Kidnapped

An extreme and sudden change seemed to have come over Lauren. The bubbly, outgoing, talkative girl was gone; in her place was someone who avoided social contact altogether. She had not been out of her room for three days; no matter how many times they knocked on the locked door, there was no response. If it weren’t for the light from her room and the missing leftovers they observed every morning, they would have thought she had vanished into thin air – or worse, that the kidnappers had taken her.

On the fourth night, Lauren snuck out of her room at two in the morning, as she has done all those previous nights, to get a midnight snack. As she was pouring herself a cup of water in the kitchen, she heard footsteps approaching. She froze and looked around frantically, but realized that there was nowhere for her to hide.

“Lauren!” Natalie’s eyes widened in surprise. “We’ve missed you! We’re so worried – did something happen? Why won’t you ever come down anymore?”

Natalie looked up and was startled by how fierce and hostile Lauren looked.

“I-I mean – of course, if you don’t want to talk about it – I understand -"

“I don’t,” Lauren immediately said, glaring at her.

“It’s just…I thought we were friends…” Natalie mumbled before leaving.

“I thought we were friends.”

* * *

“I thought we were friends, Lauren. More than friends. If you didn’t like me, why did you keep leading me on?”

Lauren glanced at the boy in front of him. With chin-length blond hair and piercing blue eyes, he was easily the cutest guy in her government and politics class. She remembered how she used to melt a little inside every time he smiled at her in the hallway. She remembered all the nights she spent by her phone, waiting for him to call. Now the only thing she wanted was for him to be out of sight, out of mind.

The worst part was, she didn’t even feel bad about what she’s done. She didn’t even feel sorry. She only felt annoyed. Why couldn’t he just take a hint and leave quietly? She hated the person she’s become, and she hated him for making her that way.

“I never promised you anything. You never asked me to be your girlfriend – we were never officially a couple. I don’t owe you.”

“Fuck, Lauren, don’t give me that bullshit! We spent every weekend with each other. We kiss all the time. We even went to goddamn prom together! And now you expect me to believe that all that – all that, it doesn’t mean a fucking thing?”

Lauren stared at her feet. She really, really wished he would leave her alone and give her some peace and quiet.

“Yeah, well, we’ve had out fun. But that was it,” she said.

For a moment he looked as if he was going to hit her. Then all the sudden it was as if all the fight left in him had evaporated; his shoulders drooped, and he hurried off, hoping she wouldn’t see his tears.

* * *
“I thought we were friends, Lauren. Best friends.” Even through the shaky connection, Lauren could tell that Tessa had been crying.

“We are, Tess. Of course we are.”

Tessa gave out a short bitter laugh. “That’s why you ignored the ten letters I’ve sent to you. That’s why you won’t answer any of my calls and I had to tell your mom to lie and say she didn’t know who was on the phone. That’s why you never made any attempt to contact me whatsoever after I’ve left.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry,” Tessa echoed.

“Look,” Lauren said snappily, getting more and more impatient and irritated by the minute, “There’s no point in pretending that you aren’t 3000 miles away, that we can just go catch the new horror film this weekend if we want. And what, did you think we can talk on the phone every morning and act like we’re going to school together?”

“This is ridiculous - I mean, of course thing aren’t going to be the way they used to. But that doesn’t mean we’ve to stop being friends.”

“Maybe it does.”

* * *
It was always like this. Her relationship with others was like the short life cycle of an IT product she studied at school. Everything was alright in the initial development process. The honeymoon period was when their relationship - or the selling process - first began. Once she really got to know someone better, once their relationship reached its peak (and that usually didn’t take long), it would begin to decline rapidly, and then soon all she would want to do was to kick that person out of her life for good, like an outdated product would be eliminated out of the market. She hadn’t yet reached that point with her seven friends here, but she knew she would, eventually, and if she continued to open up to them, there would be nothing but hatred, anger, and much bitterness at the end.

She didn’t understand why she was like that either. Maybe it was because she was frightened of commitment. The more analytical part of her brain told her that it was possibly because she didn’t want to get hurt. But her favourite explanation – though at the back of her mind she knew it probably wasn’t true, since she was like that with everyone, even her family - she’d like to think that it was God’s way of showing her only exception, her soulmate.

“You are, the only exception…you are, the only exception…” she sang under her breath.

And that person was her boyfriend, Will.