Down By The Bay

The gravel crunched beneath the tires as Lovey pulled up to the house. The girls had been looking forward to this weekend all summer, and Lovey was so happy to spend some time with her two best friends before going off to college. "Let's get this party started!" Jen screamed in excitement as she stepped out of the car.

The beach house belonged to Jen's family and the girls had been partying there every summer since freshman year. But this weekend was different. It was just the three of them; Lovey, Jen, and Mandy, the three amigas. There would be no wild parties this year. No hooking up or boozing out, just three best friends making new memories before moving on to new lives. Lovey began to tear up at the thought of leaving her friends behind, but she held it back swallowing her emotions as she usually did.

"Awwww, guys this is our last summer together", Mandy said as though she read Lovey's mind.

"Guys, come on", said Jen said rolling her eyes. "It's not like we'll never see each other again. We'll just be in different states but it's not the end of the world." Lovey wanted to believe that their friendship would withstand the distance, but she knew better. Sooner or later, the weekly phone calls would turn into monthly text messages as the girls got busy with their new lives and schools. Lovey had enough people walk out of her life for her to know what's next.

"Grab your 'ish and let's go ladies! We're home!", Jen yelled, breaking Lovey's melancholic thought. The beach house looked like it belonged in a magazine, it was picture perfect. It was a light blue bungalow nestled in nature. The trees surrounding the house looked greener beside it and the bay that ran behind the house glistened in the sunlight. This is going to be the best weekend ever, Lovey said to herself.

The girls spent a relaxing evening indoors that night. They were spent from the long drive up and they didn't feel like doing much of anything that night. They sat around the table playing card games, eating pizza, and drinking beer. Lovey looked across the dining room table at her two best friends and was content. The three of them couldn't have been more different with Jen being the rich, Ivy League bound academic and Mandy being the beautiful popular cheerleader. Lovey was plain and boring compared to her friends, but she never felt out of place when she was with them. Their differences brought them closer together and made their friendship greater. "This is going to be the best weekend ever", Lovey shared out loud.

The next morning, Lovey woke up with a piercing headache. She felt as though her brain was swelling beyond the capacity of her skull, and her eyes would pop out of her head any second. She opened her eyes to excruciating brightness as the sunlight poured into the living room. She laid very still on her back as she felt waves of nausea wash over her. Way too much alcohol, she thought to herself.

Eventually, she mustered enough strength to sit up and reach for her cell phone which was lying in the middle of the floor. Jen was fast asleep on the floor a few feet away from the phone. It was in the afternoon, and she was usually an early riser. Last night's drinking had her feeling bedridden. She closed her eyes hoping that the pressure behind her eyes would ware off.

It was creeping up to evening time when Lovey's eyes opened again. She didn't realize that she had drifted off to sleep until she looked around the room and noticed that the sun was going down. Jen had moved from the floor to the love seat adjacent to Lovey. Still asleep.

It was then that Lovey realized she hadn't seen Mandy all day. She slid off the couch slowly, her brain still throbbing mercilessly. She walked over to the large bay window overlooking the bay expecting to see Mandy taking a swim. Out of the three of them, Mandy was the only one who knew how to swim. She was an avid swimmer who had been apart of the swim team for the last 3 years.

No matter how hard Lovey searched, Mandy was nowhere to be seen. She rushed outside to get a better look. The temperature had cooled down significantly and the breeze blowing over the water was brisk. Lovey wrapped her arms around herself for warmth.

"MANDY!", Lovey yelled with urgency.

The car was sparked in the driveway exactly where they left it the day before, so it wasn't likely that her friend went far. The closest town was hours away by car and the nearest house to theirs had been vacant for years.

"Mandy, where the hell are you?!". Lovey yelled before running back to the house. Her heart was racing as she shook Jen awake. "Jen wake up!", she shrieked. "Mandy's missing."

Jen's eyes snapped open as she rose to her feet so quickly that she fell back on to the couch. She rubbed her forehead as though she was plagued with the same ailment as Lovey. It took her a moment to realize that her best friend was trying to talk to her, but she couldn't grasp what she was saying. Something about Mandy. Lovey held her friend by the shoulders and shook her desperately. "Jen focus, Mandy's missing." And with that sentence, Jen snapped out of her stupor and vomited.

It had been five hours since the girls realized that Mandy was gone. The police came around to take their statements and arrange a search party. Mandy's parents were notified; it was Jen who made the call. The girls stood outside huddled close together as though the other would disappear into thin air as well.

"Sergeant Brown, we found something over here", a young officer shouted. Before the sergeant could make a move, the girls rushed over to where the officer stood. Nothing could have prepared them for what they saw. Laying before them, just steps away in a clear blue plastic bag, was Mandy's decapitated head, her eyes opened wide, frozen in shock.

Lovey felt as though the air was knocked out of her and her knees started to buckle beneath her. The atmosphere filled with terror as Jen shrieked in fright and fell to the ground in anguish. The next thing Lovey remembers is being helped into the police cruiser beside her friend who was puking relentlessly into a plastic bag.

The months after that weekend passed by in a hazy blur. It was strange watching her friend's murder case unravel on the 5 o'clock news every evening. Seeing a photo of Mandy's smiling face staring back at her from the television screen was almost surreal, as if Lovey was part of a sick, twisted joke. The case was ongoing, and according to the news report, there wasn't much evidence to go on. There were no suspects at this point, and the body was still missing. Lovey told the police everything that she knew, which wasn't much, unfortunately.

Jen had missing in action since the day they left the beach house, and no matter how often Lovey reached out to her, she never got a response. Jen had been accepted into an Ivey League school out of state and was planning to move out at the end of summer. This would be their last chance to say goodbye.

Lovey crept out of her house one Saturday night when her parents were out. She sped off into the night on her bike to Jen's house, which was a few blocks away. As Lovey pulled up to her friend's house, she noticed that Jen's red Benz was not in its usual spot, and neither were her parents' cars. An eerie feeling washed over her as she knocked on the front door. Something felt wrong. Her knocks went unanswered for several minutes before she finally accepted the obvious. She peered through the window and realized that the house was completely empty. She has already lost one friend to murder, and now her other friend was gone too. Lovey got on her bike and rode off feeling more alone than ever.

The summer turned into fall, which then turned into winter. Time passed by and the years added up. Now, in her final year of college with new friends and a boyfriend for the first time in her life, Lovey rarely thinks about Mandy or Jen anymore. She hadn't gone back to her old neighbourhood since her parents moved out of state years ago, and she never heard from Jen again. The last summer of her senior year at high school felt like a bad dream and she was finally able to move on.

She sat down with a moan on her roommate's futon. It's been a long week of writing papers and Lovey needed to unwind. She turned on the TV to catch the news and was caught off guard when a familiar face stared back at her from the screen. A nauseating ache rose in the pit of her stomach almost instantly, and beads of sweat formed on her brow. She sat up and blinked a few times to make sure that she was seeing clearly. Staring back at her through the TV screen was an image of Jen, who was being charged with accessory to murder in Mandy's murder case.

An abundance of thoughts and emotions raced through Lovey's head, and she felt like she was stuck in a never-ending nightmare. According to the news report, Amanda Delgado was having an affair with Jen's father, Mr. Harris, at the time when she became pregnant. In an effort to cover up his affair with a minor, Mr. Harris begged Mandy to get an abortion, but she refused.

Weeks later when the girls spent the weekend at the beach house, Mr. Harris met with Mandy in the morning to persuade her into terminating the pregnancy. Again, Mandy refused. In a desperate attempt to eliminate the shame this scandal would bring on him as a married man and an affluent member on the community, Mr. Harris strangled Mandy to death. The police aren't sure how or when Jen got involved, but they have evidence against her that proves she played a role in getting rid of the body.

Feelings of guilt, rage and despair washed over Lovey as images of her friend's murder replayed in her mind. She was recovering from a hangover merely steps away while Mandy laid helplessly on the ground. She tore back the pages of memory to see if there was even a glimpse of evidence that she could've missed, and suddenly she remembered. Flash backs of her and Jen sitting in the back of the police cruiser came rushing back. Jen seemed so distraught, so broken that it seemed impossible that she could have anything to do with it. Except for one small detail that Lovey overlooked that day. Mandy's head was wrapped in a clear blue plastic bag, similar to the one Jen was holding in the back of the car.