She came to join our school last year. New face, completely new person.

She was a strange child. I didn't like her. She may have been there, but it seemed like she wasn't. Her eyes were distant. It was like she'd lost her soul. There was nothing there. Whenever she smiled, it wasn't a smile. It never reached her eyes. Her eyes remained looking dead, accompanied with a blank, expressionless look. It was creepy. I thought she was very odd.

She seemed to be imprisoned in some kind of world trapped between reality and fantasy. Floating in some different dimension, something that made no sense for anybody else.

I guess that no one really gave her a chance. Well, to defend everyone, I have to say that the lifeless look about her was rather off-putting. She looked scary. We didn't want to be involved with her. She scared us an awful lot, not in the way a vampire scares some people, but because nobody could understand her.

Maybe nobody tried. Maybe nobody knew how to find out.

Anyway, she was so odd. She never talked. No one knew why. We couldn't ask her, because she wouldn't answer. It freaked us out. We did wonder if she was deaf, or just couldn't talk, but no. She seemed intelligent enough.

Some people thought that she thought she was higher than them. Miss High and Mighty. Better than them. I never thought that she did. It just didn't seem to fit with her. It made her sound really overconfident and courageous. In my opinion, she was anything but that. She seemed really shy, frail, and fragile.

She actually reminds me of a puppy who's been kicked out. Lost, lonely, so sad. She didn't even have to look sad to get you feeling sorry for her, that emptiness, that self was enough to make anyone pity her. At least, to anyone who actually looked at her long enough to see her suffering.

Unfortunately, I don't think many people did that, but like I said, she didn't exactly make us feel welcome around her. I doubt that even one person made her welcome though. She just sat about, cold and rigid, staring away into nothingness. In her world of silence, in her world of nothing.

So naturally, no one was more surprised than me when she came up to me one day.

"Hi." She looked nervous. She was shaking and standing up tall, completely tense. Her hand ran through her hair. I don't think she was used to talking to people.

"Hello," I said slowly, staring at her. I didn't mean to, but the shock that she was actually talking - and to me - was so great that I just couldn't help it. She was really apprehensive.

We talked a while. I noticed how she rarely asked questions, but she would answer. She was so obedient, or at least tried to be, another thing that reminded me of a little lost puppy. I really wished she'd calm down, but she wouldn't. I could tell that she answered all questions honestly, but if she didn't want you to know an answer she was very good at sidestepping the question. I didn't mean to sound rude or judgemental, but I felt like I had to ask about her silence.

She told me that she didn't care whether they liked her or hated her. She said that that wasn't the point. She didn't care. According to her, she will only speak to people when they acknowledge her for who she is - she doesn't care whether they hate her guts, like her or love her as long as they acknowledge her for who she was. She told me that I was the only one who'd done that. I felt special.

She talks to David now, too. It may be a year later, but we're the only two. It didn't happen with David like it did with me. She wasn't friendly. He wasn't friendly. She was talking to me in technology, when he started to insult her. He hit the nail right on the head about who she was. He acknowledged her. Even I see that, now. The others didn't understand.

Now that I think about it, it seemed so... out of her character, such a tense moment. And it scared us all senseless.

She stood up really quickly. Her chair fell to the floor. Her eyes, now that was what scared me the most, the complete change there. From as long as I'd known her, her eyes had always been so empty of emotion, never betraying how she felt. She'd been like a rag doll. Now they were blazing. Nothing could hide the fire in her eyes, even if she'd wanted to. I don't think she was too concerned about that at the time.

She absolutely screamed at him. No one had ever done that before. No one talked back to him, ever. Not even the teachers did, so you can get an idea of how respected he was, for it was rare when he did something unreasonable. This was one of those few times.

I got scared then. Everyone did. We all expected him to blow up at her, but he didn't. I don't really understand why. He laughed. Laughed, and clapped her on the back. He smiled. She glared at him for a moment, when a smile twitched on her lips, too.

They became instant friends then. I was worried he'd treat me horribly, but he accepted me, as I was her friend. He's actually quite nice, when you get under his whole attitude. Once, a girl described him as a knife; cold, swift and deadly. I guess when you don't know him, he does seem like that. But he's not. He's not at all. He's actually really awesome. We were this little threesome, wandering around school.

There were a few consequences after they became friends, though.

The first, people steered even more clear of her than they had before. They were afraid of igniting her temper. I doubt they would, as I asked her about it. She told me that she has a very bad temper, but is very good at controlling it. When she lets it slip, though, she isn't in control. I knew that she wouldn't snap at them unless they really hurt her, so it pained me to see her being treated so badly. She wouldn't let me tell them. She said that they would eventually find out for their selves, or ask for themselves. She said that if they wanted to know, that's what would happen.

Second, people started to annoy David. And I mean, really annoy him. They stood up to him, then grinned at him, expecting the treatment that he gave her. He just flew off the handle at them. It made me glad to be his friend, not his enemy. When I voiced what many people were thinking ('why treat her one way, and others differently?'), he shrugged. Pointless.

As I said, we used to be this little threesome, but now it's more like a little duo. We don't know what's happened to her. David and I need to know what's going on. She won't tell us. We aren't really annoyed with that, because she never really was very open with either of us, but now we're just curious. She seems to be slipping away, and we know that we need to catch her. If she was just slipping away from the two of us, we would leave her to do as she pleases, but she's not. She seems to be completely losing her sense of reality.

We may not have known her long, but we know that she's a kind-hearted, honest girl, even if others don't see her that way.

That's why we need to do this. We acknowledge who she is. She's our friend. You shouldn't even bother trying to fit together a puzzle when you don't have the pieces. We have few pieces, but we don't care. We need to find out what's going on. We need to find the other pieces. It may seem horrible and nosy, but we're doing this for her. We need to do this. We need to understand what's going on.

And so begins our search.