The Girl Who Sat Alone

I have been holding back all my emotions for a while. About a month ago a terrible thing happened to my best friend. Her name is Alexandra Holland, I call her Alex. My name is Rachel Payne. Alex had always lived down the street from me, but we never really talked. She was always really quiet and had kept to herself most of the time. As for me I am very talkative and outgoing. Have you ever had the moment were you were thinking about talking to someone, and you were about to say the first word to them but they walked away without realizing that you were about to say something? Well that is what always happened to me with Alex. In school we had every class together, but I was always sitting by my friends in the front of the classroom, but Alex always sat in the back by herself. Sometimes I just wanted to get up and go sit by her but I never had the guts to do it. There were days that she came to school and looked like she just got jumped. She would have bruises, cuts, and her eyes looked very tired and baggy. On December 9th , 2011 in the hall we were walking out of the school and I was right behind Alex. Next thing I know I see the quarterback of our varsity football team ram into her and just kept walking. Alex dropped everything she had in her hand, her books and binders and made her papers went everywhere. That was the moment that we became friends. I bent down to help her pick up her stuff. I could tell that she was surprised that I stopped to help her. I watched her small and delicate hands reach for her Biology binder and saw the scars and cuts on her wrists. Instantly I started crying, but we continued to pick up the rest of her books. I still don’t know if she realized that I saw the cuts.
We stood up and Alex said “Do you want to hangout later?”
I said “Yeah of course!”
“But, um, would it be ok if we hangout at your place?”
So I told her, “Yeah! That’s fine! My parents won’t care. They won’t even be home.”
“Ok. Great!” , Alex said.
We ended up walking home together since we didn’t live too far from the school. It was pretty awkward because Alex really didn’t talk, and I felt dumb when I kept trying to make conversation. To make it less awkward I started playing music off my phone. The song that I played first was “Moments” by One Direction. We both start singing the song very loud and obnoxiously. At this point we were shouting the lyrics as we walked down our street. Alex looked at me and we both smiled and started laughing. I think that is the first time I have ever seen her smile. By the time the song was over we were standing at the end of my driveway. I grabbed her hand and we ran to the front door. I opened the door and we went straight to my room. We put our stuff down and then went back downstairs to the kitchen.
I walked to the fridge and said “Anything you want you can have.”
Very shyly Alex said “No thanks. I’m not that hungry.”
“Come on, we all know the school food is terrible. I’ll make us some popcorn.”
“Good point,” Alex said as she turned her gaze at the ground.
We jumped at the sound of the microwave beeping letting us know that the popcorn was done. I grabbed the bag of popcorn and we walked into my living room. I told Alex to sit on the couch and I started playing more One Direction songs. It was amazing how much Alex had came out of her shell in just the last hour or so. Yeah, we still had a few awkward moments but they were always followed by us laughing hysterically.
Being the outspoken person I am I said, “Why do you do that to yourself?” pointing at Alex’s wrists.
Alex looked at me with tears in her eyes and said, “I don’t have a very good home life. I do not have a mom and my dad abuses me.”
“I’m so sorry I asked. Really, I had no clue” ,I said this as I was sobbing because I finally understood why she kept to herself all the time. I realized now that when she came to school with cuts and bruises it was because of her dad. I can’t believe I could have been there for her so long ago and helped her through all this but never said anything. But this is where everything changes. I am here now to help her through it, and I always will be.
“It’s ok. But since I’ve started I might as well finish. My mom died at child birth. I still don’t even know what exactly happened to her but I feel it inside me that I miss her terribly even though I never really met her. My dad’s name is Charlie. He has always blamed me for her death. He abusively drinks alcohol almost every day and beats me pretty often. He has never told me he loved me, because he doesn’t. He believes that I killed my mom. It stresses me out so much. One day I decided that I would start to cut myself. My reasoning was that if I was hurting myself he would have no reason to hurt me, but that wasn’t the case. Half the time it seems as if he doesn’t even know or remember that I cut. When he puts his hands on me I instantly cringe. I always try to prepare for the pain but no one could ever prepare themselves for the hits he throws. There had never been one time that he only hit me once. There is always one hit followed by another, and another, and another. I know that if I tried to run away while he was beating me he would just get madder and hit me even harder. When he gets home from the bar, if he sees my face it instantly makes him furious. When he looks at me he sees my mom, which reminds him that she died at my birth which is when he starts swinging. The anger in his eyes absolutely terrifies me. Now when he hits me I just look away, it’s too scary. The only way to get away from him is school. Before today I never had any friends to hangout with. Now I have you. Rachel just in this first day we already have made a great friendship. I’m so glad that football player bumped into me today. If it wasn’t for him we wouldn’t be talking right now. I’d probably be home working on school work anticipating the moment that my dad walked in. Thank you so much being here for me! Honestly, I never thought it would feel this good to tell somebody what was going on.” Alex finished as she leaned in to hug me.
I wrapped my arms around her saying “Alex anytime you want to get away you can always come here. No one is ever home besides me. My parents go out right after work almost every day, and even if they are here you are always welcome. I hope I never meet your dad I might be attempted to hit him with my softball bat. That’s terrible that you have to go through all that day in and day out. You can spend the night every day if you want. And if he starts to beat you real bad just run straight to my house. I don’t care what time it is, it can be two in the morning for all I care just run your little butt off. Just ring the door bell. Wait even better I’ll give you the extra spare key. I’ll go get it.” I didn’t give her time to answer I ran to the kitchen I took the key off the hook it has been on since my parents bought the house before I was even born. I wanted her to know that I meant it when I said to just come whenever she needs to. I really don’t want her to get hurt. It scares me that she has to go home to that monster that is her father. I opened up her hand and gave her the key.
Tears were now pouring out of her eyes. “Rachel, you don’t have to give me this.”
“You’re right. I don’t have to, I want to. I want you to know I’m here for you.”
Alex hugged me again tighter this time. I could tell that she was happy to finally have someone to talk to. She looked at the clock on the wall and said, “Oh crap! I better get home, my dad will be home any minute. Thank you for everything! Really it means a lot! See you tomorrow at school!” . Next thing I know she ran to my room grabbed her stuff, waved at me, and then left. After that day we started to talk all the time in school. We sat by each other in all of our classes and sat together at lunch. Our lunch table was just us two, but we didn’t let that bother us. Half the time we didn’t even pay attention to the people around us we just talked and laughed the whole time. We started hanging out a lot too. She was at my house almost every day of the week. Some days she stayed very late and others she had to hurry home to get there before Charlie. We had only been friends for a week when we had our first sleepover. We decided that we were going to have sleepovers every Friday. Our first sleepover was a blast! My parents had went to Vegas and said that I could have Alex sleepover since I didn’t like to sleep in my house alone. Of course Alex was perfectly fine with the idea, and so was Charlie. He told her that she should stay at my house forever. But we both know that that would never happen. We know that Charlie would come looking for her some day when he needed to take his anger out on someone. On that Friday we went to school and had to sit through eight very boring classes that seemed to last forever, but as soon as our last class was over we ran to my house we were so excited and couldn’t wait for the fun to begin. When we got to my house we were out of breath and just stood in my front lawn for a minute or so laughing at the fact that we just ran our butts off to my house as if a killer was chasing us. We walked up to the door and it was locked. I started looking through my book bag for my key. Before I could pull it out Alex had already pulled out her key that I gave her and unlocked the door.
She looked at me, laughed, and said, “You said to use it whenever I needed to. I think this was a situation that we both need it.”
I just laughed and said, “It’s a good thing I gave you that, or else you would have been the one climbing through the window to unlock the door. ”
For our first sleepover we had a line up of fun things to do. As soon as we went to my room we started talking in hilarious Russian accents. This became one of our many inside jokes that we always did when we were together. We even had funny names that we called each other in our Russian accents. She called me Olga and I called her Annette. To this day I still have no clue how we came up with those names but we did. We ate so much food that night! I remember throwing away at least five empty bags of popcorn. We watched a movie, painted each other’s nails, and I curled Alex’s hair. While I was giving her a makeover I played music off my phone. The first song that came on was “Up All Night” by One Direction.
We were singing along to the song until Alex snapped her fingers and said, “Oh my gosh Rachel I just got a great idea!”
Anxiously I asked, “What is it?”
She smiled and said, “We should stay up all night! I just got the idea when this song started playing.”
“Let’s do it!” I said very excited.
“Yay! I’ve never stayed up all night before.”
I looked at her like she was crazy. “Never?”
She looked straight into my eyes and said, “Never. I’ve never had anyone to stay up with. This is also my first sleepover.”
I smiled and said, “Woohoo! I am the first person to have a sleepover with you! Let’s get this party started!” . When I was done with her makeover we turned up the music as loud as we could and danced and sang along to all the songs. Once we were done with that we started to talk in British accents. It was the early hours of the morning and we weren’t even the least bit tired yet. We were hungry though. So we ate a ton of junk food and chocolate at the dinner table. We decided that we would drink Mountain Dew to make sure we would definitely pull off the all nighter. Probably wasn’t the greatest idea. I remember just talking the rest of the time until we realized that it was nine in the morning. We had pulled and all nighter. Most importantly Alex pulled her first all nighter at her first sleepover. We go changed out of our pajamas and put on sweats and hoodies. We walked to the mall which also wasn’t too far from our houses either. We spent the duration of our Saturday at the mall. We had bought so much stuff and then had to lug it all home.
When we got back to my house we set all of our bags down and Alex said, “Well I better get going so I can make Charlie dinner. I might come back after when he leaves for the bar. I had such a great time! Definitely the best first sleepover I could ever ask for. Thank you so much Rach!” She hugged me tightly. This was a sign letting me know she was scared to go home after all that fun we had. She turned towards her bags, looking sad she looked at me and asked, “Would I be able to keep all this here. I don’t want Charlie ruin it all.”
As I put my hand on her shoulder I said, “Alex, of course you can! You practically live here anyway. I won’t let anything happen to your stuff. Promise me you won’t let anything happen to you.”
She looked at the floor, “No promises.” I just nodded back and we hugged again and she started walking towards her house. I was scared for her. She kept looking back to see if I was still watching. I stayed on my doorstep until I couldn’t see her anymore. After that I hadn’t seen her until the following Monday on the walk to school in the morning. I was so glad to see her! I had thought something terrible happened. She said that Charlie hadn’t even laid a hand on her the whole weekend. She said she had gone home, ate dinner and then went to sleep, but on Sunday she worked on all the school work she had due all day. The day went really fast just like the entire school week. Before I knew it, it was already Friday December 21 which meant it was time for our second sleepover. This time when we got home we had hot chocolate and decided that we would not pull an all nighter. We changed into our pajamas pretty early. We ended up eating dinner in them. We had made our own spaghetti and meatballs. After we ate there was still a good bit of spaghetti. I had no clue what to do with it.
“Hey Alex what should we do with the ” I couldn’t even finish my sentence because I had a handful of spaghetti thrown at my face. “Oh it’s on!” I grabbed a handful of the saucy noodles and threw them at Alex they hit her right in the stomach.
She dramatically fell to the ground and said, “Ah! I’ve been hit!” I laughed and helped her up. I noticed that she let out a tiny whimper when I grabbed her wrist. I looked at her left wrist and saw there was some healing cuts added to the others. I think she noticed that I saw them. I just turned away and started to clean up the noodles and sauce that had hit the floor. Alex started to help and we finished cleaning the dining room without saying a word. Luckily since Alex had left the new clothes and stuff she had bought we changed into different pajamas. We must have ate dinner really late because when we went to the living room with our popcorn and the eleven o’ clock new was on. They were reporting a story about a boy who had died before arriving at the hospital. I felt terrible, I felt sorry for his friends and family. Alex quickly grabbed the remote and changed the channel. I should have realized that that kind of stuff hit her hard. I grabbed my phone and the popcorn.
“Didn’t like it?” I asked.
Alex looked up at me and said, “Nah, too depressing for the Christmas season, you know” .
I looked down at her and saw the cut on her cheek but ignored it and said, “I can’t believe Christmas is in four days! Which means the New Year is right around the corner.”
That’s when Alex sat up straight and said, “Which reminds me. I want to make a resolution.”
With no clue with what the resolution would be I asked, “About what?”
“I want to stop cutting.” She had to pull up her sleeves because the pajamas she changed into had long sleeves. She showed me all the scars and healing cuts, which would soon add to the collection of scars. The sight of the scars always had got me a bit choked up.
As comfort I put my hand on her knee saying “Yeah, I remember. That’s great Alex! Let’s go to bed. It’s after midnight and I’m exhausted.” I went and turned the lights off and when I got back threw a pillow at Alex’s face and told her to go to bed. I fell asleep soon after I had lain down. Alex ended up spending two nights in a row. We woke up the morning of December 23rd. I woke up before Alex. She woke up when I was getting ready. She stretched out and then ordered me to play music, in a joking way. As usual I started playing some One Directions songs. Just like every other time I played their songs we started singing the lyrics, basically taking turns with the different solos. I sang Niall’s and Liam’s solos, my favorites of the band, and Alex sang everything else. We would always sing the choruses together though. After dancing around and shouting the lyrics of the songs we decided to change out of our pajamas. I knew that at some point Alex would have to return home to the monster.
It was as if we read each other’s mind because right at that moment Alex had said, “ I better go back to Charlie soon.” This was so hard for me to see my best friend like this. So scared, no not scared terrified. I could see the fear in her eyes.
Putting my hand on her shoulder I told her “If he starts to hit you, now know where to go.” I smiled trying to comfort her.
She said “If he hits me I will run straight here. I promise.”
We hugged for a very long time. And then as she walked down my doorstep I said, “Alex, be strong! I know you are!”
I walked back inside my house with my arms crossed it was so cold outside. I was hoping and praying that she would be ok. I was hoping that Charlie wouldn’t hurt her. We had two more days until Christmas I really hoped he wouldn’t ruin her Christmas. It was really warm in my house so I went to my room and changed into boxer shorts and a t-shirt. I sat down on my couch for a little while. I heard a faint sound. I muted the TV and then I heard it loud and clear. It was the sounds of sirens. I instantly knew it was for Alex. My best friend was in trouble and needed me. I ran straight out the door. No shoes, no socks just running on the freezing pavement to her house. At this point I could feel the bitter coldness on my bare legs and arms, as I looked at the snow covered lawns. I didn’t care this was all for Alex, she needed me. When I got to her property the authorities wouldn’t let me see her. The officer gave me a blanket and started questioning me.
“I’m Rachel Payne. That is Alex Holland, my best friend! Is she ok? What happened? Is she going to the Emergency room? Did you find her father? Is she going to live?” I asked all these questions as tears repeatedly rolled down my cheeks, feeling as if they all froze at my jaw line. He told me they would try for the best. He showed me to his car and I got inside and we rushed to the hospital. There was a ton of people in the halls, I rammed through them not even caring that I was being rude, and the fact that I was running through the hospital bare foot. When I got to her room I instantly sat in the chair next to her bed. She was laying there not moving and her eyes were shut. She was unconscious. I wanted to know if she was going to live. They kept telling me that they didn’t know. That wasn’t acceptable I was not giving up on her like they were. I grabbed her hands and started talking to her seeing if she would answer. She started to hiccup I yelled for the doctors to let them know she was awake. She started to say my name, but never finished it. Her last words were “I wish…I wish I could have…one last moment with you…” There were tears in her eyes as she said this. I shut my eyes tightly then opened them hoping that somehow she would have her eyes open too. It was honestly worst thing I have experienced. I watched my best friend slip away from me right before my eyes. Her tight grasp on my hands loosened. She might have slipped away but my memories we shared will never slip away. Even though for over fifteen years we had never talked until that day we picked up her things, and we were only best friends for two weeks, I can promise you this, I will never ever forget about the girl who sat alone.