I’d been wondering when my best friend, Lila, would come back from her vacation. It’d been a month and three weeks. She said it would be two weeks. Five weeks had passed since her cruise to Oceania was supposed to end. I tried to text her, email her, and nothing happened. She said that she would keep in touch with me. Did she? No.
My mom said that she would tell me if Lila’s mother told her anything, but she didn’t. Now I was getting worried.
“She’ll be back,” my mom kept telling me. I know it’s a bit weird to think about this that deeply in thought, but I care about Lila and her family.
This problem about Lila mysteriously disappearing was getting in my way, so I decided to let it slide. Although, I really couldn’t. It was three and a half days until it started to bother me again. Where is Lila? Why wasn’t she writing me back? When will she be back? All these questions flowed through my head. I was thinking about this during Period Three, math class. All of a sudden, I felt nauseous.
“May I go to the bathroom?” I asked the teacher.
“Quickly.”
I could feel my heart beating. Why did I feel like I was going to throw up after thinking about Lila? That’s a question I can’t answer.
I got to the bathroom on time before I threw up. I splashed my face with cold water, took deep breaths. Then and there, I threw up in the sink. Why? I wondered. Why did I throw up?
I thought about mine and Lila’s back story: met when we were two, neighbors, went to the the same elementary school and middle school, in the same class mostly every time. I decided to go to the nurse.
“Hi. How can I help you?” the nurse asked me.
“Um, I just threw up.”
“Why do you think you threw up?”
“Um, I guess nausea and maybe-” I got interrupted.
“Nausea, really?”
I decided to leave the nurse’s office. If she didn’t believe me, there was nothing I could do. On my way out, I got yelled at.
“WHERE DO YOU THINK YOU’RE GOING?” she said rudely. “Come sit down. You can call your mom.”
After yelling at me, the sentence she said after that was like she was begging for my forgiveness. Wow.
“Sure.”
I picked up the phone, I dialed my mom’s number, and I started to talk to her.
“May you please pick me up? I just threw up,” I asked.
“Sure. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
I hung up the phone. Twenty minutes passed, and just as my mom said she would be here, she was. As we were in the car, my mom asked me a question I didn’t want to answer.
“Why did you throw up?”
I was hoping that if I didn’t answer, she would forget. But no.
“I asked you a question.”
“Because I felt nauseous.”
I hoped that would satisfy her.
“Tell me why you felt nauseous.”
“Fine,” I said stubbornly. “Because I was thinking of Lila.” (I mumbled that.)
“What did you say?”
My mom was getting on my last nerve.
“BECAUSE I WAS THINKING ABOUT LILA, AND WHERE SHE WENT! THERE!” I yelled.
“Excuse me.”
“I’m sorry, Mom.”
We didn’t talk the rest of the car ride. When we got home, my mom told me that Lila’s mom had contacted her.
“What did she say?!” I was so excited to hear the news.
My mom’s eyes started tearing up. I wondered if it was good news or bad news.
That’s when I realized my best friend was dead.