“Regi! What’s going on?” Her voice ultimately cut through my living nightmare. “Where are you?”
“I… need, help,” I whispered hoarsely, all my energy suddenly seeping out from me.
“Let me call your par?—”
“No. Please, don’t call them. Just come and get me,” I pleaded, as a torrent of tears blurred my vision once again.
“Hold on,” she said. “Don’t hang up. I’m seeing if I can locate you… Jesus! How did you get all the way out to Dixon County Woods?”
I didn’t even know where that was. “Hurry,” I frantically uttered as I pulled the phone away and listened harder for more sounds, then whispered, “before he finds me.”
“Who—who is after you?”
“Please,” I cried, not able to say his name out loud.
“Okay… Hang tight, girl. It’s going to be a bit.”
“O-k—.” Then the phone went dead.
No! I silently screamed. I tried shaking it, but there was no reception, no light came from the screen. It was dead. And so was I. Maya was never going to find me.
I curled myself into a ball, my dead cell phone cradled to my chest, and I shut down.
The moment Decker, Krew, and I climbed into his brother’s car, my beautiful day was shattered into a million shards.
Deep down in my soul, I’d known the second I had taken off and left my guys that my life would never be the same again. Ever.
I didn’t know how long I lay in that ditch, plagued by the cold that was slithering into my body. It had to be quite some time, because I was numb down to the bone.
Hallucinations rattled my mind, and when a voice called my name, I thought This is it. I’m dying. The angels my mother had told me about during church service were here. They’d come to take me away from my family, from Krew and from Decker.
Or so I thought, as I lay in the dark, hiding in the cold, wet ditch. I even bet myself that the cops wouldn’t find my body until I was decomposed. I actually smiled at that macabre notion. At least he wouldn’t hurt me again.
Then I heard my best friend’s voice, which startled me out of my morbid frame of mind.
“Maya,” I croaked. I summoned whatever energy was left in my body and launched my arm upward as a bright light swept over me. It might as well have been the sun shining down, because now I had a real reason to hope.
“Jesus fucking Christ, Regi—Who—Oh my God…”
Using nothing but pure grit, I dragged my tired and battered body up from the ground. Despite the blood, the sweat and the mud, my best friend hugged me.
Regina’s Diary
May 2nd, 2008
Dear Diary,
This is the worst Wednesday ever. It’s Terrible with a capital T.
Maya passed me a note in math class. She asked me, ‘Who do you like more and who do you want to kiss? Krew Gatlin or Decker Moss?’
They are the two most popular seventh graders in Granger Middle School, Diary. All the girls—including us fifth graders, like them.
I thought my best friend’s questions were fun. So I wrote back, ‘I like them both.’ I never answered the kissing question, Diary, because I really don’t know. I never kissed a boy, ever!
When I passed the note back to Maya, Mr. Trince—the jerk, grabbed it out of my hand and started reading it out loud in class. Do you believe a teacher would do that, Diary?! I was so embarrassed. I covered my face with both hands and wanted to cry. But I didn’t.
Thank goodness, Krew and Decker weren’t in my class, but I was afraid they would hear about it anyway.
