Friends or Foes

There I was, sitting on my bed with my classic cheesy “Fries before Guys” sweatshirt and my sweatpants from GAP with a grease stain on my thigh, staring at my blank phone on my pillow. I hadn’t touched it since last week when I received a text from an unknown number. I had already looked through all of my current contacts, old contacts from my old phone, and a few of my forgotten contacts, and still, no one matched the number I received a text from. So there I was, staring at the black screen of the new phone I had gotten just over a week ago. I hopped off my bed to get a soda from the purple Frigidaire in the corner of my room.

Why me? Why was the message sent to me? Of all the 7.96 billion people on earth, why me? I am the least coordinated person ever. Seriously, I am late to almost everything and my mind often tends to run away from me and take me down a road of alphabet soup made of random thoughts. I’ve got to find a way to get that under control. Whenever I realized I was off track or running late, I would be too late to make an excuse.

“Abigail!” My mom yelled while knocking on my door. “You’re going to the park to hang out with friends in five minutes! Did you forget that?”

Shoot!- I had been so engrossed in thinking about the text that I had forgotten. Oops!

“Just putting my shoes on! And don’t call me Abigail!! I like Abby more!”

I now had to change my shirt, and pants and put on shoes in the time I told my mom it would take to put on only shoes. Goodness, gracious. I asked Alexa what time it was and immediately increased my already rapid pace of changing from sweats to a cute outfit fit for the middle of July in Utah. Fifth-teen minutes later, I jumped out of the car and slammed the door shut right after saying goodbye to my mom who had dropped me off.

I looked around a little to try and find Caroline, Emmie, Mia, and Jess. After a few minutes of searching, I saw them sitting under a tree laughing. I run over and plop myself in the middle of where they are all sitting. I notice a cooler to the left of Emmie propped open slightly.

“What’s that for?”

“Oh. This?” Emmie asked in a voice that had a little too much mischievousness.

“Yes, that,” I exclaimed obviously with humor in my voice but a little too much annoyance.

“Well,” she paused for dramatized suspense, “This is… drumroll please.”

“STARBUCKS FOR EVERYONE!!!” She said with too much excitement in her voice while throwing enough confetti and glitter from her pocket to cover everyone within a 5-mile radius.

“Oh my gosh, Emmie!!!” Everyone shouted very excitedly at the same time.

“What? I haven’t seen y’all in a long time and I wanted to make an experience that we would all remember for a long time.”

“Emmie, we haven’t seen each other since school got out. Which was over 3 months ago. No matter what we would remember this for a very long time. But since you added Starbucks to the equation, we will remember this for even longer!” Jess said while laughing while finishing her sentence which resulted in everyone laughing with her.

After what seemed like hours of laughing, Emmie passed out everyone's favorite drinks, and we all started to sip our drinks. I took a big long sip of my Pink Drink. I close my eyes, allowing my taste buds to take control, letting my tongue bathe in the creamy, smooth, sweet flavor of strawberries mixed with cream and ice-cold water. I open my eyes to see everyone almost halfway done with their drinks.

“What's wrong Abby? Do you not like it? I thought the Pink Drink was your favorite. You’ve only taken one sip.” Emmie asked, sounding a little offended although I’m sure she didn’t mean it.

“I do, it is my favorite. I just like to let every one of my taste buds get the flavor, to let the drink coat the sides and roof of my mouth, to let the strawberry chunks slowly slide down my throat as the taste buds at the back of my throat get all the flavor as well. Ya know?”

Everyone stared at me like I was some goth girl reciting the most beautiful poem which I had written. I looked around at all my friends' faces and saw the same reaction from everyone.

“What?” I asked in an innocent but also worried voice.

“Ab, are you okay??!” Caroline asked.

I thought it was a joke with how much concern was in her voice, but then I took a long hard look at her face and saw real concern for me.

“Why are y’all so worried?”

“Abby, you’ve never talked like that before. I mean you've been sappy at moments, but you’ve never been like…”

“Poetic.” Mia chimed in.

“I’m fine you guy–”

“See! Somethings wrong! She always says ‘y’all,’ she never says ‘you guys.’ Ab, what is wrong? You can’t hide it from us anymore? Are you moving?! You’re moving, aren’t you? Why didn’t you tell us? I can’t believe you’re moving. Where are you going? Does it have a beach and can we visit when we hav–”

Mia started ranting on and on. She needed to be stopped.

“I’m not moving. And of course, you could visit on breaks. I don’t want to worry y’all more.”

“Ah-hah! There is something!” Mia said as she had just cracked the last clue to a murder crime scene.

“If I tell y’all, you have to promise not to tell anyone. Got it?”

At the same time, every single one of my friends right there, right then, looked at me with those joking puppy eyes and said,

“We promise that if you tell us we will not tell anyone until the day we die.”

“Or until it's over.” Caroline just had to chip in.

“No. Even after it’s over, you can’t tell anyone.”

A hush washed over everyone like an ocean wave coming up to a sandy beach and lingering.

“So? Are you going to tell us or not?” Jess asked very eager to find out the cause of why I am so reluctant to tell them.

After contemplating for far too long about if I should tell them all of it or not, I finally decided to tell them everything. I mean, what are best friends for?

“Please don’t overreact.”

“We won’t,” Caroline said like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

“Have you met y’all?” I said like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

I wasn’t expecting that to make everyone laugh, but it did.

“Okay okay okay. So a few weeks ago, when I still had my old phone, I got a text from a random number that said ‘I thought I’d never see you again.’ And I was a little creeped out at first, and then I remembered that I was getting a new phone and didn’t worry about it too much. I thought that since I was getting a new phone and a new number, the mysterious message would disappear and the person who sent it would realize it was a mistake and text the wrong number.”

I paused to take a sip of my glorious drink.

“Then, once I got my new phone along with my new number, everything was fine until a few days ago when the message appeared again. Except for this time, it said 'Why do you push me away? You really shouldn't do that' and then I was really freaked. But I'm not going to do anything about it because they probably just texted the wrong number and don't know it. I'm going to text them telling them they have the wrong number, okay?"

My friends didn't seem too pleased that I was going to ignore this, but I pull out my phone anyways and start texting the unknown number:

I don't know who you are, but please stop texting me. You probably have the wrong number.

Not more than a second after the message was delivered, I got a text back saying:

No, Abby. You don't know who I am, but I know who you are.

My phone drops like a brick from my hands as I stare blankly at my friends.

"What? What is it? What happened?" Everyone exclaimed at the same time, before getting a worried expression on their faces after I didn't reply.