chapter : murder

the invitation

The Invitation

It was the fifth day of May when things down-spiraled. A week before school was out for the summer, my last summer at Henry B. High School. I was a senior and couldn't wait to graduate so I could finally move out to London, my life long dream. What I thought would be a fun experience turned out to be the down fall of all my closest friends. I woke that morning with a smile and jumped up to check my email. Sure enough, it was there. The thing I'd been anticipating for the past two weeks. I let out a squeal as I clicked on the email, reading;

Congrats,

You have been accepted to spend the next two months of summer in our summer camp. We ask that you will spend the time wisely, actually using the camp for it's intended use,

I remember I had stopped reading at this point. I figured out all I needed to know; I was going to Maine for the summer. I quickly sent off a message to my best friend, Kris, telling her how happy and excited I was invited to spend the summer in Maine. Travel was my favorite thing. Ever since I started at Henry B. four odd years ago I had the thought of travel implanted into my brain.

After reading the fragment of the email, I had skipped out of my room to shower and get ready for school like any other ordinary day. Kris had told me in second hour, our only class together, after checking her email that she was invited to the summer camp as well. In honor, I covered my face with little pastel stickers. Pink hearts and yellow stars. It was the happiest day of my life.

School ended that day in a frenzy, Kris and I were high off the news for the whole day. That night I lay on my bed thinking of the exciting things I was going to experience in Maine, or maybe just with Kris. I also thought of how I'd miss my room. My parents less so, but my room was my safe place.

The fairly lights I strung around my room glowed brightly in response. When I got them, my mom and I joked that they glowed only as long as I kept my innocence. I kept Polaroid photos up around the border of my room taken at each event I went to for whichever elective I'd chosen that year. In freshman year I decided to try out band, where I played clarinet until the end of the year and I decided I wasn't feeling it anymore and I left.

Then when school came back for sophomore year and I was in need for an elective I ended up choosing art in a panic of not knowing what to take. When I started out I wasn't the best at art, only made a few pieces I was particularly proud of, but it was my way of trying something new. The next year I still took art, I ended up falling in love, and added choir to my list of experiences. I went to a couple of contests and quit halfway through the year. I took Spanish class for the remainder of the year. For senior year I got into drama, along with photography. I had some of my most fun moments in my drama class. It's not like I jumped from class to class because I was having an identity crisis, or struggling to find a passion. I knew what I liked and what I wasn't a fan of. But I liked trying out things I wouldn't always try willingly.

My eyes traveled across the border of photos, pausing on one of me and a couple of my friends from freshman year, Sage, Quinn and Dakota. We were best friends for almost three years, middle school all the way to freshman year. I have a photo album full of photos of us together, not including the ones stacked onto my mirror, that have yet to be removed for memory's sake. You can tell there's a strange change in the tone of the art pieces I created and the photos I took. It was no longer bright and happy, but was dark and emotionless. Quinn and I were the first to grow apart. We all had this stupid tradition to go to the local smoothie shop everyday after school to talk about how our day went, until one day she just stopped coming. Not gonna lie, it stung.

Next was Dakota. We came back to school for sophomore year and something in our friendship changed. We didn't stay up until midnight texting each other, and only said hi in the hallways, it's not like we were particularly rude or anything. With Sage, I think it hit me the hardest. It was like, one day she woke up and decided I wasn't worthy of her friendship. She stopped responding to my messages, and ghosted me at school. I will never understand why it happened. But regardless, it was around this point when I met Kris. She was an exchange student from California that year. Only then did I start brightening back up from my depressing phase.

Kris and my ex-besties ended up becoming pretty close, but when they would hang out I would quote-un-quote "coincidentally" have some other-very-important thing to do. It's probably my fault we never reconnected, and I do regret it. Like, if I could go back in time and UN-chicken myself out of those situations, I would. If it meant graduating high school with more than one friend, then yes. I would a million times, risk that awkwardness for a possibility.

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