Day three of searching for Beatrice. I loathed every day that went by without her. Beatrice was my best friend. I sighed in despair. I have to use the word “was” now. I’m not even sure if she is still alive. Every hour without her seems like a whole day without her. No word from her. Not a single message. Ever since Beatrice met that guy on the internet, she changed. She started staying up all night just talking to him. Beatrice started being mean and hardly talking to her friends. She was still the same with me at first, but after a while, she’d stay to herself.
Everyone noticed a change in her when she first wore a hoodie and sat by herself with a plastic knife and an apple. Beatrice was the most beautiful and most popular girl in our school. We observed as she started carving her name and Charlie’s name in the apple. Some kid walked up to her to ask if she was alright. She quickly looked at him with wide lifeless eyes. She looked so tired and dull, but was so angry. She snapped at him and threw the apple in the poor kid’s face. That night I remember me going to her house and having a long talk with her. It was the fateful night of April 13th.
Beatrice spoke to me in a very quiet and scared voice, as if she was trying to hide from someone. She told me all about Charlie. She told me everything that time. I stared at her in shock. Charlie had met up with her and raped her, stealing her virginity. He was not the the same person he had shown to Beatrice in his pictures. I told Beatrice to sleep over at my house for a month, to just stay with my family and I until she was safe. She had told me she continued to meet up with Charlie after school. He continuously beat her and raped her everytime she saw him. Beatrice couldn’t stop seeing him. He threatened to kill her, her mum, and her little sister. Beatrice told me in a hushed voice that she had fallen in love with him. I realized that night that sometimes things aren’t as they seem to be. She looked away and whispered “He... threatened to murder my family if I don’t return to him...” She looked back at me. “This is a privilege. Me being here right now. He wants to keep me locked in his basement..”
Now it’s over a month. Beatrice never stopped seeing Charlie, or whatever his real name is. She came back to my house every night, bleeding and battered. Worse and worse every time she saw him. She gave out all her confidential information to him too. I wasn’t going to give up faith in her. I never stopped helping her. We’ve been best friends since 1st grade. Now it’s all gone. Everything we built just because of that person that was met over the internet. My parents, the police and I haven’t stopped looking for her. Ever since the first day she hasn’t shown up back at my house. “What’s going on with the world,” I ask myself now.
I coiled up in a ball. “I miss you,” I said quietly. I couldn’t stop thinking about Beatrice, my best friend. Now my only wishes are for her to come back, alive. I see the internet differently now. "Help, salvation, reassurance, safety. Where is that in this god forsaken world?"