Healed

She was my first best friend. We're neighbors, it's inevitable. We grew up together. I moved in a few months before she was born (I was born in January and moved next to her house when I was five months old, and she was born in September). We're eight months and twenty days apart, to be exact. What I didn't know until a year and a half ago was that her parents...well, I knew they argued, but so did mine, so I thought that it was normal. Just "parent stuff." But until halfway through last year, I was oblivious to how badly her mom was being treated. I found out the hard way.

It was in the middle of the night. My dad didn't wake up and the doorbell wasn't loud enough, but I heard about it the next morning. Ainsley's* mom had made a 911 call around one in the morning; her husband had been beating her, and she panicked. When the cops came around and arrested her dad, Brent*, her mother, Winnie*, had to come with them for questioning. Ainsley couldn't stay home alone. It was a school night, but my dad agreed to take her in for as long as we had to. Instead, they called in Brent's brother and he stayed with her.

Since the incident halfway through seventh grade, I'd been worried about her. The bad relationship between her parents was effecting her childhood. She had turned inward. She lost friends. Her mother would come to us some evenings to talk to my parents, when she needed help, and occasionally, she'd cry. All of us were scared that Ainsley was suffering from depression. I hated my overactive imagination even more when I realized she might even be cutting or something. I went to my friends. I even cried once. It hurt to think about it.

Brent was forced to move out, and Ainsley rebelled against Winnie, who requested divorce. At this moment, almost all papers are filled out, and with the help of her lawyer, Winnie will (hopefully) gain full custody over Ainsley. However, there are problems to be thought through. We're concerned that Brent will stop contributing to Ainsley's tuission, stop sending the Winnie and her daughter money. Winnie so far doesn't work; she had a job at one point, but I don't know what happened.

On the bright side, ever since the divorce was requested, Ainsley has been brightening up. People reached out to her, asked her to hang out, and she laughed for the first time in months. She can socialize. She has friends again. She has best friends, which is even better. And finally, my worry for her is inching away.

Her mom came to us again today. She had been getting our mail because we were out of town for a while. When she announced happily that Ainsley has been doing better, I smiled. And I asked her to remind me what her birthday was (I knew it was September, I just never remembered the day). Who knows? Maybe a little gift box and a card would find itself in her mailbox on September 25th.

*name changed.