Bea.

Ying and Yang

Bea had always been stunning. Throughout secondary school, I was the good one, who stayed at home and handed homework in on time. Bea, who refused to comprehend the concept of work and didn't care whether it was morning or evening, was the bad one in our friendship. We stuck through it all though, no matter where we were. We were ying and yang, and so we often wondered how we worked as friends. A few days after Bea's seventeenth birthday, she met Jon. He coaxed her into all manner of things; from stealing, to heroin, to violence. He sent her down a path that I never fully brought her back from. There were calls from the police, when she needed someone to bail her out or even just someone sober to calm her down. She would turn up at my house at two in the morning drunk and tired, let herself in with my stolen key and crash on the sofa. But then, I got a call at half past 11 one Saturday night from her foster parents, frantic and worried because she hadn't been home for two days. It wasn't unlike her to stay out, but two days was excessive for Bea. I grabbed the Fiesta keys off the kitchen side and drove off in search for her. She wasn't in any of the usual places; I had checked the Horse and Lion, the druggie park, even her old care home, but she wasn't there. I found her just south of Repend Street, curled up in the floor of a derelict house. She couldn't move, the empty drug packets lying used next to her. I brought her back to my house, she'd always felt safer at mine. She said my mum was the kindest person she'd ever met, and that my dad had good taste in music and made her laugh like nobody else ever had. We were the happy home, according to Bea, and the only place she had ever truly felt at home with. I carried her in, still too weak to walk. My mum was up of course, she'd heard the car drive off and knew where I was going. She had hot tea and blankets waiting, kissed us both goodnight and went up to bed. I lay her on the sofa and sat beside her, stroking her hair and whispering kind words in her ear while she shook violently, still in that drug induced state. She fell into the grasps of sleep, and I lay beside her, angry and confused at Jon. I couldn't sleep with his smug face on mind. I slipped out of the blanket covers and set off out once more to Jon's flat. Long story short, he came out of that with a bloody nose and a rather painful groin. He didn't come back after that. I hear he's got a family now, moved down to Bristol. The bastard. From that day on, I vowed to myself never to leave her. She became addicted, thanks to Jon, and I would find her in quite a few alleyways over the years. But we always stuck together.  We vowed, that whatever doss house, whatever back alley I'd find her in, she would always come with me.