Since today was going to be another lonely day, I decided that I wanted to spend it with my best friend on the beach. Here I live in this six-bedroom house, and I am an only child whose parents are never home. Most kids would be happy to be in my shoes, but if you asked me, it was terrible. So instead of moping around the house by myself, I decided to pull out my phone and call Izzy. After three rings and a groggy “hello?” from my favorite person, I asked Izzy if she wanted to spend the day with me in the sand.
“A healthy dose of skin cancer you say? You know that I am always up for anything that brings d**h sooner!” Izzy replied with her voice cleared of sleep. Don't get the wrong idea about Izzy; she isn't crazy. I guess you would call people like her emo, but without the constant moaning and groaning about how much life s**s. She doesn't really want to die anytime soon; d**h just interests her.
“Good. I'll come and pick you up.” I told her while I crawled out of bed to put on my purple bikini and wrap a towel around my waist. I headed to my bathroom and brushed out my brunette hair as I stared into my green eyes. I hated that my hair was too straight to curl. I envied Izzy's waves. One positive thing about it though, I never had to worry about frizz because my hair was a healthy oily and laid flat.
After my bathroom preparation, I walked down the spiral staircase and headed out the front door to my car. Actually calling it a car is kind of an insult. My parents got me it for my fifteenth birthday because they thought a Porsche would make everything better. Even though my car is my baby, it still doesn't make up for the fact that my parents are never around. I see them twice a week, which is on Sundays and Wednesdays. I have tried asking them so many times why they are never around, and they always tell me “You will understand one of these days.” I hate that answer. What do they expect me to understand? Am I supposed to be happy that I even get to see them at all? It is a good thing I have such close friends like Izzy. I would probably have ended up in a gang or something without her.
I headed through the crowed city to her house, and when I pulled into her driveway, I was prepared to wait. Izzy likes to take her sweet time getting ready because she is always on the prowl for a new boy toy. Today though she only took three extra minutes, which I am pretty sure is a new record for her.
“About time you got here; I have been waiting on you!” Izzy exclaimed as she got in the pa**enger seat, and all I could do was giggle. She had to take her time because she was wearing a mini skirt over her bikini and a pair of heels. Her outfits were always ridiculously skimpy, even for the beach. I swear that if she turned around too fast, her b**b would fall out of her yellow top.
“You know Izzy; we aren't going to a club,” I said gently. “Why do you always wear such revealing clothing? If you want to find a good guy, make yourself look more respectable. Plus those heels are going to get ruined in the sand.”
Since Izzy and I practically live on the beach, it didn't take very long to get there. To be quite honest, if we wanted to we could walk to the beach. Our part of the city is located about a mile from the shore. I just happen to be like every other teenage girl; I love to flaunt my shiny and expensive objects. This is exactly why I chose to drive verses walking.
“Today we are going hunting, okay Shay? I really need to find me some fresh meat before next semester starts, and there is only four days left.” Izzy took a breath and looked at me when I didn't immediately reply. Her face started to show signs of panic. “Are you listening? We only have four days until next semester. Do you know what that means?”
“Yes, Izzy, I know what that means. It means that we will be officially starting our junior year, and you need a new man at the beginning of every year. When will you learn that you don't need a guy to make all the other girls jealous? They already want to be like us, so why make them more miserable. There is all year for doing that. You are not queen of the school, and you don't need to act like it.” I took a glance her way, and she looked hurt. I felt bad for chewing her out, so I went on. “Okay, you are queen of the school, but you are not the only one.”
After I said that, she cheered up, and started laughing. I really wasn't that shallow, but sometimes you tell your friends what they want to hear to keep them happy. Did we act as if we ruled the school? Of course we did. I, however, tried to be as nice as possible about it, but I'm not perfect.
“Of course I am not the only queen; a single queen equals a lonely queen. If I did all the work myself, I wouldn't have any fun.” Izzy smiled at me and flipped her long blonde hair over her shoulders. When she looked at me with that happy glint in her blue eyes, I knew I had said the right thing.
Our conversation stopped right as we arrived at our destination. I sat in my seat for a moment to enjoy the view, and to unstick my legs slowly from the black leather seat. The beach was packed today, which wasn't very surprising. Most of the kids that occupied the beach were from my school. Like us they were trying to enjoy the last of our two week summer vacation. See, I go to one of those private year-round schools that don't give the students a three-month summer vacation, so we enjoy what we get, while we can.
As I got out of the car, I grabbed my tote bag careful not to scratch the blue paint on my door. Izzy and I headed over to our favorite spot. Our small plot of sand has rocks surrounding all sides but the one facing the water. I am not talking tiny rocks either; I am talking about rocks that insure our privacy. We loved this spot because here, we were in our own world. After we finished setting up our towels, we laid out and applied our tanning oil.
“Race you to the water.” I looked over and dared Izzy.
“Yeah right, like you could beat me!” She yelled back at me as we sprinted to the ocean.
I dove in headfirst. Izzy was right on my tail. I swam deeper, so she wouldn't see me. Then I grabbed her leg from behind and pulled her down with me. I let go and went to the surface of the water to find that she was freaking out. I busted out laughing.
“What's wrong Izzy; did a big bad sea creature get you?” I said in a taunting voice.
“Shay I am going to k** you for that!” She screamed, her face turning red with embarra**ment. She turned and swam towards shore now in a huffy mood.
“Oh come on, you act like there is actually something scary out here. You really need to lighten up.” Following suit, I headed back to our towels to start frying. There is nothing that I love more than roasting in the sun. My pale skin needed all the help it could get, and if I didn't tan at least twice a week, I couldn't hold any color. Izzy sprawled out on her towel next to me, but not before, she smacked my back.
“Geez, what was that for?” I gave her a dirty glare.
“Pay back,” she said with a co*ky grin.
“I didn't actually hurt you though. Now I am going to have a bruise.” I put on my best pouty face, and looked at her with sad eyes.
“Well, let's see scaring me half to d**h is a form of hurting me.” She started, ignoring the look I was giving her. “You know I could be scarred for life now because of you. I may never swim in the ocean again.” Izzy started to babble just like her older sister, who was majoring in psychology. Diana, Izzy's older sister, likes to talk about everything that she is learning, and this week she is learning about phobias. Of course, this meant that I was as well.
“How about you shut up and stop acting like Diana or I will throw you back in the water.” I said and punched her on her arm. We started laughing all over again.
We had only been sunbathing for about twenty minutes when I heard a strange noise. I looked up from my towel to find Myles starring back down at us with a hungry look in his gray eyes. His face didn't look right, and his blonde hair was messier than usual. I found this to be very odd because he was always so neat with his appearance. Myles and I had known each other for years, and I had never seen him with a single strand out of place. His mother was very uptight about looks, especially since her husband was a very important man. I really believed that her biggest fear was her family making a fool of themselves.
When his look started to make me uncomfortable, I began to ask him what he was doing, but by the time, I opened my mouth he was on top of Izzy biting into her neck. I had no reaction to what was happening in front of me. My mind and body completely shut down. I couldn't believe what I was seeing; what he did was just to savage for a human. I tried mentally shaking myself because I thought I was in a dream, a very bad dream.
I knew I was in reality, however, when Izzy let out a piercing scream. All I could think was no one would hear her. After all that is one of the reasons why we chose this spot. We like quiet. We come out here far from the main beach, so that if everyone there is yelling or playing loud music we won't hear them.
My blood was running cold through my veins as I tried to put a coherent thought together. It was nearly impossible since my mind was repeating, “No one can hear her, so no one would hear me. There is no help. There is no help.” A tear leaked from my eye as I blankly stared ahead.
Was he really drinking from her? No that can't be it. A rabid animal must have bitten him, and it is making him crazy. Wait. Does that happen? Does rabies make you bite people? All these thoughts rushed in at once when he looked at me with blood covering his face. Though my mind was slowly warming back up, all I could do was stare at him, and watch as his throat moved with the last gulp. When I finally made eye contact, shame covered his face. The look he gave me screamed, “Please forgive me.”
Before I realized what I was doing, I reached out to pull Izzy away from him. My arms were shaking and my hands drenched in sweat. I was attempting to move slowly, so that I didn't startle him because that's what you do around wild animals. Right? Unfortunately, I was too late. I never got a chance to help Izzy because he was gone almost as fast as he came and the damage to her was beyond repair.
More tears spilled on my cheeks as my brain wrapped around the concept that Izzy was dead. My best friend was lying dead in my arms. What did I just witness? I pinched my arm while sending a pray that this was a dream. I needed to wake up. I needed Izzy to be okay, and I could tell her about this awful nightmare. She would laugh and tell me that it was hilariously awesome. “What a cool way for me to go out,' she'd say. I didn't know what else to do, so I wrapped my towel around her neck attempting to stop the bleeding.
No one is going to believe what really happened, I told myself. She was my best friend, but I knew how this looked. I couldn't just leave her because her parents knew she was with me. If I told the truth though, people would think I was crazy. I would be placed in an asylum or prison for murder; I was old enough to be tried as an adult. This looked brutal enough to put me away for sure. Normally, I wasn't so self-centered, but if I actually thought about what the issue was, I would go insane.
I had to do something besides sit here though, so I called 911.
I thought about what I was going to say as I waited for the police to arrive. I knew that if I told them about Myles they would send me to the crazy bin faster than I could say ‘loony'. Therefore, I had to make something up, but it had to be something believable. I wanted to make sure that I didn't look like I was lying, so to hide some of my nervous shaking I started heavily crying. Which wasn't that hard to pull off considering I had my best friend in my arms, growing colder by the minute.
The ambulance arrived first and loaded Izzy onto a stretcher. One of the men started CPR while that other asked me what happened to her neck. I kept my eyes focused on his suit as I told him that a wild animal did it, but I was too terrified to register what it was. After a many rounds of chest compressions with no success, they pronounced her dead at the scene.
By then the cops had showed up, but they were busy discussing Izzy's cause of d**h with the paramedics to notice me at first. One of them told an officer that I had been here when it happened, so the tall bald one walked over to me and a female shortly followed him. His blue suit sent shots of panic through my body.
“Hello miss, my name is Officer David Jones and this is my partner Candice Baker. Why don't you start with your name and then tell us what happened here.” The officer said to me as he looked over at Izzy's corpse. He was intimidating, but I guess all cops are at first.
“I am Shay Thompson. That is Izzy Keeser.” I pointed with a vibrating hand to the red and white ambulance. “We were just tanning when a wild animal jumped from the top of that rock there and attacked her. I was afraid and I didn't know what to do. Obviously, we don't have anything here to fight it off with, so I just started picking up rocks and throwing them. When that didn't work I went up and kicked it in the belly. It ran off and I tried to stop her bleeding with my towel. I didn't… I didn't know what else to do, so I called 911.” I told them as calmly as I could. My voice stuttered but to them it would only seem like I was frightened. They would have no idea that I was making the whole story up.
“Do you know what kind of animal attacked Miss Keeser?” Officer Baker looked at me skeptically.
“No, no ma'am I don't. Like I told the paramedics, my brain didn't register what kind. I was more worried about getting it away from her than, what it was.” I silently hoped I was coming across as believable.
“Did she try to fight back?” Now it was Officer Jones' turn to ask a question.
“She must have fallen asleep because she didn't scream until it bit her. I was facing away from her, so I didn't notice the creature either until it she screamed.” I replied more naturally, I was finally starting to calm down on the inside.
The officers asked me a few more questions and told me that they would call her family and explain what happened. I just nodded and started walking away from them when they told me I could go home.
The drive home was silent. I didn't bother rolling down my window or turning on music. I sat surrounded by her left over perfume. I was strange how I never noticed before that she wore too much of it. My senses were on hyper-drive and everything about her was registering. Every little thing that I hadn't paid attention to before was now scrolling through my mind.
You know when you drive somewhere, but you don't actually recall the drive. You don't remember the turns you took or if you stopped at the stop signs. This was one of those kinds. When I finally made it home, it only took five steps towards the door and I was on the ground bawling. The full effect of Izzy's d**h had finally hit me. I now just understood what that meant. I was never going to see her again. I was never going to hear her laugh anymore. We weren't going go to school together for our first day as juniors. She wasn't going to be prowling around for boys with me behind her shaking my head.
An half an hour later, I pulled myself up from the hot ground. I was thankful for our gated community, but sad when I realized my skin was burned from the ground. Izzy would have lectured me about how fragile I was and that I needed to be more careful. Just like that, I was crying again. With no other options, I went upstairs to my room and curled up in a ball on my bed. I drifted into a restless sleep as I sobbed. My dreams filled with the scene of the crime. My mind reeling with questions, but they would have to be answered another day. Today, I was just going to lay in bed and mourn the loss of the greatest person in my world.