The Other Girl

Prologue

30th May 2013

Springs' Casu was bustling with energy and life. Every table, every booth was occupied, making Shamiya Rodriguez encourage her waiting staff to fire up their bottoms and hustle. The Casu had been a family business owned by generations of the Rodriguez family in the town of Pepperson. Now handled by Shamiya, a round woman filled with pep in her mid fifties, the Casu was still as charming as ever. Her entire day today was destined to pass by with a constant swarm of seventeen-year-olds entering and exiting the Casu celebrating the joy of never having to attend Pepperson High anymore.

"Ramirez! Fire up your bottoms and give table 17 their order!" Shamiya yelled at her son, the next owner of Springs' Casu.

Table 17 was always reserved unofficially. A simple wooden table with an ever changing table cloth that could hold six seats at once, but was always occupied by just four teenagers. Caroline, Benjamin, William and Evelyn, they were a bunch of best friends with nothing in common whatsoever. Caroline was the head cheerleader and the President of Pepperson High's chess club, Benjamin was the class clown that the corridors of their old high school would miss and a Physics geek in the purest form, William was the golden boy of Pepperson town: sports, academics, cooking, singing, you name it, he aced it. Then there was Evelyn, the last one to become an occupant of table 17 at the Casu, crazy good in math with a knack for coming up with plans that could get her declared lunatic in a second.

Today table 17 held just three of the four occupants. The last one to join was also the first one to leave a vacant seat. She was at the Casu though, sitting at the corner most table adjacent to window overlooking the streets of Pepperson, hidden in plain sight. Caroline's eyes wandered to her former best friend's table every now and then, a new wave of nostalgia hitting her every time. William and Benjamin tried to be unbothered by her presence just a few feet away but their trial failed every time. Evelyn on the other hand was lost, mentally she had still been thinking about the day when she had left the Casu just seconds after she had resigned herself from table 17.

The exit of Evelyn from table 17 that day had been the talk Pepperson for the longest time. No one had known the reason behind it and none of the four were ready to speak about it. All that everyone knew was everything that was obvious.

One day Caroline and Evelyn were scheming about crashing a party hosted by Gabriella Mitch taking place on the coming Saturday and the next thing everyone knew that Gabriella's party was never graced by anyone of the four.

No one knew whatever happened. The only thing sure was that the direction Evelyn was looking towards now was forward while the rest could not stop looking back at all the memories the last four years had given them.