All the little kids in Straddleton have friends. They all have toys and games and big homes with loving families. The boys play with toy airplanes and cars, the girls play with dolls. Except for Angelina.

        Angelina was different, is different. She doesn’t have toys to play with or large homes to hide in. She doesn’t have normal friends; she doesn’t need normal friends. Angelina is smart and friendly- but yet still, all the other kids think she’s weird. But that’s okay. She doesn’t need them.

        Angelina’s whole family died in a mysterious accident, leaving her an orphan. But that’s okay, too. She lives with Mrs. Picketts- a nice, elderly lady that took Angelina in when her parents, um… left her.

         Angelina has a lot of imaginary friends- at least, that’s what all the other kids think they are. Just a figment of an overactive imagination. All these friends live in the cemetery. Mrs. Picketts says she’ll grow out of them, but that for now they’re “cute”. Angelina goes to the cemetery every day after school, to talk with her friends that live there. Their homes are in the ground, in these cushiony, black boxes.

          Angelina originally started going there to visit her parents’ graves. But they never came out. But her friends say that’s okay. Because she has them.

And me. She always has me.

           Angelina doesn’t realize I’ve been watching her. But I do. I am. I have been watching her since her first visit to the cemetery, when I first saw her. I had lived there then, but now I live with her. I follow Angelina everywhere she goes. I love her. I love everything about her. I need her. And one day, I will consume her very being, as I did with all the other kids I’ve watched over the years. She will be a part of me. But until then, I just observe her, begging her friends to tell her why her parents never visit her from their box-like homes like all the other residents of the cemetery do, even though they’re the ones she really wants to see. But she wants me. She doesn’t know it yet, but she wants me. Just like I want her…