The past couple of days has definitely not been easy for me, I lost my partner in crime, and the worst part is that nobody knows what happened or how. I expected the lack of evidence since the last place she was seen was at a house party with me, and there was a lot of drinking. I was sober the whole time and so was Amanda, at least she was before I left. I had to leave early, around 11:30pm because I had to be up early the next morning for work. Sometimes I feel like if I hadn’t left she would still be here with me on the phone, talking about what outfit to wear for school.
I get up out of bed to get ready for school. I go into the bathroom to take a shower and change into my outfit. Lately, I’ve been feeling a cold gush of air every morning when I’m done changing, I find it really strange since its mid spring and almost summer, it gives me goose bumps. I grab my car keys and cell phone from my night stand and take off to school. Yet another day without a phone call from Amanda’s saying, “I LITERALLY HAVE NOTHING TO WEAR ALYSSA!”
I never look forward to school anymore; everyone always stares and talks about Amanda, saying how much they miss her. Those who say that would never even talk to her when she was alive. I arrive at school and head to Civics for first period. It should be illegal to have history for the first class of the day, it’s impossible to not fall asleep. I was the first one in class, so I put my stuff down on my desk and went to the restroom. There are usually a lot of girls in the restroom touching up their makeup, fixing their hair, but today it was just me.
I started fixing my hair and in the corner of my eye I see the reflection of someone who looked exactly like Amanda. I quickly turned to look, but there was no one there. I squatted down and looked underneath the stalls to see if maybe they had entered the stall already, but I was alone. I thought maybe I was thinking too much. I brushed it off for the rest of the day and made my way back to class.
The rest of the day at school didn’t get much better, every class had awkward silence when I walked in and the lunch table wasn’t any better. After school I was walking to my car when I realized that I forgot my keys in my P.E locker. I always carried my keys attached to my I.D badge, which I took off before P.E, and would leave in my P.E. locker.
I made my way back into the building and entered the locker room. School was over so nobody was in there anymore. I’ve always hated being alone in locker rooms, any room without windows for that matter. In the horror movies I’ve watched some psychotic killer comes out and murders the main character. I started to put my combination on the lock and I heard an extremely loud noise that scared me so bad I probably jumped at least 2 feet high in the air. The noise was like the sound of a locker being shut with a ton of force.
I know how all cliché horror movies go, there is an intruder and the main character hears an unusual noise and calls out “Who’s there?” as if the intruder is going to respond. So of course, I don’t make that dumb move. Instead I go and check where the noise came from; turning every corner, but there was no sign of anyone. I started to panic; I quickly opened my locker and tried to rush out the door with my keys in hand, but as I got close to the door there was a foggy gray mist forming in front of it. I was freaked out, but for some reason I had a calming feeling inside that I cannot explain. The mist began to start forming a silhouette and I thought I was going crazy, what the heck was happening.
Before I knew it the mist had gone from a silhouette to a full body figure. It was Amanda. I was in shock and couldn’t move my body. “Alyssa I know what you’re thinking, but please don’t be scared!” she said slowly, walking towards me.
I looked in disbelief, still not being able to move. I shut my eyes as tight as possible and said, “This is just my imagination, get it together Alyssa,” and opened my eyes again.
“Still here” Amanda said waving at me almost jokingly.
“Look, I know this is a lot to take in but I need you to hear me out” she said to me.
“H-how are you- how did you- what are you doing here?” I asked her. I wasn’t sure if this was real or not, I honestly thought I was going insane. My best friend coming back from the dead as a ghost does tend to shake a person up. I sat down on the benches they had next to the lockers to pull myself together, I buried my face into my hands and rubbed my eyes.
I looked back up and Amanda was gone… “Just kidding, I’m over here! ha-ha!” I heard her by the bathroom stalls. Same old Amanda.
I walk over to her and stared at her, my heart still pounding. She looked so real, as if she had never left. I felt like crying, for one because I’ve missed her so much and seeing her right in front of me got me emotional, and two because I knew she wasn’t really here it was only her spirit.
“I hope I didn’t scare you too much, but I really need your help Alyssa,” she said breaking the silence.
“Is this real? Tell me I’m not going crazy” I told her.
“Yes, but whether you believe what you see, or not, please put it aside for now because I really need you right now.”
I knew this wasn’t my imagination, I’ve always believed in the paranormal and you would think seeing it right in front of me would be more evidence, but it didn’t. It only made me confused.
“Alyssa, you all don’t know what happened to me and neither do I. I need you to help me figure out who did this to me” Amanda said to me very calmly. “I can’t move on without closure Alyssa, I am stuck between this plane of existence and the next until I find out who did it.”
I could see it in her eyes, how bad she wanted me to help her. “You had me at ‘I really need your help’” I said to her smiling. She didn’t have to say anything more, I knew what I had to do and she disappeared.
I left the locker room and finally headed home. The drive home was quiet, usually I play the music really loud because it relaxes me, but today there was no music. I spent the drive home thinking, maybe a little too much about how and where to start investigating on what happened to Amanda. I arrived home and ate a little snack before dinner and went to my room.
I plopped myself on my bed and did what I have been trying to avoid doing the past few weeks, which is to relive what happened the night Amanda was murdered. There wasn’t much for me to remember because I wasn’t there for most of the time, but I knew a lot of people who were. That is where I needed to start, by asking people questions. Finally, a day of school I was looking forward too, not because of school itself but because of the information I needed to uncover.
TUESDAY: The next day at school I began by asking Michelle, a good friend of mine who was at the party about what she saw that night. After a short conversation all she knew was that Amanda was really wasted and dancing by the pool twirling her cup around, typical. She also mentioned that two guys tried helping Amanda out because we couldn’t walk up right by herself, she said she didn’t know who one of the guys was, but the other was someone named Isaiah.
I was really good friends with the counselors at school, they would never show me anyone’s grades, but they would tell me what class a student would be at. I asked my counselor to show me a picture so I would know who I am looking for and he also told me that Isaiah’s 2nd hour was in room A32, I headed that way.
I found Isaiah by his locker and I saw him arguing with a girl, so I waited until they were done talking. I overheard the girl say, “WHAT WERE YOU EVEN DOING WITH HER?” and then she walked away.
I walked towards him and taped him on the shoulder, “Hi, you don’t know me but I really need to ask you something”
“Sure, go ahead” he replied.
“On Saturday I heard you were helping Amanda while she was drunk, do you know what happened after?” I asked.
“This is actually what me and my girlfriend were arguing about right now, my friend Jacob and I were helping her out and put her down on the coach so she could rest, and Jacob snapped a picture of me with my arm around her shoulder, and my girl took it the wrong way.”
There were pictures from the party that got out; most of them were on social network sights already and several of them had Amanda in them. Isaiah told me he and Jacob dragged her into a room because they didn’t want to leave her alone on the couch. Apparently surveillance cameras from the house party caught them in the act and they were immediately suspects. Isaiah’s friend Jacob cleared their names showing a receipt for when they were at McDonalds around the same time police believe Amanda was murdered.
After school I went home and looked at all the pictures from the party that Amanda was in and printed every single one with a guy in the picture. There was a total of five different guys all of which I recognized because they went to our school. Two of them were Isaiah and Jacob who were already off the hook so I didn’t focus on them. I didn’t want to question these three other guys as I felt like maybe watching their behavior and would help me lean towards one of them.
WEDNESDAY: At school I started with guy number one, I followed him to every one of his classes, watched him socialize and when he was alone to see any suspicious behavior, but got nothing. He was living his normal life, no sign of anything. I wasn’t even sure what to look for. All I knew was that anyone who did something that serious would have to at LEAST show some sign of concern, if maybe someone was catching on to them.
THURSDAY: Moving on, next was guy number two. I decided on doing the same routine that I did with the first guy. I followed him to all his classes and nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Everything seemed to check out okay with guy number two until after lunch. I saw him whispering something to someone on the phone; he looked very concerned and kept looking around to see if anyone was listening. Luckily he didn’t spot me, I tried really hard to listening to what they were saying, but all I could catch was him saying “Just keep cool man” which was enough for me to proceed with this guy.
I went back to Michelle and showed her a picture of guy number two; she knew a lot of people around the school. “Oh yeah, that’s Alex” she said after showing her the picture of him.
“Who was he with at the party?” I asked her.
“Yeah, he went with Matt” she replied. I knew Matt from back in middle school. We were best friends back then, but grew apart but still remained fairly close. I looked for him during passing time and found him at his locker.
“Hey Matt, you got a sec?” I asked him.
“Oh hey Alyssa, sure watcha need?” he replied.
“You were with Alex at the party right? Was he alone with Amanda at any point?” I bluntly asked holding a picture up.
He told me that he know what I was thinking and did admit that Alex disappeared for a while, but that he has known Alex for a long time and he could never be capable of something like that. I told Matt that I had noticed that Alex was acting rather strange and he simply said that he must be stressed from school work because he is failing most of his classes.
“Look Matt, I know this is a huge accusation to make with little proof but I’m looking for some answers okay, please let me know if you hear something okay?” I asked him and he nodded.
I decided not to waste my time too long on Alex because I didn’t have much to go on, but I wasn’t going to give up on him either. For the mean time, until I gathered more information. Guy number three was up; I didn’t have to wait until the next school day to watch him like the others. He was fairly simple to figure out because well, let’s just say he wasn’t into girls. I felt like I was at square one again. I didn’t know what to look for anymore. I didn’t expect Amanda to be guiding me along the way, but I didn’t expect to be doing this alone either. This felt like a dead end, until Matt came to me.
SATURDAY: It had been a couple days since I had spoken to Matt about Alex. He came to my house and revealed some shocking information. He told me that after I talked to him he went to Alex’s house after school; he was noticing something strange about Alex as well, but didn’t want to accept it. While Alex was showering Matt said he found a video on his computer that had what looked like Alex filming Amanda on a rock talking, but what frightened him the most was that the video was dated the same day and evening she was murdered. Matt confronted him about it after he was out of the shower and Alex got panicky and aggressive.
“I didn’t know what to make of it Alyssa, I’ve never been in a situation like this before” he told me almost in tears. Matt was smart enough to copy the video onto a USB he had with him while Alex was still in the shower. I told him we had to show this to the police, it doesn’t prove that he murdered Amanda, but it does prove he was with her around the same time it happened. He agreed and turned the USB in later that same day anonymously.
Police proceeded to search for more evidence on Alex and with DNA testing with bodily fluids. They had a search warrant they found enough evidence to prove that he was indeed the murderer. I felt a weight release off my shoulders knowing that Amanda’s parents and loved ones could finally receive closure. I wondered what would happen now, if Amanda would show herself to me again, or if she had finally broken between this life the next.
***** 1 week later ****
It’s been exactly six weeks since Amanda was murdered. Today was finally the day to properly say goodbye. Today was Amanda’s funeral. The ceremony was beautiful, they perfectly remembered Amanda like the girl she was, kind, funny, bubbly, and beautiful. I cried but I knew that I shouldn’t, because no matter what I knew Amanda would always be with me in spirit, probably judging my choice of wardrobe, but still with me. After the burial I stayed, for a long time actually. Everyone had left back to Amanda’s house, but I sat down on the grass hoping she would show herself but I got nothing.
It was getting late and as I was about to leave I heard a voice say, “Thank you” and I turned around to see Amanda’s silhouette glowing with a smile on her face. I nodded, smiling back at her and her spirit lifted to the sky. One of the most beautiful things I’ve seen. I felt relieved that now my best friend could finally rest in peace.