Melanie Dawson was cold and dead, of that much I was sure. Her mother and father insisted that there was still a chance, that she’d be back home soon and that the body in the woods had been a false ID.

I, on the other hand, knew better. The parents didn't know their daughter like I did. They hadn't for a long time. Melanie wasn’t the type to open up to many people.

I was the only one she shared herself with, the only one who really knew her. I was the only one who had seen her favorite bracelet sitting amid the mess where she was found.

You see, Melanie trusted me. Were the best of friends, closer than sisters. I was the only one who understood her, the only one that really loved her. I wanted to protect her from everything bad in the world; in fact, I'm sure I would have if it hadn't been for that boy.

Now, he didn't kill her -not directly anyway-, but close enough. He whispered sweet sounding lies into her ear and stole away her love with his dark hair and his pretty boy eyes.  Melanie was fooled by him completely, but I resisted. I knew his so called love couldn’t be real, not with how he encouraged her to spend her days apart from me, the one that made her happy.

Unlike him, I had genuine love for Melanie.  It pained me to lose her, to see her losing me.  I knew I had to take her from him, to find a way to keep her by my side.

So you see, I had to do it.  It hurt me more than it hurt her.  I knew it would, but I had to.

It was surprisingly easy. My neighborhood had always been considered safe, and that makes people foolish. It turned out to be no trouble to reach in through a window opened for summer air and steal a knife that had no ties to me. It was no trouble to slip an extra pair of bloody rubber gloves into the back dumpster of the local hospital. It was no trouble to convince my dearest friend to sneak out and take a late night walk in the woods with me. It was no trouble at all to ensure that Melanie would forever be mine and mine alone.

They were so distant from her, the rest of the world, that they didn't even notice what I took. Everyone was so wrapped up in the loss of their own petty mortal connections to her; nobody thought to worry about the worn silver chain missing from her wrist or the decreased count of trademark electric blue streaks in her hair.

In the end, those self centered fools never gave a second thought to the quiet friend draped in mourning black. The boy and the parents were so wrapped up in their denial and falsified grief to notice that Melanie wasn't even truly gone. She was with me the whole time, safe from false love in the bracelet around my wrist and the lock of hair under my pillow.

Although Melanie Dawson was cold and lost to the world, she was warm and alive to me-just as it was always meant to be.