Mean Girls Missing

8

March 31

4:18 pm

Samantha

It was clear: date nights with Arnie were awful. I was the first one to be subjected to one of his invitations. He had a gift for me as well. I received this enchanting gold ring set with diamonds. It was probably the prettiest ring I'd seen, not including the giant sparking engagement rings I dreamed of getting one day. My date didn't go quite the direction as Steph's had; but it had still shaken me up.

Steph had said he was going in on detailing her body. The entire time he was talking, he had been jacking it under the table without her knowing. I was fortunate not to experience that level of creep, though I couldn't say I had it any better.

Arnie was attracted to me. He said he just simply couldn't keep his hands to himself and wanted to explore me. We had sat at the table chatting for maybe five minutes before he asked me to lay on the bed with him. For an hour he kissed my lips, various parts of my body, and gave out some squeezes. Arnie particularly paid attention to my chest and arms, feeling up every inch he could find.

He didn't technically touch skin. As in, he grazed over the fabric. Arnie never tried to take a search downstairs and I was thankful. I wished he wouldn't have touched me at all, but at least he never attempted to remove clothing. That might have sent me over the edge. All in all, the evening was a disaster. I spent equal amounts of time after crying and taking showers. No matter how hard I scrubbed my body with the soap, and I scrubbed so hard I was starting to peel off skin and revealed blood, I couldn't feel clean. All I could feel was the way his grubby hands poked and prodded, pulling and caressing.

And every minute of it would just play on a constant loop in my brain. I tried to clean, organize, and cook to get it off my mind. That didn't work. I thought if I slept I could avoid thinking about it. That didn't work either. I had a nightmare about it and woke up drenched in sweat, crying. I didn't know it was possible to cry in your sleep until then.

Steph hadn't understood before. She didn't know how bad it was and if I was being dramatic or not. Then Arnie requested her presence and the minute she returned, she crashed hard. Steph was not the girl who broke down. She did not cry. In my entire life, I had seen her cry maybe a handful of times. Emotions weren't her things. And now it was several times a week. I wasn't judging her. I knew exactly what she was going through and besides, I would be a hypocrite to judge Steph for being emotional. I had a mental breakdown almost every day.

It had been two days since her date. She still wasn't the same. I tried to talk her into talking about how she was feeling but Steph was adamant. She didn't want to. She was shutting me out. For once I was the one who felt like an outsider in her life instead of the twin she grew up with. I hated seeing Steph so unlike herself.

I was able to get her out of bed by enticing her to cleaning. It wasn't my idea of a fun time and I knew it wasn't Steph's either. We started in the kitchen by going through the fridge, freezer, and cupboards to see what was still good and what we could toss. Steph and I went through the food in complete silence. The only audible noise was the clanking of soup cans, Sprite bottles, and pasta boxes.

And then, she spoke.

"Is this still good to use?" she asked in a small, childlike voice.

I peeked at the label. I had been doing the majority of the cooking so Steph hadn't really poked around in the fridge too often. A half empty salsa. I'd used it once for tacos and again for tortilla chips.

"If you can think of anything you want to eat salsa with, sure. I probably won't use it."

Steph dropped it in the trash. It clattered against the metal.

"Steph, are you sure you don't want to talk? I know it's really hard but it might make you feel better."

Stephanie's eyes glared at me. "I will never feel better."

Her voice was cold. Sharp as glass. Most of all, I could hear the hurt behind it. I knew what that hurt was. I felt it too. It weighed on my shoulder and struck me in the core. How could someone do this? That kind of hurt. I know it was wrong, Arnie sure as hell knows what he's doing is wrong, but he still does it anyway. How? Why would you purposely harm anyone so vulnerable? The kind of hurt where it feels like your body doesn't belong to you anymore and it's just a prop for other people to get what they want. Like you don't have meaning. You're alive, but you're lifeless.

Yeah. This hurt was a fucking burden.

I wrapped my arms around her. She didn't do the same for a few moments. I could feel her stiffen as soon as I neared her personal bubble. But silently, she put her arms around me and we stood there together. Her back was shaking against the palm of my hand as she cried into my shoulder. And before I knew it, I was crying into hers. So we were in an awkward, sobbing, mucus-y hug in the middle of the kitchen.

Steph pulled away. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. "God, what happened to us?" she questioned. "I'm so far gone I'm getting snot all over your Gucci, I'm so sorry."

I shook my head. "It's not mine, Steph. None of this is mine."

She smiled a sad smile. We continued to cry some more, in our own spaces but still standing together in the kitchen. We didn't say anything. We didn't really have to. This time in the dungeon had taken a toll on us. The worst part was the time. It drug by like a tortoise. One day in here seemed like three days in our normal life. Steph and I had been here for a little over two weeks.

I had so many questions and no one with an answer. Were people looking for us? If they were, had they found any clues or evidence? Did they find a witness or security camera footage? What about our parents? Had someone informed them that we had been missing? Did they consider us to be missing or did they think it was a case of runaways? Was Austin on the frontlines with the police, searching for me? Did Austin give up and find another girl because he assumed I would never come back?

The list went on and on andon. The one that stuck out to me the most, the one I had pinned in my braineach and every day: Would I ever come home?

A/N - i finished the entire novel as of yesterday! upon further investigation i discovered i wrote the book in exactly one month (I began writing on August 18 and finished my last chapter on Sep 18). I suffer from writer's block so I often start stories that I can never finish because I lose the motivation. The inspiration just kept coming for me and therefore I will be able to present you with the full length book. 

FUN FACT: Mean Girls Missing is my second novel to complete cover to cover. The first book I wrote was roughly 200+ pages and written in the time span of 2-3 weeks. Unless you count the first book I ever completed in fifth grade at age ten, where I wrote a novel of over 100 pages just for the heck of it, however I realized several years later that it was awful and could not be published.