“Are you serious, Isabella? What do you mean you can’t hang out at the mall?” remarked Abigail over the phone.
“I’m busy, I am going to lunch with my mom tomorrow and I really don’t want to,” replied Isabella.
“Come on, your old and boring mother is more important than me, your popular friend!” snapped Abigail as she hung up the phone.
Actually my mom is just as important as you, Abigail, but I already had planned to go to lunch with her. And you know that I don’t really like going to the mall with just you and your boyfriend; I fell like the odd one out. But, have fun. Her biological mother, a teenager, put Isabella up for adoption, even before she was born. Carol adopted Isabella but Carol was never married and Isabella was the only thing she ever had. She poured her heart and soul into raising Isabella, trying to make her daughter’s life better than her own and wanted to build a positive relationship with her daughter so she frequently took her places, like out to lunch almost every Sunday.
The next day, Isabella popped out of bed at 11:30, ready to go to lunch with her mom, but when she walked into the kitchen she saw a note:
Isabella,
The hospital called me in this morning b/c a nurse called in sick so we won’t b able 2 go 2 lunch b/c I have to work til 5. Text me if u go anywhere.
Mom
Now I can go with Abigail and her boyfriend to the mall. But I don’t really want to go since I always am like the odd one out and I don’t really like the mall anyways. I would much rather draw cartoons than go to the mall. I just won’t tell Abigail; she won’t care anyways.
So Isabella flopped back onto her bed and reached for the drawing pad and pencil on her nightstand. She chewed on her pencil, a bad habit of hers, and started thinking about which character to create next. After about two hours of drawing, she heard the phone ring. Lazily, she got up off her bed and slowly meandered to the phone.
“Hello, this is the Rose residence, Isabella speaking,” she recited, a line she repeated every time she answered the phone to be polite. She listened intently as the police officer on the other end broke the news to Isabella.
“Abigail was driving on highway five near the county line close to the Mid-City Mall when a drunk driver, who was driving on Abigail’s side on the road, hit her directly on at 75 miles per hour. A bystander called 911 but there was not enough time and she was pronounced dead on the scene, soon after her parents arrived. The passenger was rushed to the hospital and is in critical condition….”
Isabella didn’t know what to think. I knew I should have gone. I knew I should have gone with her to the mall. I knew I had to be with her. Her parents just got divorced and her mom has breast cancer and I needed to be a friend to her. I knew I should have been in that car with her on the way to the mall. And, the last conversation I had with her ended in a fight and then she hung up on me. I just knew I made the wrong decision. Why did this happen to me? A tear fell from her eye and she started to sob as she contemplated her last words with her best friend.
After a few minutes of just laying on her bed, tears were running through her hands and onto the bright pink rug laid out in the middle of the room. She continued to cry for another hour or so just thinking about all the memories she had shared with her friend. She thought about their trip to Florida together, the many times they went to the mall, and when they met for the first time in preschool. Why me, Why did this happen to me of all people? What did I do to deserve this? Why her? Why me?