Chapter 1

Dallas receives some shocking news in the middle of the night.

I got the call at around two in the morning. The ringing shook me awake until I heard my Aunt Bailey walk quickly out of her room and down the hall to the closest phone attached to the kitchen wall. I sat up in my bed and slid my feet out from under my covers and onto the carpeted floor below me. I stretched and yawned and stood up slowly, assuring my balance. I trudged into the kitchen, wearing just a tank top, sweat pants and a pair of socks with my hair in a tangled mess, so I could hear the conversation between my aunt and whoever was on the other end of the call. I sat on a cushion on one of the polished, wooden chairs with the electric fan by the door still on, sending a cool breeze towards me and giving me chill bumps up and down my bare arms. Patiently and tiredly, I waited for her to hang up to find out what was going on. It must be something serious if it’s this late at night.

            “Hello?” she yawned into the phone, holding it up to her ear. I could hear another female voice on the other end. Through the darkness I could see my aunt’s eyes half closed with bags under them, giving her more of an undead zombie appearance. After about twenty seconds of listening to the other woman talk, my aunt gasped and her eye lids suddenly lifted, widening them and she shifted her body towards me, gazing into my eyes with the most worried expression. My aunt began answering with words such has “okay” and “yes” and ended the call with a simple “I’ll tell her. Have a good night.” She gently placed the phone back on the receiver and shifted her gaze back to me, just staring for a moment.

            “What happened?” I whispered. Something bad just happened tonight. I couldn’t help but wonder if my mom or dad ended up in a car crash from driving drunk or that my very old and brittle great-grandmother had passed away in the nursing home. Aunt Bailey continued to stare. She was thinking, probably of how to give me the news. I waited briefly, and watched as she would open her mouth and then pause before finally giving it to me. “It’s about…Andie…”

            “Andie? What happened to Andie? Is she hurt?” I asked, firing one question after another and raising my tone slightly. Andie’s my best friend, almost like a sister to me. And images were already flashing through my mind of her lying unconscious and bleeding on the side of the road, as if she was in a car wreck or in a hospital bed with bandages and bruises covering her face and arms with the heart monitor beeping at a steady, constant pace.

            “Dallas, they heard something fall and her parents found her lying on the bathroom floor…” Aunt Bailey whispered quietly, having a hard time of looking me in the eye.

            “But what happened? Is she okay?! What’s wrong?” I yelled, firing off more questions, desperate to know what else happened. I might have woken up my uncle and younger sister with my voice increasing volume at a rapid rate. 

            “She overdosed. There was an open bottle of pills on the floor next to her.” Aunt Bailey muttered to me again. She hung her head and stared at her bare feet on the kitchen floor below her.

            “But she’s okay now right?” I was getting a sick feeling now, expecting to hear the worse news possible to come right out of her mouth.

            “They called 911 and the ambulance took her to the hospital while she was unconscious but still breathing. They did everything they could to wake her up and…” I gasped. I knew what she was going to say. I just knew and tears were beginning into flood my eyes, getting that choking feeling in the back of my throat. “Andie’s gone now Dallas.”

            I was silent for a minute before I lost it. I fell down to my knees, crying and sobbing my eyes out into the palms of my hands. My best friend had just died tonight. I had just seen her at lunch today. I talked to her and everything seemed fine. But now she’s gone. And I don’t have a clue if this was a complete accident or she just committed suicide. Those thoughts imprinted themselves into my mind as they flowed through my brain a billion times.

            “Dallas, I’m so sorry. I know this must be hard on you.” She grabbed my hands and helped me stand up to my knees and pulled me into a hug. I sobbed even harder into her shoulder, feeling her hand pat and rub my back. A moment later, I pulled away and went back to my room, consistently wiping the hot, salty tears from my eyes. I curled myself into a ball under my thick comforter. There was no possible way I was going to be able to go back to sleep now and I wouldn’t be able to handle a day at school. This is a small town in Tennessee where everyone knows everyone else and it doesn’t take long for news to spread. Everyone will know by morning what happened tonight. Everyone will be talking about it and I just won’t be able to handle the stress and control my emotions.

            Even though I was so upset, I grew sleepy enough to fall back to sleep and rested for the remainder of the night and the majority of the morning. When I rolled over and noticed the sun shining through my windows and my digital clock unplugged, I immediately thought I was late for school and the power had gone out last night. But it took a moment before I realized what had actually happened. Everything was just so hard for me to register now.

 

            I didn’t attend school for the remaining three days of the week. However, I attended the funeral that weekend on Saturday afternoon. I had expected to see myself dressed in black at a funeral soon, but not at one for my best friend. At most, I was expecting the phone call to be about my Great-Grandma Clara who I knew was slowly dying due to her old age at ninety-five.

            I arrived with my Aunt Bailey and my younger sister, Ivie(My Uncle Charlie having to work). I wore the same black skirt and blouse I had worn to my grandfather’s funeral a little over a year ago, nearly matching Ivie’s. Mrs. Lancaster, Andie’s mom, invited us to sit with the family in the front pews since I was a very close to her daughter and her family. The casket was open up front, with many arrangements of flowers next to it. Andie’s chestnut brown hair was curled and she was dressed in her favorite short, purple dress and the matching shrug that she had worn to the last homecoming dance at school; the one where neither of us had dates and decided to go together. I’m going to miss those good times.

            I had known Andie Lancaster since we met in the fifth grade. I actually didn’t like her then. She used to steal my stuff and pick on me. That’s when she was hanging out with the “Bad Crowd”. But once we entered the sixth grade, she had an attitude check and we somehow ended up becoming friends. We ended up in the same homeroom with our lockers right next to each other every year up until our sophomore year. But since the sixth grade, we’d been inseparable.

            During the funeral service, I had been completely cried out from crying for the last three days, although I did shed a few tears here and there, drying them with a tissue from the box at the end of the pew.

            “Andrea Grace Lancaster will be dearly missed by all of her friends and family here in Abbott, Tennessee.” Those were the last words of the eulogy written by the pastor of the local church. I looked over to the pew next to ours and noticed Mrs. Lancaster sobbing into a tissue and her husband patting her head, allowing it to rest on his shoulder. I recognized Sam, her older brother, trying to hold back tears to be manly about it, but he was truly upset that his younger sister that he always protected was now gone. And nobody knew why we were sitting here today, including me.

            Moments later we exited the funeral home in silence, all of us got into vehicles to drive to the cemetery where Andie’s casket would be lowered into the ground. We took up Mr. and Mrs. Lancaster’s offer for us to ride in the limousine to the cemetery with them.  It was mostly silent with the exception of Mrs. Lancaster sniffling her nose and a few quiet sobs.

            Everyone was just quiet that day. Nothing was said when we arrived to the cemetery. And as Andie’s casket was being lowered into the ground, you could only hear the wind blowing through the trees and a few vehicles driving by on the highway.

            This had just been a horrible week for me. And I didn’t know how I was going to face it in the upcoming months. Everything would be different now; for I was now without my best friend in this crazy world and forced to face everything on my own.

Author's Note

Sorry if you think it's short. I just wrote it out this morning, but it's a start.