“Melanie!” I shouted, “what’s the equation for finding the hypotenuse of a right triangle?”

     We were listening to Louis Armstrong in my cozy bedroom, sheltered from the stormy weather outside my window. Through the shimmering glass, I saw hail dropping from above and heard the thump of ice flakes against the rooftop. The vinyl record spun on the archaic record player that I had found sitting in our attic, creating crisp saxophone notes. My best friend, Melanie, was lying on top of the bed and her head hung off the side. Her curly red hair swept the floor and freckles danced across her cheeks. I was sitting on the floor, reading over our notes from math class that day.

  “The what… hippopotamus of a triangle?” Melanie responded as she turned over onto her back and stared at the ceiling. Her hazelnut eyes were hidden underneath delicate eyelids and she was nodding her head rhythmically to the jazz.

“Melanie, stop pretending you don’t know what I’m talking about,” I groaned and rolled my eyes at her. “Do you want to pass this math test or not?”

  “You know what? We don’t even need to learn about geometry! I mean how is this supposed to tell me how to get a job?” Melanie exclaimed, waving her arms in the air in an exasperated motion.

“Melanie, come on!” I cried agitatedly. “Do you know the answer to this question or not!?”

“Oh, calm down, Jazzy. I’m just playing with you.” Melanie rolled off the bed, laughing. She knelt on the carpet and stuck a lollipop in front of my face, “Here, cheer up and take a cherry! It’s my favorite,” she shouted gleefully.

Melanie never takes no for an answer, so I sighed defeatedly. We were never going to get done with studying. I took the lollipop from her hand, ripped off the pink wrapper, and popped it into my mouth.

Melanie scooched along the rough carpet over to the secret stash of snacks underneath my desk and brought back a small bag of unfinished Cheetos. She took a handful and stuffed it into her mouth. She then proceeded to lick her fingers, which turned orange from the cheesy powder.

    Unable to resist, I grabbed a handful too, and we both giggled.

The two of us chewed in silence for a while.

Melanie broke the quiet first. She furled her brow and asked, “Can I tell you something, Jazzy? Her face was serious, all traces of playfulness gone. “You have to promise not to tell anyone.”

“Of course,” I responded. “We’re best friends. You can tell me anything.”

To reassure her, I linked my pinkie with hers and whispered, “I promise.”

“Okay then. I trust you,” she murmured. Melanie was usually carefree and confident, and always spitting out witticisms at someone else. Something was off today.

“My brother disappeared yesterday," she announced nervously as she curled her knees into her body, rocking back and forth with agitation.

“What!?” I cried. My jaw dropped in surprise. “Why?”

“I think it was because of my parents,” she whispered. “They were always arguing. He finally got tired of it, packed up, and just left,” she confessed as her pallid face grew whiter.

I thought about her dilemma for a moment. “It’ll be fine,” I comforted Melanie. “He’s already seventeen. He can take care of himself.”

“Yeah. I know.” She whispered. “I just don’t understand why he didn’t tell me before.” Melanie was close to tears. I noticed her nose crinkling and saw her eyebrows stitched together with worry.

Even though we’ve been living next door for our entire lives, I didn’t ever really talk to Melanie’s family. Her parents weren’t even home most of the time. Mrs. Benson, Melanie’s mom, would disappear off to who knows where whenever Mr. Benson went on business trips, which was pretty often. Melanie’s dad sometimes even appeared in headlines in the county newspapers. He was a successful building investor who everyone said was a charismatic and cunning man.

Because I had the closest window to their house, I could see Melanie’s parents coming home late at night. The lights inside their house would flash on suddenly and I’d hear yelling voices and crashing sounds erupting from her living room. However, every morning Melanie would always come to school looking fresh and content, so I never knew what to think.

“Does your dad ever drink?” Melanie questioned suddenly, looking up.

     “Umm. Yeah. Mainly at parties when his friends from work come over,” I answered, not understanding what that question had to do with anything.

“Well my dad does, a lot.” she exclaimed. “Drinking changes his personality and he acts weird and aggressive.”
“What do you mean by ‘weird’?” I asked. In my mind, I couldn’t imagine Mr. Benson as anything other than that charming man I’ve gotten so used to seeing in the newspaper pictures.

Melanie was still curled up in a ball, with her face hidden between her arms and under a mess of ginger hair. She suddenly stood up and wiped her moist eyes with her hand. Tears rolled down her cheeks and she gasped for breath.

“Thanks, I should go,” she whispered, grabbing her old navy coat hanging behind the door. 

I grabbed the heavy metal frame of my window and a gust of cold wind ushered into the room. It was still hailing outside. Melanie zipped up her coat and pulled on her hood. She grabbed the frame of the window to climb through and landed with a thump on the concrete sidewalk outside. Just as I was about to shut the window, Melanie shouted in the midst of the hail storm, “The Pythagorean Theorem!”

I had a puzzled expression pasted across my face, thinking I had just misheard her in the loud pitter- patter of the hail pellets dropping on the ground.

“The Pythagorean Theorem!” she shouted again. “A- squared plus B- squared equals C- squared! That’s how you find the hypotenuse of a triangle!”

Just as I wrapped my mind around her sudden exclamation and realized she was answering my question I had asked earlier, Melanie took off. She was holding on to her hood with one gloved hand so I couldn’t see her face clearly. However, I could already imagine she was grinning from ear to ear with satisfaction under that mess of ginger hair.

I pulled down my window, finally pushing the freezing wind out of my bedroom. As I watched Melanie stomp playfully through puddles, I was hit with a sudden realization: Melanie is keeping secrets.

That night, I lay in bed thinking about what Melanie could be hiding. Something about her behavior was off today and it was keeping me awake. I kept writhing in bed, kicking the sheets and turning over and over from side to side. It was pitch black in my room, except for a beam of moonlight shining through the window. It was all a little too quiet.

Suddenly, I heard a scream.

Everything happened in a flash. The lights in Melanie’s house turned on and flooded into my room. I scrambled off my bed and crouched behind it, in the shadows. Frightened, I could hear my heartbeat race.

A few moments passed before I heard another scream. The lights on Melanie’s front porch kept flickering on and off, lighting shadows on the cracked yellow walls of the house.

I heard a door slam and feet hitting the front steps of Melanie’s house. Paralyzed with fear, I continued to crouch behind the bed, my body still shuddering. In my mind, I didn’t know what happened. Was it a robbery? Was Melanie all right?

It seemed like ages, waiting for something else to happen. But suddenly, I heard a faint knocking on my window.

Hesitantly, I peeked my head above the bed to see who it was. I was almost certain a ghost would be staring me in the face, just like in The Haunting.

But it was a different ghost I saw outside my glass window, Melanie. Her pale complexion glowed in the moonlight and I could see tears streaking down her face. Just below her left eye, there was a faint purple bruise.

I quickly scrambled onto my feet and to the window. I lifted the cold metal bar of the glass and ushered Melanie inside. Her nose was puffy and her eyes were red.

“He hit me!” She sobbed, trying to stifle each whimper.

“What? Slow down,” I exclaimed, very confused. “What happened?”

I could barely tell apart her words from her hysterical crying. I held her stone cold shoulders until her breathing calmed.

“My dad! He came home drunk and started yelling at me like he always does. I told him I was going to run away too, just like my brother, and he punched me,” she explained frantically.

Melanie showed me the bruises, one below her eye, one on her wrist, and another on her hip.

A million different thoughts raced through my head.

This is what she had been hiding! Is this why her brother left? What do I do?

“Why haven’t you ever told me!?” I asked. I was a little hurt she would keep such a secret.

“I was afraid,” she whispered. “You have to help me.”

I wrapped my arms around her cold neck and pulled Melanie into a hug. I whispered, “It’s gonna be all right.”
The truth was, I had no idea what to do.

Everything passed by in a blur after that. My mother had awakened up and called the police when we explained to her what had happened. Police cruisers with flashing red and blue lights showed up at our house and arrested Melanie’s dad.

Mr. Benson held a striking resemblance to Melanie with his red hair and freckled face. However, I could tell they did not share similar traits.  There was no doubt he would make the newspaper headlines again.
Melanie had to be taken away too. She had to be separated from her dad.

Just as Melanie was about to get into a police car that would take her to an adoption center, I grabbed her wrist. Melanie’s face was stone cold and had dark circles underneath her eyes. She had a tired and weak look about her that I had never seen before. Now I knew it was the tell- all sign of the silent battle she had been fighting all along.

Deep from the pockets of my red wool coat, I pulled out a lollipop with a pink wrapper. I forced out a smile and whispered, “Take a cherry. It’s my favorite.”

Melanie’s face softened and softly, she began to recite, “Best friends are never apart…”

“Maybe in distance, but never in heart.” I finished as we linked pinkies.

The quote was from an old adage in a book that we had found in first grade. Over the years, it became something we would say to each other during goodbyes. However, this time, I was certain goodbye was forever and I would never see Melanie again.

She was finally pulled away into the car and an officer slammed the door shut. As the police cruiser sped away, I could see Melanie peering outside her window, her breaths of air fogging up the glass. I could only imagine what was going through her mind. Melanie gave a last glance at the life she was leaving behind, her best friend, the old yellow house that hid secrets, and a broken family.

Melanie and I were two naïve young girls. All that was certain and righteous to us in the world had been broken by secrets. Nothing was anything like it had seemed. Mr. Benson had hidden his true nature behind closed doors. Melanie was fighting a battle behind that warm smile. Our friendship, that we thought would last forever, had ended before the hailing even stopped. Nothing, not even cherry lollipops and pinkie promises, could fix it.

Melanie, the sirens, and flashing red and blue lights had finally disappeared. And all that was pure and innocent in us had left too…