Teen Idols And Happy Meals

Ginger And Regrets

Nikki's POV

"You look different these days."

I glanced up from where I'd been drumming my fingernails, blunt edged and sparsely painted with Maybelline's Navy Narcissist nail polish, to regard my former best friend. Caddie sat across from me in the obnoxiously colorful booth, the harsh industrial lights above casting a sickly glow on her gaunt cheeks. Despite the heated air being pumped through the vents, she was still shivering in her black windbreaker.

"So do you," I replied. As of late, there was little left of the girl I'd known for more than half my life. Once a voracious contrarian who treated boys like handbags, did her homework on the dash of my car each morning, and believed limits only applied to other people. She'd been a dreamer with no plans to wake up. Only now she'd been thrust, unprepared, into the searing light of painful reality, and that light had burned away the very thing that made Caddie, well Caddie. The person who sat across from me now was a shell - a stranger. A sleepwalker.

"That jacket looks new," she said blandly, ignoring my comment entirely as her bloodshot eyes focused on the cream colored leather jacket that currently adorned my frame.

"Jacen bought it for me," I muttered defensively, my skin crawling with the judgment I could feel passing from her to me.

"He get you those shoes too?" she asked flatly, picking at a loose string that hung from the hem of her tattered sleeve.

"He's my boyfriend," I retorted in annoyance. I'd been conflicted about letting Jacen take me shopping but he'd insisted, saying it was his way of making up for our fight, even though it had mostly been my fault I knew. "He's allowed to buy me things from time to time. There's nothing wrong with that."

Caddie didn't say anything, just adverted her eyes and ran a trembling hand through her greasy hair. "Did you really go to all this trouble just to shoot the breeze with me?" she asked, gesturing nonsensically to the McDonald's interior around us. It was late, nearly ten, and my shift had ended an hour ago. I'd stayed late, had Carter arrange for Caddie to meet him here, but really it was me waiting for her when she arrived. She'd tried to leave when she spotted me, but I'd pulled on her sleeve and insisted, and finally she'd sat down.

"You know I didn't," I sat, trying to meet her eyes but to no avail. She was looking at everything but me. "You know what I want to talk about."

"Let me take a guess," she muttered hostilely, finally looking up at me. Her eyes, dark brown with red veins spidering out from the iris like cracks in a porcelain vase, bore into me. "Is it the drugs?" she snapped darkly, leaning closer with every guess, her expression twisted up in anger. "The drinking? The stealing? The men? Take your fucking pick!"

I had to work to keep from snapping back at her in the same nature; it would've been so easy to fly off the handle and scream at her like I wanted to. I wanted nothing more than to shake some god damn sense into her, but I knew it wouldn't work.

"Sylvia," I replied evenly.

She recoiled like I'd slapped her, sinking back into her seat like a wounded animal. "We don't talk about Sylvia," she said quietly.

"We have to," I insisted, reaching out for her hand but she pulled it back. "Caddie, what you're doing isn't healthy. I know Sylvia was important to you. She was important to me too, believe me. She was one of my best friends. It's been hard losing Sylvia. But Caddie, it's been even harder losing you."

"Stop it," she hissed, her expression tight with pain, like she was holding in tears. "Stop talking about Sylvia like she's dead. She's not dead."

"I'd like to believe that too Cad," I said gently, "And maybe you're right. But . . . It's been almost three months and no leads. You have to accept the possibility that Sylvia is . . . gone."