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I don’t know what happened to my friend, but I want her back. But she is not here anymore. She’s completely changed into a monster. I don’t know who else has survived her wrath. All I know is that she has killed and eaten a lot of my friends. Eaten! I’m terrified and I don’t know what to do. I’ve managed to fit myself into a tall locker, and pretend not to breathe. I hear her, shrieking and clambering in the hallway.

A Week Earlier

“Darren’s cute,” Sariyah mused, dreamily looking up at the ceiling, her chin resting on her hands. She lay the floor, sighing, swinging her feet to and fro.

I agreed. “ Yeah. Too bad he only likes cheerleaders and football players." The latter of the two was platonic…hopefully.

I was sitting in front of the mirror, straightening my curly brown hair. After all of this time, trying to style my hair in a new way, I had finally managed to find what worked for me.

“Michelle, tomorrow, I’m going to make my move,” Sariyah declared.

I smoothed the flat iron up and down over the parts that were almost straight. “Good luck,” I encouraged her.

“Thanks!” she beamed.

Samiyah and I were both sixteen years old. And yes, we both had crushes on boys. Mom said it was natural for teens. We both had natural hair, but hers was more coils and longer. In my opinion, she was more attractive than I was, so she had all the boys looking at her. I was shorter and less graceful with a rounded face. I was also a bit chubby too. The popular kids tended to either make fun of me or look over me. I didn’t mind though. My love of pop culture and video games outweighed popularity. Speaking of…

“You should get rid of some of your nerdy things, Michelle,” Sariyah noted. I stopped brushing my hair. Was she really just suggesting that I change my ways to be popular?

"You can't be serious," I replied flatly, but I was still incredulous. "No way you're telling me to change just so I can be popular."

Sariyah sat up and gestured to all the figurines and posters in my room defensively. "No one's going to take you seriously with all of these childish things around."

I stopped ironing my hair and turned around. "Those childish things have helped me get through school. Just because you don't like my things..." I couldn't finish. I shouldn't have had to defend myself. "I'm not going to change for popularity."

"Suit yourself," Sariyah said, shrugging. "We are at the bottom of the popularity food chain along with the tech nerds."

"That's because we are not rich and our parents aren't mayors or affluent people," I muttered. "And our parents shouldn't change for anything either. You can try to get the guys that you want, but leave me out of that."

Sariyah and I had been friends for years, and yet I've never known her to be obsessed with popularity. This was a new development in our friendship and it was getting a bit concerning. She insisted I change, and eventually the discussion turned into a full blown argument, ultimately resulting in her trying to pluck my Star Wars action figures from my desk. I yelled at her for almost causing it to break and asked her to leave the house.

There was a significant rift between our friendship after that. We avoided each other every time we crossed paths in the school hallway. This spouted some gossip about us. I didn't care. I didn't belong in that world; I only belonged where I was wanted.

I thought I belonged with Sariyah.

The ultimate betrayal came when she, along with the other chickens, flocked to Darren. She was insufferable, batting her pretty eyelashes and tossing her long coils of brown hair with highlights. He humored her though. He noted that she was friends with "that cute, short pudgy girl." I was a little satisfied seeing the irritated look on her face. She was no longer my friend. Had she ever been?

What I didn't account for was him brushing past her to walk over to me.

My heart froze. I did have a bit of a crush on this guy, but like I had stated previously, if Sariah wanted him, she could have him. I caught myself looking over at her expectantly, but she was visibly fuming. I could see steam rising from her ears. I fumbled with my locker that I had been standing at for the past five minutes staring at Sariyah make an attempt to flirt with Darren.

"Hey," he said in a laid back tone. He was a tall boy - almost seven feet - and he was finely fit with muscle. He had smooth dark brown skin. His eyes were almond-shaped; they were the right size of huge. He was cleanly shaven and had twists in his hair.

I smiled in a friendly way. "Oh, hey Darren," I said nonchalantly, getting my locker door open and gathering my books.

"So, I have been hearing that you are into anime," he said softly. He looked like he was embarrassed that he was even speaking about it.

I nodded. "Yeah, so what?"

"What anime do you like?" he wondered. I was taken aback. Was anime now popular or was I just being stupid?

I gave him a laundry list of shows that I liked, ranging from Dragon Ball Z to Apothecary Diaries. He seemed excited, but I was still suspicious. How have I never seen this side of him before? Even if I've looked at him from a distance, he's never shown any signs that he was interested in nerd things.

"My friends and I are all into anime. I'd just thought because it wasn't as popular as sports, that it wouldn't be widely received by the popular crowd. But since I know that at least one of my classmates has an interest in it, I'd decided that I wasn't going to be ashamed."

I shook my head. "Having an interest in anime or anything nerdy shouldn't be shameful. You like what you like and it shouldn't matter what people have to say about it."

Sariyah was still staring, so I gave her a knowing look.

"So, I guess you and her aren't friends anymore? That's weird," Darren said, scratching his head.

I sighed. "Yeah, well, we just..." my voice trailed off. It was bad enough that her and I weren't friends anymore. Did I have to say anything bad about her?

Before I could get a chance, she walked up to me. "Just what?" she fumed. "Say it!"

I glared at her, fire boiling in my blood. The nerve of her starting something in front of everyone! Luckily, Darren noticed the tension and stepped in.

"Chill," he said firmly. "What you two have going on is none of my concern." He raised his hands defensively. "You two can work it out for yourselves."

Sariyah walked away fuming, and I stared after her for a moment. Then I turned back to Darren. We resumed our conversation and then, he did something that I didn’t expect him to do.

He invited me to an anime Halloween party.

“What’s your name again?” he asked me.

“Michelle,” I told him.

He nodded slyly. “I didn’t even know your friend’s name.”

That made me chuckle a bit. We walked along the hallway, talking about the details of the party. Darren told me that we were going to dress up in cosplay costumes, so we could wear anything pertaining to anime and pop culture. He told me that he had permission from the school principal months ago to hold it on school grounds. I was excited. But I was worried how this would affect Sariyah.

At home, my heart fluttered. I couldn't believe the turn of events. I excitedly told my mother about it. She was concerned at first, and I understood why. She said she had to meet this boy Darren first and see if he was as upstanding as I made him out to be.

"There's no way of knowing whether he is playing a prank on you or not," she said, swirling her forkful of steak lightly in the air. "I don't have a good feeling about this. I know it's going to be at the beginning of the weekend but..."

"If something happens I will call," I said surely. "It won't be totally unsupervised. His parents will be there."

She seemed to relax a little at that. She sat her fork down. "I'm gonna want to meet his parents then."

"Sure thing," I said, beaming.

I was interrupted by my phone vibrating. My mother lifted her eyebrow "What have I told you about phones while we were eating together at the table?"

I looked sheepishly at my mother. "Sorry," I said, gritting my teeth with embarrassment. My phone kept vibrating like crazy. Annoyed, I looked at the screen.

"I have to be excused," I said quickly. Without an explanation, I stood up and headed upstairs to my room

Notifications of text messages littered the lock screen of my phone.

And they were mostly from Sariyah.

I had him right where I wanted him, it read. I expanded the banner notification.

"He was supposed to be mine." The messages kept going.

"You’ll pay for embarrassing me."

Fine. I would let her play her stupid games. She could play as if she were crazy all she wanted. I wasn’t studying her. I blocked her number without a response.

A few moments later, I heard Mom’s footsteps bound up the stairs. She, no doubt about it, wanted to get answers out of me, and she wasn’t going to take no for an answer. She was in my room in no time.

“I never excused you for dinner,” she said, placing her hands on her hips. “I wasn’t sure if you wanted anymore, so I threw your food away. What a waste.” She shook her head.

“Sorry,” I apologized.

My phone vibrated again. It was a different number, but the message was the same. She was crazed. I showed my mom the text messages and she was horrified.

“I should call her parents!” she exclaimed, horrified.

Suddenly, there was a loud bang as if something was being thrown. Both my mother and I glanced in the direction the noise was coming from. My mom moved toward my bedroom window.

“Sariyah! What’s gotten into you?” she shouted.

I heard Sariyah respond in a mad shriek. “YOU WILL PAY FOR THIS MICHELLE!”

Mom closed the blinds and turned toward me with wide eyes. "I'm going to call the police."

The police arrived in a matter of minutes, but Sariyah vanished without a trace. Officers searched around the house, but could not find her. A female lead officer shrugged her shoulders and told us to call them when Sariyah made an appearance again. I showed her the text message. She looked at the text messages.

"She just sounds crazy," the officer said. "Call us if you have any problems."

Days before the Party

Darren and I spent time in between classes talking to each other and getting to know each other. I could hear the rumors starting to take hold of the school. People were saying how we looked great together. At lunchtime, I felt Sariyah's eyes burned on my back. She would try and talk to Darren, but her efforts were in vain. She didn't even care about the popular kids she was hanging out with anymore. The other girls were competition. But they noticed she took it more seriously than they did.

One of her new friends, Callie, brought it to my attention. She had caught up with me in the hallway and told me that Sariyah was acting strange, sneaking off campus somewhere and then appearing hours later. Her appearance changed. She began to look unkempt, her hair was wilder than ever, and her skin began to be rubbery.

One time, I was using the bathroom and I had heard her chanting obsessively, "He has to be mine....he has to be mine..." She stopped, and I heard a pitter patter of bare skin on the bathroom floor.

She had crawled all the way on the dirty bathroom floor from her stall and was looking up at me from the stall next to mine. I rinsed my hands and quickly booked it out of there.

Her parents debated sending her away to a mental institution. They noticed the severe changes in her and wondered what was happening.

This was scary.

The Day of the Party

Mom had met Darren's parents the day of the party. She was hesitant, but she gave in. She always wanted to see me happy and living my teenage life. A week before, I had convinced my mom to buy me a Yumeko Jobami costume. She had no idea what I was talking about, as usual, but she bought the cosplay and it came on the day of the party. I told my mom that Darren could drive me to the school, but that was out of the question. We all carpooled together, along with other cautious parents and students and we all met at the recreation hall.

Mom looked at me in my costume. "Have fun. Call me if you need anything. Don't forget." Mom placed a hand on my shoulder, looking deep into my eyes. She didn't want to let me go. She gave me a squeeze on both of my shoulders and kissed my cheek.

Darren walked up to me, and gave me a high five. "Nice cosplay," he complimented. I smiled and thanked him.

I met his other nerd friends; most of them I knew already, but didn't know that they were anime fans. I was ecstatic. I complimented a girl in a Yoruichi costume. I felt at home. Bleach was playing in the background on the projector screen. Perfect. Darren and I were getting to know each other; we were getting close until...

All of the lights went off and everyone started to murmur. A scream rang out in the crowd and everyone dispersed. There was the sound of someone slicing and dicing plastic and flesh. I wanted to be aware of what was happening, but I didn't want to get anywhere near the disaster. I along with my classmates, ran towards the exit of the recreational hall, careful to not slip on the thick, viscous blood on the linoleum floor. The sound of maniacal laughter from behind me rose above the cacophony of screams and sounds of knife on flesh; or was that teeth on flesh? I tried to find Darren. I wanted to make sure he was okay.

I had to call my mom.

I found myself alone in the dimly lit hallway. My heart felt as if it would tear right through my chest; I was so scared. At the end of the hallway I saw a dark figure with familiar curly, long hair, holding a gleaming knife.I Instead of it being long, curly and beautiful, it was wild and untamed. She didn't look like the same person that I've known. Her smile was stretched too wide, her skin was pallid and rubbery. She didn't seem real. There was blood all over her. And....was that bits of flesh in her face?

It was Samiyah.

I booked it in the other direction.

"Michelle!" she screamed, but it sounded wrong. It sounded like something got inside her.

Within a week she had transformed into someone that was unfamiliar to me. I didn't know her anymore. How could this have happened so quickly? She was past reasoning. Again, I tried all of the classroom doors along the hall. Sariyah's footsteps thundered behind me. I thankfully reached the nearest supply closet, closed it tight and locked it.

Her shrieking voice echoed along the hallway. She sounded demonic, it was scary. I heard the sharp bang of the knife and the scrape, scrape, of it dragging along the locker walls. I trembled, still unable to believe that this was the girl that I was friends with.

"How could you do this to me?" she shrieked. "How could you take Darren away from me?!"

I tried not to breathe as I waited for her to pass by and find somewhere else to search. I cautiously opened the door. And a few moments later I saw a tall figure in the dim hallway.

"Michelle?" the voice said. It was Darren. I graciously ran over to him and hugged him tight. "Oh thank God you're alright," he said, hugging me back.

I cried. "I don't know what's gotten into Sariyah. She's...she's..." I couldn't finish my sentence.

"Bat shit crazy? Yes, she is, and we have to get out of here," Darren said.

We searched for some place to hide. There were faint sounds of Sariyah shrieking like a madwoman.

"We have to be separated for a bit," he said. "I'll have to break in two lockers so that you and I can be safe."

That's how I ended up here. I might have to spend the night if Sariyah doesn't get to us first. I'm calling my mom so that she'll know what happened. She won't be happy, and she probably won't let me go out ever again. I think she found us again, because I could hear her trudging down the hallway and trying to force her way into the locker that I'm hiding in.