For those of you who are familiar with BFF? this first chapter will probably be familiar. Depending on the response, I may, or may not, leave this story on here. For the time being though, I'll post whenever I have time. I hope that you enjoy it. Please read/review. Constructive crit is always welcome and wanted. Happy reading!
BG2021

Memories

I sat silently in the small, quiet room, waiting for my turn. The off-white walls and lingering scent of incense filled my mind. “I can’t believe I let you talk me into this!” I murmured to the boy sitting next to me. He said nothing; just gave me a sad smile and squeezed my hand.

“Come in, Elsbeth,” a deep voice that I knew only too well said quietly as the door opened.

“Go on, I can’t go with you,” Lance said, letting go of my hand.

“I can’t do this…I can’t talk to him!” I whispered, turning to look towards the exit.

The doors were so close, yet so far away. I would never get to them before I was pulled back. I sighed, turning to look at Lance. “Do I have to?” I asked. He nodded, a small smile playing on his lips.

“When you get out, you’ll feel better. Not to mention,” the smile was growing a little, “there’ll be a surprise for you when we leave.”

“Fine,” I groaned inwardly and headed towards the door. “Wish me luck!”

“Good luck!” Lance said. “You might need it,” he added as an afterthought. I rolled my eyes and walked through the door.

“Hello, Ellie. It is okay that I call you Ellie, isn’t it?” I shrugged. “Take a seat,” the tall, balding man behind the desk said, smiling.

“Hi,” I muttered, sitting down as far away from the desk as I dared, without looking at him.

“Well, what is it that you need to talk to me about?” he asked, leaning forward into a ‘ready listener’ position.

“I dunno,” I said, looking at my hands.

“Well, you wouldn’t have come here if there wasn’t something you needed to talk about,” he said standing to move towards the door, his eyes boring holes into my neck. I seriously thought about putting my hand up to see if I could feel the holes. “just a moment, I think…” I heard the door creak open, and voices speaking softly out in the hall. I heard the door close again, and the man walking back to his seat behind the desk.

“Ellie?” I didn’t care if he brought Lance in, I wasn’t going to look up, or talk to him. “Please…” Lance walked over to me and put his hand under my chin, kneeling down. Even that way, he was still a head taller than me. “Els, look at me,” he commanded, lifting my chin, forcing my eyes to meet his. “I know you don’t want to talk, but you need to talk to someone besides me. There’s nothing I can do to help anymore. Please, just talk to him.”

“You don’t understand, Lance,” I said, my voice shaking. “I can’t talk to him…I really can’t.”

"Why not?” he asked, looking hard at me.

“I just can’t! Please, don’t make me talk to him,” I begged, looking down. I wasn’t going to tell Lance the real reason I wouldn’t talk to the man. I had a really bad feeling about this guy. Something in his eyes told me that he wasn’t who he said he was.

“I won’t make you talk to anyone. We just aren’t leaving until you get this out,” he replied, standing up. “I don’t care how long it takes, she needs to talk, and I can wait all day, if necessary," he said to the man.

“I understand,” the man replied.

I heard the door open again, and when it shut, I knew I was all alone.

“Well, what do you say? Do we hurry and get this over with, or do we wait all day?” he asked.

I took a deep breath, and then said, “Fine. Please, understand that this is really difficult for me. I haven’t really talked to anyone but Lance in a long time. He’s been the only person I’ve felt I could trust.”

“What about—“

“Don’t say it. I know what you’re thinking, but I don’t know anymore. I thought I did, after talking with Ben a while back, but I don’t!”

“Okay. Well, please, just understand that I’m here to listen, and, if necessary, give advice.”

I thought for a minute, trying to decide what to say. I decided to stick with a half truth. “I know I promised not to say anything about May, but he won’t know that it’s her right?”

“I have a very good friend that I’m extremely worried about. She used to be so happy, but in the past few months she’s become really depressed. She wrote me a note a little while ago saying that if things didn’t get better she’d go to someone to help her do something. I asked her about it later, and she just said that she didn’t mean it; she was really upset and had just broken up with her boyfriend of two and a half years when she wrote that note.

“I don’t know what to do, because I’ve noticed that she has more scars lately, but she just says it’s from sewing or sports. For some reason, I don’t believe her. What should I do?” I asked. I hadn’t told him the whole story, but I really didn’t care. He didn’t need to hear it anyway.

“Do her parents know about this?” he asked.

“A little, I think. She and her mom are really close,” I replied.

“Well, I don’t think that there’s anything that you can do for her right now except be there for her, listen to her, care about her. Now,” he said in a very different tone, “what about you?”

“What about me what?” I asked, playing dumb. There was no way that I was going to talk to him about my problems. No way.

“You know what. You didn’t just come in here to ask for advice about a friend. What about you?”

“Well. . .” I paused, trying to think of a way out of this one. “Haven’t I told you enough for now? I really don’t feel like talking anymore.”

“Okay, just promise me that you’ll talk to me when you need to.”

“Okay,” I promised, inwardly saying that I’d never need to again; not that I’d needed to in the first place.

“Have a good day,” he said, holding the door open for me.

“’Bye,” I walked out, hoping to never again go through that door.

Lance was sitting in the waiting room when I came out. He looked relieved at first, then suspicious when I didn’t say anything.

“Well?” he asked as we walked out.

“Well what?” I replied.

“Did you tell him?”

“No, I didn’t tell him the whole story. There was no point in telling it to him, so I just kept my mouth shut. I did tell him a little bit about May though.”

“Els, you ne—”

“Don’t you dare say that I ‘need’ to!”

“Okay, okay. Anyway, there’s a surprise waiting for you out in the car,” he said smiling.

I ran out to the car, and saw a little calico-colored tabby kitten curled up on my seat.

“Oh, Lance! Thank you!” I said running back and hugging him.

“It’s not that great, but anyway,” he grinned, “I’m glad to see you really smiling.”

We left the parking lot, and just drove around for a while. My mind was wandering over a million different things, and Lance wasn’t saying anything. Then I looked down and noticed that Lance had taken my hand in his and was smiling contentedly.

“Lance?” I asked quietly.

“H’m?”

“What would you do if I ever had to . . . leave . . . for a long, long time? Maybe forever?”

“I’d miss you, of course! We’ve been best friends longer than we can both remember; we’ve always been together. Why?” he replied, looking at me out of the corner of his eye.

“Well. . . I might have to.”

“Why?” he asked again.

“I . . . I can’t tell you that,” I said, looking out of the window.

There was a long and kind of sad silence for a little while. I looked down at my hands and started playing with the ring on my finger.

I had had that ring since the middle of fourth grade, when “marrying” was all the rage. Lance and I had gotten “married” by one of the older students, then exchanged rings. The ring he had given me was silver, and had a blue star sapphire as the gem. Don’t as me how he got a hold of something like that. When I saw it I felt really bad, because I hadn’t been able to get him anything that nice, and the ring I gave him was just a ring out of the vending machines at the store. Yeah, I had spent probably five dollars before I got a ring that I thought he might like, but I still felt bad.

I risked a quick glance at his hand, the one that was steering, and saw that he, also, was wearing his “wedding” ring, though it no longer fit on his ring finger. I smiled, remembering how grown up we had felt that day on the playground. We were the first fourth graders to have gotten “married” by a sixth grader, who had seemed all powerful in those days.

I sighed, remembering how care-free and happy we all were then. Boyfriends and girlfriends, fair-weather friends and fighting with parents, all of that kind of thing was unknown to us; or if we did know, it didn’t really matter. We weren’t afraid of being ourselves; we didn’t really care what others thought about us; we were just the way we were, and we liked it that way.

Lance was slowing down and pulling over. I looked up to see where we were, and smiled. We were up at the spot between our two families’ cabins, where we had first met. I got out of the car, and walked up the hill to our special rock.

“Do you remember that day?” he asked, coming up behind me.

I remembered that day better than any other in my life. My parents and older sister had been arguing again, and I had run out of the cabin and as far away as my four-year-old legs would carry me. I saw the rock at the top of the hill, so I climbed up it—it had seemed gigantic then—and sat down on the rock and cried. I remember asking why they couldn’t just get along with each other; why they always had to fight. I was so upset, and so oblivious to what was going on around me, that I didn’t even notice when someone came up behind me. I didn’t know that anyone was there until he climbed up onto the rock with me and asked, “Why’re you crying? Are you sad?” I had looked around and seen a little boy, close to my age, sitting next to me. I hadn’t answered, just shrugged my shoulders. “Is that your cabin over there?” he had asked, pointing in the direction I had come from. I nodded, trying to stop crying. “My cabin’s over that way,” he said pointing in the opposite direction. His face had lit up as an idea occurred to him. “Do you want to come over?” I had smiled, trying to remember the last time I had been able to be with a friend. “Sure,” I had answered, my tears drying on my cheeks. He smiled too, and took me over to meet his family.

Today reminded me of that day, so many years ago. “Yes, I remember,” I answered. He came and straddled the rock, sitting behind me, then put his arms around me.

“Please Els, don’t go anywhere, not yet anyway. We only have one year left of high school, and then who knows what’ll happen?” he said, beginning to play with my hair.

“I know Lance, I just don’t know if I can keep it from happening.” I sighed, leaning back on him.

“Then I’m just going to have to make it stop,” he said so softly that I could barely hear him.

“What?” I asked, frowning. Then I heard one of my least favorite sounds in the world.

“ELS-BETH!” I heard, coming from the direction of my cabin.

“Oh joy . . . the family’s up here,” I muttered.

“So’s mine. Go on, I’ll come get you tonight. The same place as usual?” he asked.

“Yeah. Same time?” He nodded. “I’ll see you tonight, I guess.”

“Until we meet again, fair lady, farewell!” he said, sweeping me off the rock and giving me a light kiss on the lips. I watched him as he jogged down the opposite way from my cabin, and smiled. He had finally kissed me.