I'm going to tell you a story of a couple friends. I wrote this in high school so it may not be super great, so I'm going to edit most of the story. Hopefully it sounds better from my mind now, instead of my high school brain. Here's a short story I wrote awhile ago entitled, "Write Your Own Story,"

Every time I think of the enjoying life, I think of the time I spent with my best friend Alice. She was the one to create a bad situation into something brilliant. I can remember a time back in preschool when I met her, if you are past preschool, and are probably in high school or even higher up, you can remember how terrifying it had been. Walking in with new tennis shoes, sweaty palms, sack lunch packed with a PB&J sandwich, and the huge fear that you needed to make friends right away. In Alice’s case, she could take on anything. As I walked into the new room holding onto my lunch tightly I felt like throwing up, I didn’t know what was going to happen. All I had known was my family, but Alice was open to all types of friendship. I sat down at a round table at the front, my mother had already said goodbye to me and I was soaking in all what had been going on around me. I had been super focused on two girls fighting over a Lego until a pink tee shirt came into view.

“Hi! What’s your name?” a girl’s voice shrilled, I look up to a girl with no front teeth and freckled cheeks.

I was usually really quiet, even up until my high school years. I squeaked out a short and simple, “Hi,” to a strange girl with a pink tee and blonde pigtails.

“Your name is hi?” she questioned in loud voice, she sat down and I could see a purple stain on the front of her shirt. Was that grape juice? I want grape juice, I thought.

I managed to push out, “No, it-it’s Bayley,” I clutched my necklace that had been a locket my mother gave me for my third or fourth birthday. I can’t quite exactly remember what birthday but it has always been something important to me, even to this day.

“OH!” the strange girl exclaimed towards me, “My name is Alice! Do want to be my best friend?” I didn’t exactly tell the spunky, young, Alice no, so I basically just got stuck with her. It wasn’t that bad being her friend, although she was completely happy all the time. It was just really annoying about how positive she was, and most of the time, I wanted to just sit and listen to music but she would always bug me.

Our first day of our freshman year, I had walked in with blue shirt that had the very popular logo for Blink 182. I was the friend that listened to the punk, alternative bands constantly, and Alice listened to more upbeat mainstream music. Car rides with her were always weird, because we’d switch music of different genres constantly. I walked to my locker, nervous to enter my combo all though during orientation I had entered it at least five hundred times, which may be an exaggeration. As soon as I finally got the combination, I heard a loud voice and feet running on my left side, I took out my headphones blasting music from my ear.

I could see a sprinting Alice, with her very peach dress, curled hair, and beautiful jewelry that bounced over her shoulders as she was flailing her arms around while shouting, “Bayley!! Oh my god, Bayley! Hi!!!” I rolled my eyes at Alice and looked back in my locker, this was going to be interesting. As soon as I was about to grab my copy of Perk of Being A Wallflower she slammed into me with her arms embracing my entire body, “Bayley! I can’t believe we’re freshman already!” she exclaimed in my ear.

I pushed her arms off of my body, “Yeah, cool. Can’t wait until high school is over.” I mumbled to her as grabbed a couple notebooks and folders from my top shelf of my locker. You can tell that I wasn't the happiest in high school.

She laughed at me, and patted my shoulder, “Are you kidding me? High school’s going to be a blast! I already have so many things that we can do together!” she practically shouted as she draped her arm over my shoulders. I hated when she did that. Even hugged me, I was truly the angsty-est teen I know in high school.

I pushed her arms off, “Alice, I told you not to do that.” I grunted towards her, sorting out my books in my arms until I found my sketchbook. Since it was the first day I was going to dedicate my whole day to drawing, not trying to draw attention to myself and hopefully breeze by on my first day of high school.

Alice still, laughed and smiled, “Bayley, sorry! I forgot!” she looked down at her own stack of books as we both walked down the hallway, she had her schedule plastered on top of it. She looked up at me, “What do you have for your first hour? Please say English 9!” she exclaimed, as I shuffled through my stack of books I found a yellow paper that held the contents of my schedule and sure enough I had, wait- I had Algebra 1. Finally time away from Alice, I thought. I loved her company but sometimes she got to be too much for me back then.

I looked over to her, “No, sorry. I have math.” I said, trying to sound disappointed. I shuffled back to my sketchbook, tapping it with my pencil trying to figure out what I should draw.

“Ah, oh well. I’ll see you at lunch!” she stated as she hopped off to English 9. Later in math, I kept doodling a picture of Charlie from Perks of Being A Wallflower, along with Sam, Mary Elizabeth, and Patrick. Our teacher kept droning, on and on about what we were going to learn this year. It was getting really boring, it had always been the first day that always bored me to tears. That’s why I drew most of the day, not until lunch where I saw a very, giddy, happy, Alice. Not very surprising to say the least, as I sat down and stared at my pizza that looked like someone had vomited it on it, I went back to my sketchbook trying to finish my drawing, ignoring Alice hammering on about some party.

“Bayley we have to go! This hot senior, Cameron invited me. It’s going to be our first high school party, isn’t that exciting?” Alice babbled to me as she chewed on a carrot at the same time, she always brought her lunch. Which made me so jealous, I wish I could eat yummy vegetables that were organic. She continued on, “It’s on Friday, please go with me it will be fun! I’ll let you borrow my dress and-”

I was tired of hearing her babble on about this, I just angrily stated, “Fine,” to her so she would shut up and I continued my drawing that I wanted to finish, instead of listening to what she was talking about. Like I said, I was happy to even have her as friend but she always came to be too much for me at the time. I wish I would have appreciated Alice’s over excitement towards life but I didn’t at the time. After Alice had freaked out about my answer and after many doodles, ten or so assignments finished, two quizzes, it had already been Friday and I was sitting on Alice’s bed protesting the night.

“Can we just stay here and watch Perks of Being A Wallflower again?” I groaned towards her, but she wasn’t listening. It may have been the 100th Friday I had begged her to watch the movie with me, since at the time I had been heavily obsessed with it. She continued to shuffle through her closet to find some dress she wanted to wear that night, I needed to think of something else. So I said, “We could go to the game? Please, I don’t-”

She popped out of the closet with the dress she had been looking for, “Aha!” she exclaimed, holding up the dress in the air then she turned to me with a disappointed look on her face, “Bayley, we watch Perks all the time! Also, the game is soooo boring! Tonight’s gonna be fun just you wait,” as she said this to me, something in the pit of my stomach made it feel like it was not going to be fun.

I swallowed the lump in my throat, “Are you sure about this Alice? We could watch that dumb show you like...what is it called?” I pondered towards my friend, I did not want to go out on account of the feeling I just received in the pit of my stomach.

She rolled her eyes as she grabbed some mascara off of her desk, “It’s not dumb, Kim Kardashian is a genius. Plus nothing you say or do will make me change my mind.”

Even though I had a bad feeling about this night, I let it happen even though I felt like throwing up the whole time I got ready. I just let her take me, because I wanted her to stop bugging me about how much she wanted to kiss that senior Cameron, and how this was the only shot she was going to get, is if she went to this party. Once we arrived at the house, it was really scary, I was in dress. Who was comfortable in a skin tight, tube dress? Not me at least, it had been twenty minutes into the party and while I was sitting on the couch a kid who was in my math class, came up to me. We had talked a few times because one time I came in wearing a Nirvana shirt, he got really excited about it.

It was typical day of my first week of freshman year, we had unfortunately, assigned seats. I was sitting at my desk when this lanky guy walked in, and sat next me. I had turned to grab something from my bag when, "Holy shit, rad Nirvana shirt," came to my ear. I looked up towards the voice, and sure enough it was the same guy that had been standing before me.

“Why are you sitting by yourself?” he questioned as he pushed back his dark brown hair, he sat down and I noticed her was wearing some grey skinny jeans, a tee that had a symbol from Harry Potter on it and read “Deathly Hallows,” across it. I looked up at his face, he has some pretty bushy eyebrows but some nice brown eyes.

I avoided looking at him, “Um,” I started, “Because what’s really the point to all of these parties anyways?” I questioned, looking back at his half smirk across his face.

He laughed slightly, “I always thought it was because of the music, then I got here. And yeah, it’s to see who you can either hook up with or who can get drunk the fastest.” he said with a smile waiting for my reaction.

I laughed, “I guess you’re right. My friend forced me to come, even though I’m straight edge, she thought it was good idea,” I had claimed as straight edge after I saw so many of my family members drink or smoke their problems away, I didn’t want to end up with less brain cells so this was the best choice for me.

“Ah, well. I drink, I just wasn’t feeling it tonight,” he announced, he turned to me again, “I’m Alex, by the way. I guess I never really mentioned it eariler when we've talked."

“Bayley,” I stated shaking his hand, after a while we continued to talk and at one point we decided it was good idea to people watch. We had already picked out all the people who were extremely close to passing out from an over consumption of alcohol, it was really fun until I checked the time on my phone “3:30 AM” it read across the screen, we got here at eleven, had it already been four hours?

“Oh man, it’s already three am? How did that happen?” I questioned aloud, it hadn’t even felt that long. I was starting to wonder where Alice was off to a while ago but I got so caught up in talking to Alex that I had lost track of time.

“Oh yeah! It is three am!” he exclaimed from my side, acting as it he surprised at how long we had been talking. I looked around like mad for Alice with my eyes but she wasn’t anywhere to be seen. I could feel panic start to rise up in the pit of my stomach, there was definitely something wrong, Alex started to notice my sudden rush of panic, he turned towards me, “Hey, are you alright?” he asked in a sympathetic voice, seeming concerned to what was going on.

“I don’t know where my friend, Alice is, you have to help me find her,” I quickly said to him in a panicked voice, I could not let anything happen to my best friend she was my only source of positive outlook on life and I needed her to help me through anything.

“Alright, don’t worry. We’ll find her, let’s go look around.” he calmly said while patting my shoulder we both walked around the entire house, she was nowhere in sight. I started to panic even more which made me think of the possible of things that could have happened to her. What if she were killed? What if someone kidnapped her? I could feel my stomach turn as I thought, What if she was raped? I brushed it off thinking that was impossible, Alex and I made our way out to the front of the house lawn looking for anything that might lead me to Alice. Then I heard something that made my heart drop to the pit of my stomach.

“Why? Why me?” an agonized cry had come from bushes, I turned to Alex, who pushed his way through the bushes and I followed along feeling like someone had punched me in the stomach. As I got behind the bushes, what I saw felt like my heart had been torn out of my chest. It was Alice, covered in dirt from the ground, tears streaming down her face, she was a wreck and I couldn’t do anything about it. What could I do? Alex helped her up in his arms, I didn’t drive around this time so we both had to walk almost two blocks to Alice’s house. As we were walking she sobbed in Alex’s chest, we both looked at each other but didn’t say a word. I kept petting the top of Alice’s head as we continued on into the deep, dark, road whispering, “It’ll be okay Alice, I promise. Please stop crying. Please.”

We finally reached Alice’s house, Alex laid Alice lightly onto the couch trying not to wake her up because halfway down her street she had fallen asleep from all the crying she had been doing. I sat down next to her, still petting her hair. Alex looked down at me, “You probably should let her rest,” he said softly, he took his thumb and wiped the tears off of my cheeks I hadn’t even noticed that I was crying, “You should get some too,”

As he started to walk off, I got really nervous that he might tell someone about what had happened to Alice so I croaked out really quickly, “Alex. Please don’t, you know say-”

He turned from the door he had been walking in the direction of, he shook his head in my direction attempting to reassure me, “Don’t worry, I won’t say anything. You have my word.”

I got up from the couch and rushed over to Alex and gave him a hug, tightly squeezing him, I mumbled, “Thank you, so much.” He was taken aback from my actions but he quickly hugged me back.

As he was patting my back he muttered, “No problem,”

After that night Alice told me what had happened to her was she was hanging out with Cameron, the cute senior she had been talking about wanting to kiss. They both went up stairs, they were talking about a lot of things for the longest time until he starting getting really flirty and touchy with her. But once they started to kiss each other, he was getting more rough then he should have been. Alice tried to push him off, Alice tried to tell me what happened but she didn’t need to say because I could already understand what had happened, I was so sad. How could someone have sex with them against their own will?

A week later I had to go to school, I wanted to keep checking up on Alice but I had to make sure I got my school work. Around my lunch time when I usually sat with Alice I sat with Alex instead, I was drawing something that resembled the devil which was Cameron. I hated seeing him, he was happy and didn’t even care about what happened to Alice he just wanted sex. He was a pig.

I was pressing down on my pencil really hard when Alex said, “Is Alice okay?” I looked up to see Cameron laughing at some dumb joke his friend made, I was so mad at his happiness. Someone who had done something so horrible should not be joyful at all.

I turned to Alex, “No,” I breathed, during the lunch period I proceeded to tell him what Cameron did to Alice and after I was done Alex was speechless to what I just described to him, he couldn't believe that had happened to Alice.

“What an asshole,” Alex stated the obvious, he took a bite out of his french fry he had picked up. I looked at my food, I couldn’t eat since that Friday night I clutched my stomach as it turned and growled. I went back to drawing Cameron, this time adding devil horns Alex continued to eat his fries but once I looked up I could see Cameron close to Alex, who was dipping his fry in some ketchup and gave me a look of Don’t even react to him.

We sat in silence until, “Ha, so are you next on my list of people to fuck?” the nasty comment came from none other than Cameron, be the bigger person Bayley. I could hear snickers coming from Cameron’s group of delinquents, it was becoming aggravating but I kept my cool. He touched my shoulder, “What got nothing to say, sexy?” he laughed evilly, I was close to tears bursting from my eyes it was killing to hear these nasty comments.

“Just shut the hell up Cameron,” Alex sneered towards him, trying to make it known that we wanted to be left alone. I started panicking because that wasn’t going to help my situation at all, please stop talking Alex.

“Oh yeah, what are you gonna do about it emo kid?” Cameron got up to Alex’s face really slowly with an intimidating look on his face, I swallowed at the sight of it as he waited for what Alex had planned on doing. When he didn’t do anything, Cameron continued to harass me, “That’s what I thought, dickhead. So, where were we sweetie?” I cringed at the name sweetie, please don’t call me that. I held up my arms to my chest in fear as he continued, “Let’s say we go ahead and get this over with?” he said with smug look across his face, grabbing my arm.

Alex stood up with rage across his face, “Don’t. you. dare. touch. her.” he growled towards Cameron, who just laughed.

“Alright, calm don’t emo kid-” Alex cut him off with swift punch to the gut, Cameron huddled over in pain while groaning.

“I said not to touch her,” he yelled, he grabbed my arm, while pushing me behind him. Alex continued what he had been saying, “You don’t even deserve to touch a women again after what you did to Alice,” he turned to walk away from the situation. The whole scene was kind of hazy, I was starting to feel my heart race at what happened. I could hear it pound up and down in my chest, it was so loud.

Boom boom. Boom boom.

“Yeah-well, she got what she wanted,” A strained voice spoke, but once he said that things got even more hazy but once it was completely over.

All I could hear was heavy breathing everywhere and the noise of my heart still pounding.

Boom boom. boom boom.

When my vision came back, I looked up at Alex, who’s hand was shaking and bruised he looked to me and grabbed my arm.

“Mess with my friend again, I’ll blind you.” he breathed out, as you could guess next we both were both sent to the principal's office for the disturbance during our lunch period. My hands were shaking as I waited for Alex to be done being lectured, I looked at my phone finally to see what I had for notifications. How could this day get worse? Ran through my thoughts when I looked, I saw 13 missed calls from mom. 10 missed calls from Alice's mom. What was going on? My heart raced, please tell me Alice is alright. I dialed my mom's number first.

Ring, ring, ring.

My hands trembled as I waited for someone to pick up, I was worried about my best friend.

"Hello?" A distressed voice said through the line, it was my mom.

I swallowed the lump in my throat, "M-mom, is everything...is everything okay?" I stuttered out towards her.

She took a long sigh, I could hear her holding back tears as she spoke, "Honey, I'm so sorry but-" she paused, and I could hear a sniffle on her end, she continued on still sounding like she was going to burst into tears at any moment, "She's gone honey, she's gone,"

Once those words hit my ear, I dropped my phone down from my ear and cried the hardest I had in a week.

The next thing I remembered was waking up in my room with Alex sitting next to me, how long had I been here? I looked over to Alex I saw him looking at my sketchbook.

I croaked, "Don't look-" he reacted to what I said by sitting down my sketchbook and turning towards me hurriedly, with a concerned look on his face.

"Bayley, you're awake." he said in a joyful voice, he touched the top of my head with his fingers, "How are you feeling?"

I swallowed, my mouth was dry, "Horrible, how long have I been here?" I questioned.

"Only a few hours, but you rest. Don't worry about your homework, I'll bring it for you so you can catch up.... you know until after," he paused trying to find a word not to upset me, "Everything..." I was starting to think he was a great friend for how much he had been doing for me these past few weeks. I sat up and opened my arms while hugging him, he hugged me back harder than ever, "I know it seems like everything is going wrong right now, but it will all only get better from here," he whispered.

That stuck with me, forever.

I am now writing this story to you a few years later in my life. I'm now a junior in college still trying to remember Alice in her prime throughout the years rather than seeing the bad parts of what happened. I try to make sure that every friend I have now always knows that they have someone to talk to rather than taking their own life, I don't want someone to take away the possibilities that they will have for themselves in the future because life is so much more worth living for then what happened to us in our past and I wish Alice could have known that. But she was so caught up in the thought of; there must be something wrong with me? When there was nothing wrong with her, it was, Cameron. He was too caught up in what he wanted rather than considering what Alice wanted. What we need is to be emphatic toward each other, and understand that life will get better from here on out. So I'll leave you with this:

A semicolon represents a sentence an author could've ended, but chose not to. The author is you and the sentence is your life; this isn't the end. Write your own story.