then, something unnaturally eerie happens. The pain stops and a feeling throbs at my brain. The feeling is like a hammer with a rope, it's pulling me apart while still knocking at my mind. Suddenly, a whisper strikes. Sabrina will be annihilated, destroyed for good. You will be pulverized, along with your beloved friend. I shudder, then glance down to the pearly tiled floor; stained with mud as brown as dark chocolate.
I am in utter bewilderment, mind unknown of the deathly message. It threatens me, and Sabrina. It shouldn't threaten Sabrina. She's my best friend. I'll do anything to stop whatever it is from hurting Sabrina. Not one person lays hands on Sabrina until I get myself down there. Or wherever she is. I need to find her. I can brainstorm at home! Unless the pain stops though, I'm not going to move from my bed when I get back to the house.
✦
"Christine Alexa Brandon, what happened? How did you end up in the Nurse's Office?" Mom demands. I cringe. I didn't expect her to be this mad. She notices my 'I'm sorry' face, and softens. "It's just that you're always healthy. I don't understand it."
I can't control my visions, can I? Do I really have control to think and do what I'm supposed to? I'm not perfect, and I can't do everything right! Why is all the pressure on me sometimes? There's never really pressure on Katy or Easton. They have life easy. How nice it must be to not really care what you do, it will please your parents either way.
One time, Katy got a B on her math test (which I consider horrible), and Mom was all, "Oh, it's okay, honey. You did your best, didn't you?" She nodded and Mom had said, "then that's all that matters." Then she made Katy's favorite dinner dish: chicken alfredo with potatoes and peas!
When I got a question wrong on my math test and still got an A, Mom was all, "Christi! Do you have any regrets?! Did you try your best? Maybe we should find you a math tutor. You can practice over summer!"
I told her how I felt after she had made my least favorite dish that day, and she cried. She said she was just so sorry. She said that the dinners weren't planned. She confessed that since Katy wasn't a mathematician, she thought it would be the same for me. I reminded her that we're all different, and she listened. Then we hugged, and everything was better. Kind of like in Disney movies.
I leave Mom to her break down and head to my room. I pass our little teeny doggie room set close to the bedrooms of my sister and brother. Spotting our dog, Ash, a black labrador, I run to him. We got him around the same time Sabrina got Kai, her husky. He's so cute! All dogs are cute! I mean, Ash can be cute, most of the time he just likes keeping solitary and running on a daily basis.
We actually got Ash after Easton kept begging and begging Mom to have a dog. He was quoting health things like, "Dogs make you happier and healthier!" And stuff like, "Oh! Dogs are good at this! They're good at that! They lower blood pressure and save you from heart attacks!" I later found out, that is actually true.
Then when we finally got our dog, Easton was like, "Let's name him Ash!" I forgot to mention, when Easton was like 10, about 5 years ago, he thought of something so stupid. He was nagging Mom about it too. He said he wanted to change his name to Ash. Of course, Mom refused, but she let it slide for the dog. Plus, the name matches his coat. I wanted to name him Basil before, but then I realized basil is actually green, and Ash isn't green, so we declared the name final. Personally, I still like the name Basil. He doesn't have to be green!
I decide to take Ash for a walk. Fresh air is all I want right now. We stroll for what feels like ages, and from what I know, the pain has stopped. Maybe dogs make things better all the time! That would be truly amazing. If dogs could make all things better, they would be miraculous little cuties. They could cure cancer! By just licking someone's face. That would be incredible.
The most important thing though, is if dogs could cure a broken heart. For good. If that was really true, I would get a thousand dogs to help me heal. I would be so grateful. They'd be heroes. Not only turning evil into good but making everyone so happy. That would be a real treat. I sigh. If only...
As soon as I'm done with Ash, I bring him back into the house. The equation of friendship catches my eye, and I bite my lip, nervous to the guts. I grab a piece of paper from my desk drawer. I rip some tape from the tape dispenser and slap them onto the piece of paper. Then, pasting it onto the wall over the equation, I breathe in deeply. This is something I've never done in my whole entire life.
Covering up the equation simply means that I'm kind of covering up our friendship. But in reality I'm covering up the pain of the fact that I might never see her again. I know it's only been like a day since she was taken, but it's awful. Sabrina's family is constantly getting phone calls and talking to the police. It's insane.
I sob, hoping I can make a plan to save my best friend. I'm blank-minded, ready to steal any ideas that pop into my mind. Anything will do, anything! Anything that is in perfect sense and that I can do.
I ponder the possibilities of an idea that's perfect, popping in my head. It's not very likely, and I'm clueless to the max. I wish I had the strength and courage and guts to just dive into the ocean and search for Sabrina. That would take me years to accomplish. Right now though, I don't have any hope. No hope means no chance. No chance of saving Sabrina.
What am I going to do?