“Hi, my name is Kayla. Can I pray for you?” I’ve never felt more caught off guard than I did in that very moment. The anti-social part of me didn’t want to answer her question, but since we were about to be stuck in a cabin together for a week I decided being rude wasn’t the best option. I took a deep breath and slowly turned around to face the person I had no idea would end up meaning so much to me. Kayla was everything an awkward girl like me was afraid of. She was absolutely gorgeous with long auburn hair that cascaded off her shoulders like a waterfall and a bright brace-less smile that made me even more self conscious of my crooked gap-toothed one. She reminded me of a Disney princess, in fact I was convinced that if she started singing woodland creatures would suddenly appear ready to sew a dress or brush her hair.

“Sure, if you really want to,” I replied.

She immediately grabbed my hand and started praying. “Heavenly Father,” she started off, “I pray that this week you show Merissa just how much she is worth to you. It’s my hope that by the time we leave here she will be confident knowing that she is Your daughter and all of her doubts and insecurities have been conquered by you.” I quickly thanked her when she was finished, but I never actually let her know how deeply I needed those words in that moment. That’s the kind of girl Kayla was: she had the innate ability of knowing exactly what a person needed to hear at the very moment she was with them and there was no doubt that if someone was going through a hard time, Kayla would be there ready to pray the pain away.

As a painfully shy teenage girl, everything about Kayla terrified me and somehow fascinated me at the same time. I wanted to be just like her, but I also wanted to hide from her. In the months that followed that prayer filled night at camp, Kayla and I became best friends. We complimented each other in the strangest of ways; my shy nature was enough to offset her loud and sometimes too outgoing one and slowly I felt myself start to change from a scared girl who let the world push her around to someone better; someone like Kayla. We began to hang out every week to do homework and complain about school. During one of our many study sessions Kayla turned to me and asked, “Do you ever feel like running away?” Before I had arrived at her house, Kayla and her mom had a big fight about something that seemed like the end of the world at the time which I assumed was the reason she was asking such a dramatic question.

“I don’t know,” I shrugged, “I guess, maybe. I don’t think I would get really far though.” For the first time since I had sat down on her bed I looked up from my text book to see her staring out the window gripping hard onto the cross necklace she wore around her neck. “Is everything okay?”

“Yeah. I’m fine.” She quickly snapped back into her chirpy self. It was like watching an actor get into character moments before performing in a play. Her assurance felt empty and it seemed like there were more words trapped inside of her, but her tongue wouldn’t allow them to escape. I wasn’t that great at giving advice so instead of pressing her for more information I decided to let that one go. I figured if she had something really important to say, she would tell me.

After that day I didn’t see much of Kayla. School got busy and we went from hanging out on a weekly basis to catching up quickly outside of the church sanctuary on Sunday mornings. The last time I saw her at church seemed as normal as any other Sunday. When church was over she ran up to me so she could show off the dress she just bought that she was sure would impress her newest crush. She exclaimed quickly how proud she was to have found a dress that matched her steel blue eyes and then turned the conversation to me. She asked how my life was going and assured me that even though we didn’t hang out that often anymore, I was always in her prayers. “Always remember,” she said, “When you feel alone, God is always there and when things are bad something better is just around the corner. I have to go now, we’re going to lunch for my dad’s birthday. I’ll see you next weekend!” She yelled as she flitted away. I didn’t see her again for eight months.

“Have you talked to Kayla lately?” That’s the first thing my mom said when I got home from school the following Friday.

“No.” I had just endured eight hours of questions from teacher and the last thing I wanted was more from my mother.

“Are you sure?” She pressed further.

“Yes I’m sure, I haven’t heard from her since Sunday at church.” A layer of silence fell over the room. “Why? What’s going on?”

She shifted in her seat, took a long pause and finally said, “Nobody has been able to get ahold of her since yesterday. I guess she was supposed to meet some friends at the mall and when they got there she was gone.”

“Now, are you sure you haven’t talked to her?” She asked one more time, this time I could hear a hint of hope in her voice as if she wanted me to say I had been lying so this whole nightmare could be over. “No. I haven’t talked to her.” I said trying to hold back tears. My mom told me not to panic yet, but I had seen enough episodes of Law and Order: SVU to know that if they hadn’t found her in the last twenty-four hours, things didn’t look very good.

“Do you ever feel like running away?” The question Kayla asked me just a month before played over in my head. She wasn’t serious, right? She wouldn’t actually run away. Or at least that’s what I wanted to believe. After trying to convince myself that her question was just a reaction to a pointless fight and not an something she would actually do, I decided to tell my mom just in case. She passed the news onto Kayla’s family, but I was told that unless I had any idea where she would have gone there wasn’t anything we could do about it.

Weeks passed, then months with no word from Kayla. As weird as it was that she was gone, life did start to go back to normal. Five months later I came home from school just like any other day to see my mom standing in the kitchen with a smile on her face. “They found Kayla!” The aura of excitement around her quickly changed when she realized I expected an explanation about where my friend had been for the last five months. “She was found downtown a couple days ago. From what her mom has told me she was rescued from a prostitution ring along with a few other girls around your age.”

“How did that happen?” I begged to know. I so badly wanted details, but every time I asked a question it was shot down because, as my mom put it, I was “only fifteen and some things are just too hard to understand at that age.” “Okay, but when do I get to see her?”

“I don’t know,” I remember my mom saying, “For the time being she’s been put in a recovery home with other girls like her.” I didn’t like the way that phrase “girls like her” slid so easily off of my mom’s tongue. It felt like she was placing Kayla on a lower level than me. Now instead of being my friend, Kayla, she was my damaged friend, Kayla. One of those girls.

I found myself at Kayla’s front door three months later. She had been back from the recovery home for two weeks and after a lot of arguing with my mom I was finally allowed to see her. As I stood staring at the doorbell I wondered what it would be like to talk to her again. In the last eight months nothing in my life had really changed, but everything about hers had. I finally mustered up the courage to ring the doorbell and I heard the dog, Muttley, start to bark. For a second it felt like just any other visit with an old friend until her mom answered the door. She greeted me with a warm hug as she had so many times before and I began walking down the hallways toward Kayla’s room. The house looked almost the same as it had the last time I was there, but it felt different. I knocked on her door and heard a familiar voice say, “Come in.” I entered cautiously and saw her sitting on her bed staring out the window in a way she had done a million times before. “So far, so good.” I thought as I sat down on the opposite side of her bed. Everything seemed normal until our eyes met and I realized the person in front of me wasn’t the same girl I used to know. She had gained weight and her beautiful long hair I was once so jealous of had been cut to her shoulders and started to thin.

“Are you just going to stare at me all day long or what?” she said and I realized I hadn’t actually spoken a single word since I got into the room. A simple hi was all I could manage to come up with. What was I supposed to say in this situation? “How are you?” “I’m glad you’re back?” No words seemed to fit. “Long time no see.” She said in a joking tone. I laughed and immediately regretted it. Was I supposed to laugh at that? There were so many things I wanted to tell her, but I didn’t know what to say. I wanted to tell her I loved her, that I was so happy she was home safe, and that I prayed for her every day, but none of the words would come out.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” She said, “Or, at least, I will be. Something better is just around the corner, right?” I had heard her say those exact words many times before, but for the first time I didn’t know if I believed them. I examined her a little more and memories of the first time I met Kayla came rushing back. I remembered how bubbly she was and how much joy flowed out of her that night and I wondered what happened to all of that.

Our time together came to a close and as I grabbed my stuff and hugged her goodbye I thought about asking if I could pray over her like she had done for me not too long ago, but I was scared and instead just left it at a simple “Goodbye.”

That was the last time I ever saw Kayla. The next Saturday I woke up to my mom sitting at the end of my bed. “I need you to stay calm, okay?” Her voice shook.

“Kayla swallowed some pills last night. She didn’t make it.”