I pulled out of the driveway at 11 AM, my favorite band, blasting through the speakers in my rust orange pick-up truck. After a short ten minutes of singing along to every song and getting a few odd looks from other drivers, I made it into the crowded parking lot of the Foodmart, like I did every Saturday morning. Armed with a grocery list and a goal to get in and out in less than an hour, I started my long trek to the market’s welcoming doors.  That’s when I began to hear the whispers.
     “She’s out, you know!” a boy on my right exclaimed. I turned to face him and thought I recognized his face as one of the many people I went to high school with. He stood there leaning against a shopping cart in which sat one of his other friends.
     “I saw her,” the one in the cart said seriously. I ambled past them ignoring their ignorant comments.
     “I can’t believe they just let her leave!” a mother packing groceries into her minivan spat to another mom in a purple jogging suit, holding a baby.
     “I know!” she retorted, hugging her child closer to her chest as if she feared for its safety.
My ears continued to fill with remarks like these as I inched toward the store. I wasn’t the kind of person to be sucked into silly gossip but this was just ridiculous. How did the news spread so fast?  Then my own thoughts began to echo through my brain:  Jessica was so kind. Born and raised right here in Cerritos, a stellar high school student. Before she left she even held down a job at the local Baskin Robbins. At seventeen years young, how did everything go so wrong?
     “It’s always the quiet ones…” The mother in the jogging suit trailed off.
     I shook the thoughts from my head and headed straight to the first aisle. Pushing my cart mindlessly up and down the aisles, I stopped occasionally to place an item into my cart. I hadn’t even gotten half way through my list when I saw her.
     She stood at the end of the aisle, staring intently at the objects on the shelves in front of her. She was alone, neither of her older sisters anywhere in sight. I slowly began to back my way out of the aisle but, didn’t succeed in getting very far.
     “Squeek!” went my wheel. Crap. Flawless hearing put to good use, she spun to face me and the sound almost immediately. All of our midnight phone conversations came back to me in a rush. We had been best friends before she left.
     Both of us stood there motionless. She had always been painfully shy. I thought about calling out to her, but I knew her biggest fear was to be called out in front of everyone and on a Saturday morning the bustling Foodmart was anything but empty. I could see the wheels turning in her brain.  “Should I say hi…no…yes…ugh I don’t know!”  She was known as an introvert, and tended to overthink things.
     The seconds ticked by as we stood frozen in place, staring at each other. I took in her dark brown hair which matched flawlessly with her chocolate brown eyes. Her pink lips curved into a mysterious smile as she carefully pushed her glasses along the bridge her nose. She pulled at the edge of the white sweater she wore, a gift from her loving mother. I knew I would have to make the first move or we would be left standing here all day.
     I returned her hesitant smile with a solid lock on her eyes.  I knew, just as everyone else in town, that she wasn’t returning from a spontaneous, two-month Hawaiian vacation, indulging her love of the beach. Giant holes loomed in her parents’ story. Jessica’s return to Cerritos followed her release from the Stonybrook Mental Asylum.
     “Hi,” I whispered and she let out a heavy sigh of relief. It was only one word but she knew what it meant. I was… still am her friend. I wouldn’t shun her like the rest of the hometown’s cowards I decided as I closed the gap between us and pulled her into a hug.