August 28

Chapter One

It was a new day, a new beginning, a new mystery.

It had been one week since my friend, Rosalie Burnett went missing. After my parents told me this news with red eyes, I couldn’t stop crying. Rosalie was too young, and too fragile. God knows what could’ve happened to her. I was with Christina Houston and Julia Knight, my two friends from Lacrosse, whom I’ve become really close with over the last two years. We were at my beach house, and everything was going perfect until we all woke up and she wasn’t there next to us. The last thing I remember was that we all held a cup of root beer in our hands, except for Rosalie, who had a bottle of beer, and laughing our heads off, until we all fell asleep. In the morning, all that was left was her scarf.

          Rosalie wasn’t the one to be roaming around, especially in Miami, where there was no such thing as peace; we all liked it that way. But in her drunken state, we don’t know what she is capable of. I invited Christina and Julia over, to just talk this out and give each other a shoulder to cry on. When the doorbell rang, I rushed to open the door. I was greeted with a pale Christina, and a lazy Julia. I gave a sad smile to both of them and let them in.

          “Does this happen to people?” was the first thing Julia said. I shrugged, not knowing what she meant. “Does stuff like this happen to people? Where your friend goes missing in the night, no one knows where, with a drunken body, and just disappears?” her voice trails off, and she’s left with tears rolling down her cheeks. “Jul, please don’t cry” I rub her back, trying to stop her tears from falling. Christina’s eyes start watering, but she just inhaled, “I’m just going to sit down, for now” I grabbed Julia’s hand and brought her over to the couch. “How are you, Emily?” Christina asked. It took me some time to respond, “I could lie and tell you I feel fine, but in this case, I feel like shit.” Christina managed a small laugh in return. I cleared my throat, “How about you, Julia?” Julia didn’t respond, she just let her head hang low. I held her wrists in my hand and rubbed my thumbs over them, that’s when I felt long, deep marks on them. I looked down at her wrists, and there were the things I was most afraid of, knife scars. Christina saw it the same time I did, and she widened her eyes. I noticed that there might be at least 7 of them on each wrist.

          Christina covered her face and muttered, “Oh Julia, honey.” I furrowed my eyebrows and stared at Julia, “Why the hell did you do this?” Julia’s voice crocked, “I’m sorry, it happened. I was sitting on my bed the night after Rosalie was gone, and there was a knife on the table. I tried to stop myself, I really did, but I couldn’t. I’ve been clean for 2 years, and now- now I’ve fallen into th-this state of d-depression an-“ Julia broke into tears, and she couldn’t continue. Christina and I understood her pain, even though we didn’t take it to huge lengths like Julia did. Christina and I held Julia, not a single word being said. Rosalie meant a lot to us, and it was a heartbreaking moment to see her fade away. Every time I think of her disappearance, I feel like she’s just going to pop up any moment and start laughing at us for being such idiots. That’s the way I looked at Rosalie. She was a calm, yet hyper girl. She would always love to make and give surprises, no matter the feeling it brings us. Rosalie’s mom always told us that Rosalie was born for one reason only, to bring joy to the people who didn’t know what joy was anymore. We 3 missed Rosalie so much it hurts us. That’s when Julia spoke up, “We should do something, something that will help us figure out what went wrong. After all Rosalie has done so much for us, so shouldn’t we do the same?” And that was the beginning of a new tale unveiled, to find Rosalie, no matter the circumstance.