The way I see it, the shift isn’t always obvious. You see, one moment Mindy and Sara are fooling around in the sandbox together, and the next, Sara becomes cool and forgets about Mindy. No climax, no expnation. It doesn’t matter if you live in a town like mine where everybody knows each other —it always happens. They just drift apart.I didn’t notice the drifting at first.And at first, it didn’t matter. Because at first, I had Vikki Hanson.

  Vikki Hanson was my best friend from year one to year eleven. She was the type of weird that people wanted to be, more a name than a girl, really. A lot of the time, she was as aggravating as she was exciting. She believed in adventure, and was the type that could only be described as the ones she embarked on. Now I'm not trying to say that Vikki Hanson was an entity of awesomeness, a diamond in a coal mine, or whatever you want to call it. She just was. And we just were.

  That was, of course, until she was murdered.

  I know, I know, that sounds terribly melodramatic, but it’s true. I’ve just decided it’s better to start this off straight. If you don’t like it, you’re free to leave.

  Anyways, it was quite odd to be a victim of murder in the small town Holiday, Texas. If I’m recalling it correctly, the st case was fourteen years ago, with a woman named Kelsey Horowitz, and it was self-caused. But most other folks in my town don’t believe me when I say that I saw it happen.

  I learned at some point, I don’t exactly know when, to keep my mouth shut. When young girls go missing, people don’t like to hear unhinged tales about the causes from little boys. So I zipped up real quick.

  But when it happened, I spouted off the story like a leaky faucet. It started with school, everything starts with school. Or, more accurately, walking home from school.

  It was one of those days where the sun ate every whisper of wind and va ran down your clothes, and everything stuck in awkward pces. The very sky hurt to look at for reasons that shouldn’t have existed. It was only March, but Texas was bipor, and it picked that month to py with Mommy and Daddy’s thermostat.

  Our houses on Bliss Lane were two doors down from each other, so naturally, we walked to and from every destination. We lived in a cute little—not so cute when you live there—community where every street was named after some feel-good concept or another.

  We were strolling down Harmony Avenue when she told me she thought if you poked Mr. Sumpter’s—our history teacher’s—round belly, it’d probably be as hard as a boiled egg. I said there was no way because Mr. Sumpter was too obese for that to be true. She was in the middle of expining her pn to prove me wrong when she suddenly paused and whacked my arm.

  Out of nowhere she asked me if I ever thought we were in a dream and we didn’t know it. So I looked up to where Vikki was zig-zagging between our path of grass and the road, rolling rocks under her beat sneakers.

  She did that a lot. Switching subjects at random, smacking me to ensure she had my undivided attention. It annoyed me at times, there’s no dissatisfaction like the missed opportunity to say what you wanted before a topic change, but I had learned that by being friends with a Vikki Hanson, you just have to roll with it.

  “Like,” she continued, “I’m sleeping right now, and this is my body trying to tell me to wake up, but I can’t.”

  “Then you would just wake up eventually,” I told her.

  “But what if I’m in a coma, and this conversation isn’t even real. OK, pinch me.” I exhaled through my nose, having no desire to because the sun made me cranky, but she was unaffected and she kept nodding at the arm she extended. I reached over and squeezed her skin between my fingers. She spped me with her other hand. “Ffffu-udge stacks, that hurt!”

  I pulled my hand back and ughed, but my arm was tingling from the impact. I scratched it and said, “See, not sleeping.”

  “You don’t know that. If I’m in a coma, then a little pinch wouldn’t wake me, and that pain could be in my head,” she argued.

  I rolled my eyes and hooked my thumbs through my backpack straps. To end an argument with her, you just have to forfeit. I heard her clomping up beside me. “Oh, I know,” I breathed sarcastically, “What if we’re both dead and we don’t know it?”

  Vikki considered this. She shook her head. “Nah, death would feel different.” And only you would know, wouldn’t you? I’d think weeks ter. “Hey, when I die, I want you to go to my funeral wearing your hedgehog tie and your fmingo socks.” If only she had known, would she be saying that?

  I didn’t wear my hedgehog tie, and I didn’t wear my fmingo socks. Just in case you were wondering.

  “What?”

  She crified, “I want you to wear your—”

  “Ever,” I finished. Forgive me, I was eleven.

  Vikki shot me a withering gre and slugged my shoulder. I pushed her away and adjusted my pack. I could feel sweat pouring under my shirt. We neared the corner of Bliss, the edge of the woods coming into view.

  Holiday’s few neighborhoods held hands with the wild, and a long trail of freshly mowed grass made for our sidewalks. Vikki often liked to drag me on her detours through the woods back then. I never liked getting real dirty, but she would bully me for being a baby, and I despised being seen as a coward more than sensibility. I was a follower.

  She reverted to a different subject (a much safer one, I might add), the questionable contents of school lunch, I think. I strongly agreed with her cims, about the pizza tasting like cardboard marinated in oil. Just as I was eborating on my theory about the cheese being melted pstic, her hand shot out to cmp around my mouth.

  “Shh,” she murmured, her index finger pressed to her lips. My eyebrows drew down and I licked her palm so she’d move it. She did, and I said, “Vikki, what the hell?”

  She inclined her head towards the trees and I followed her gaze, but saw nothing. Just lots and lots of trees. Some dead and some just beginning to bud green on their branches. I didn’t see any unusual signs of death, any bck cats weaving through the trunks. There wasn’t lightning striking the earth. There weren't any tails-side-up pennies on our path.

  With an equally hushed tone and some hefty irritation, I mumbled, “What now?”

  She shushed me again, this time with more urgency. She tugged me toward the tree line, asking me what if I heard what she heard.

  I shrugged, indicating no, I hadn’t heard anything. But I felt. I could feel water from Wednesday’s rain seeping into my shoes, I could feel sweat pstering my shirt to my back, and I could feel irritation. “And neither do you.”

  Vikki ignored me and cupped a hand around her ear, leaning forward. “It sounds like…a crunch. Like someone stepping.”

  “A deer,” I deadpanned. “Or a serial killer,” she countered.

  “Or a raccoon. Come on, let’s just…go home. It feels like a furnace out here.” It was always difficult to get her to listen. Vikki Hanson spoke her own nguage.

  “Or a ghost.”

  I ran a cmmy hand down my face and groaned. “Oh my gosh, I hate you.”

  She just shrugged, her green eyes reflecting the foliage, a small grin hooking at the corner of her lip. I contempted my options for a second, mostly just wondering if there was any other excuse I could use to stall the inevitable.

  “Vik, my mom’s making spaghetti tonight,” I whined mely.

  She cocked her eyebrow at me and gave me The Look, the one that every female gives that can neither be expined or imitated by the opposite sex. The one that I swear every mother passes on to their daughter. “And?”

  “And if we get eaten by, I dunno, Bigfoot or something, I’m gonna be really pissed at you.”

  The Look deepened. She pced her hands on my shoulders and thrust me forward, and against my better judgement, I didn’t fight it.

  This next part is where it gets a bit iffy. It’s weird that I don’t remember as much about the part that seems to be the most important and that I can tell you almost every detail about the insignificant conversation we had, but I guess I’ll make do with what I know.

  There was a whole lot of walking involved. Before we stepped into the muddy woods, we propped our bags against the bark. She had gone into detective mode, thinking every leaf pyed a part in the probably-not-mystery. I just walked quietly, avoiding the sludgiest parts of the ground and holding my shirt away from my skin. If you can’t tell already, I didn’t like the woods.

  They made me feel scared and jumpy, even though they were always there and I knew where they were just like I knew where Jimmy’s Hardware (my dad’s shop) was located. I think it’s just the not knowing that made me uncomfortable. I’m a huge fan of answers and knowing. I rely on it, and it is one of my deepest policies.

  Vikki…not so much.

  A thick cloud had passed over the gnarled, dead branches, relieving some of my torture while provoking it all the same. I stepped more cautiously and closer to her, constantly gncing over my shoulder any time I heard a squirrel zip into its hole.

  “Have you found what you’re looking for yet?” I grumbled, my voice threaded with strings of anxiety.

  She took her time with her reply, but eventually all that came was an unimpressive, “No.”

  I remember starting to feel something incredibly wrong. Something —something— wasn’t right. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but my stomach suddenly clenched and my breath leapt to my throat and I circled slowly. “Vikki,” I whispered with trepidation, “Vikki, let’s get out of here.”

  She was still, her eyes narrowed at an object that wasn’t me. And that’s what I realized was wrong. The stillness. You hear in stories all the time about the air becoming thick with foreboding before something bad happens, but even in the moments where I’d be all skittish because it was dark and I’d just watched some horror movie I wasn’t supposed to, I would never understand until then. I could literally feel a tug on my gut, as if a noose had been tied to my stomach. But instead of having impeccable survival instincts kick in, I just wanted to barf. “Vikki,” I hissed again, my tone nearing obnoxious. “something’s not right. Let’s go.”

  Miraculously, she listened and I sighed with relief. I wanted to leave, but the truth was, I was too scared to go by myself. She nodded slowly, and I saw the silent fear in her pale eyes.

  And we walked back the way we came. We were going to be safe. Until we weren’t.

  About halfway through our trek, there was a noise. My breath crawled up my throat again, and the hairs on my sweatslick neck stood. Vikki reached for my hand. I held it gdly. “That’s the noise I heard,” she informed me.

  She stood close enough for me to feel her golden tresses sticking to my cheek. Sweat pooled between our hands, but it was cold now. I listened for that noise, and it came again. Surely, it came.

  I would like to say that it was my imagination that I heard it, but knowing what I do now, I can assure it wasn’t. It was a clicking, half-moan half-static sound, like a recording pyed backward.

  I opened my mouth to speak, but Vikki stopped me with a deer in the headlights gnce. I can’t tell you how long we stood like that, but I can tell you that when we saw a figure zip through the brush, we weren’t keen on staying.

  I don’t know who screamed louder. Me or Vikki. They seemed to intertwine with each other, and she was swearing and it, whatever it was, looked at us.

  Actually, no, it didn’t really look at us. It mostly just swiveled its slimy gray head in our direction. It didn’t have eyes, just hollow bck sockets where you’d expect to see some. It was crouched over, the ridges of its spine poking through its milky skin.

  I wasn’t akin to looking at it. So like idiot kids, we pivoted and ran. Our hands tore apart and mud flew up under our feet. My lips parted with another scream and I could hear Vikki whispering, “nothumannothumann,” over and over. I felt like I was running like Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean hobbling over the uneven terrain, but I couldn’t worry about that now.

  My legs burned, and I thanked Heaven for adrenaline, because damn, I’d have died any other day. My heart roared in my ears and so did the sickening sound of something rge prowling in the distance. I wasn’t sure how far away it was, but I was more determined to put as much space between it and me than figuring it out. Maybe it’s a distortion of memory, but any time I think about it, I imagine that we were flying, almost in slow motion.

  The moment sted forever and instantaneously all at once, because next thing I knew, I was on the ground. “Shit!” I yelped, but a hand shot out to pull me up. I only half-noticed my leg scraping across a gnarled root.

  “Shit, Eddie, you good?” Vikki materialized beside me, her little body heaving with energy. But she didn’t let me answer. She pushed us toward somewhere, and then we were crammed in a massive hollow of a nearby tree.

  “Shit, Eddie, you good?” Vikki materialized beside me, her little body heaving with energy. But she didn’t let me answer. She pushed us toward somewhere, and then we were crammed in a massive hollow of a tree.

  You know how sometimes you’ll see those thick trees with the colossal divots in the wood? Well, yeah, they’re pretty huge, but not when two people are shoved in there hiding from an otherworldly beast. I don’t think I’d ever been more terrified in all of my life, but at the same time, I had the inane thought that if Vikki didn’t remove her elbow from my bdder, I was going to pee on her.

  I let my head fall against the tree with a thump, my eyes falling shut. I couldn’t bring myself to stress about how many bugs were probably crawling over me, because I was too busy scared that I was going to get eaten. And there were a million little cuts and scrapes on my body from the fall.

  I felt breathing on my cheek and opened my eyes with a gulp, half expecting to see the Bogey Man or something. Nope. Just Vikki. “You’re bleeding,” the words pouring over my skin in a cold breath. She pressed a finger to my forehead to show me the evidence. And then, as if she’d tossed me into fire, pain bubbled with the red liquid.

  I drew in a sharp breath. I didn’t want to cry, and I don’t think I could’ve with my heart and body pulsing rapidly and simultaneously, but I basically felt like somebody beat the shit out of me. “Ow,” I whined. Vikkie frowned.

  And then we were silent. Uncharacteristically so. Somewhere along our game of cat and mouse, the night had begun to swallow the burning day. I had hoped that with it, there’d be a breeze, but no. The only thing that came was mosquitoes, and they were hungrier than me. Not gonna lie, right then would’ve have been a good time for a motherly hug.

  I promise you, some of these thoughts were ones that occurred on this night, and not from present day. I’d just like to make note of that, because I probably sound very shallow. How could I not? You see, I wish I was super selfless, but I’m not. I was mostly thinking of myself when I should’ve been thinking about Vikki.

  I’ve spent a lot of nights repying that very moment, the uncomfortable expanding and contracting of our shoulders, her breathing, the quiet that sat between us, and the thoughts that must’ve been rummaging through her brain. She was never so quiet, and I should’ve recognized.

  But I didn’t.

  And I’m sorry. Because if she were still here, you’d really like her.

  But she was thinking of me. Or maybe she was thinking of herself. I don’t know. Because some more time, she told me quietly that she was going to go see if that thing was still there. She promised me she would be back. Why didn’t she come back? Stay there, she demanded. Don’t go out until you hear my call, she’d added.

  I nodded numbly, my chest tight. She slipped her arm around my middle in a cramped embrace. I inhaled her scent, a mix of sweat and dirt, and not very enjoyable in any sense.

  She was gone. I sank to the floor and tucked my legs close.

  Okay. Maybe I am selfish, but sometimes I wish that were the st time I saw her.