We were like two giggling toddlers as we walked down the ninth grade hallway to math class. It was just the two of us in that empty hallway; just me and Ryan and the lockers and the scattered papers on the floor that students had carelessly dropped. I was with my savior, the soul that had willingly carried the other half of my broken heart for much of my life. Our laughter bounced off the ugly purple lockers, filling the air with the sound of our joy. We were extremely late for class, not that either of us cared. In fact, I barely noticed; all I could see was Ryan and her straight blonde hair and her clean, naked face with her sparkly white teeth.

It was at that moment when I realized I absolutely and totally loved Ryan. This love wasn’t sexual- not the type of “boyfriend-girlfriend” love that most of us are exposed to. No, this was a sisterly love. A desire. A longing. I wanted someone that would hold me tight when I needed it, but I didn’t want a boyfriend. What I really wanted was a sister, and Ryan was the closest thing to that as I was ever going to get. I suddenly wished that I could keep reliving that exact moment forever and ever. I silently prayed that it would last until I died and keep on going on and on in heaven.

Well, apparently God didn’t hear me, because all of a sudden Ryan dropped to the floor. I instantly chucked my math textbook aside and knelt over her, worried that she had hurt herself falling. She was lying stone still on the cold, hard floor, her eyes closed and her mouth shut tight.

“Ryan!!” I said desperately. “What’s wrong? Answer me!” At that point I honestly thought that she had 1) fallen asleep (unlikely, I know, but we had stayed up really late last night talking on our cell phones) 2) passed out, or 3) died. Her face was very pale and she wasn’t responding to anything I said. I was just about to run into a classroom and grab a teacher when she began to change.

Ryan’s eyelids shot up with a click and stopped at her golden, neatly shaped eyebrows, but her eyes themselves just kept on going. Soon I could not see the beautiful shade of blue surrounding her pupils, for they had rolled back into her head. Alarmingly white eyes stared back at me and I froze. Oh God, what in the world was wrong with her?

Suddenly, she started to laugh hysterically, as if a hilarious joke had been told and only she heard it. She sounded crazy, like she was going insane. Not knowing how to handle the situation, I did the one thing that every girl knows how to do.

I screamed.

LOUD.

So loud, in fact, that a dozen teachers came sprinting out of their classrooms, abandoning their curious students in the process. Someone hollered for the nurse and immediately she came bounding down the hallway. Ryan was loaded into an old wheelchair as another teacher called 9-1-1 from her cell phone. My math teacher picked up my textbook and told me that everything would be fine.

As I walked into math class, hot tears rolling like thunder down my horrified face, I could faintly hear Ryan laughing uncontrollably in the distance. A chunk of my heart shriveled up and died as I took my seat among my curious peers ad opened my textbook to page 382.

My math teacher was wrong. Nothing would ever be fine again.