THE NIGHT MY BEST FRIEND DISAPPEARED

It has been ten years since the night my best friend disappeared, but I still remember every detail as if it happened yesterday. The smell of rain, the faint hum of streetlights, the sound of her laughter fading into the dark. Some nights I still wake up hearing her voice calling my name.

Her name was Emily. We met when we were ten years old, two kids who shared a love for tree climbing and secrets. She was wild and fearless, the kind of person who made the world feel larger just by being in it. I was quieter, the one who worried too much. She always said I needed her to pull me out of my shell, and she was right. Together we were unstoppable.

That night, the night she vanished, we had gone to the old lake on the edge of town. It was our secret place. We used to go there to talk about everything we couldn’t say at home. I remember how cold it was, how the wind made the water ripple under the moonlight. Emily had been quieter than usual. She said she felt trapped, like she was standing still while everyone else was moving forward. She was seventeen and wanted to leave our small town behind. I told her things would get better, that we just had to wait. She smiled, but it did not reach her eyes.

We sat by the lake for hours. At some point I must have fallen asleep because when I woke up, she was gone. Her shoes were still there, placed neatly beside mine. I called her name until my throat hurt. I searched the woods, the road, the water. But she had vanished into the night as if she had never been there at all.

The police searched for weeks. They found her phone in the woods, but no sign of her. Rumors started to spread. Some people said she ran away. Others said something terrible happened and she was taken. I never believed she ran away. Emily would have told me if she planned to leave. We promised we would never keep secrets from each other.

Life after that night became a blur. I finished school, moved away, and tried to build a new life, but she never really left me. Every year on the same night, I return to the lake. I sit there and wait, half expecting her to walk out of the shadows and laugh like she used to. The ache of not knowing is worse than grief. Grief has an ending. This never does.

Five years after she disappeared, something strange happened. I received a letter. There was no return address, just my name in familiar handwriting. Inside was a small piece of paper that said, “I’m sorry. I had to go. Please forgive me.” I stared at the note for hours. It looked like Emily’s handwriting, but I could not be sure. There was a faint coffee stain on the corner, the kind she used to make on every notebook we shared.

I gave the letter to the police, but they found nothing. No fingerprints, no leads. The detective told me it was probably a cruel prank. I wanted to believe him, but part of me knew it was real. Only Emily knew the words she wrote inside that note, something we used to say when life got hard. I had to go. She said it once when her parents fought, when she needed space. It was her way of saying she needed to disappear for a while.

Years went by, and I learned to live with the emptiness. But sometimes I still catch glimpses of her. A reflection in a shop window, a voice in a crowd that sounds just like hers. Maybe it is just my mind playing tricks on me. Or maybe she really is out there, living a life she could never have in this town.

Last summer, I returned to the lake again. The water was still, the air heavy with memory. As I stood there, something caught my eye near the tree where we used to carve our initials. It was a bracelet, half-buried in the dirt. The one I gave her for her sixteenth birthday. My heart stopped. I picked it up and felt tears spill down my face. She had been there. Maybe not that night, but recently. I do not know why she came back or why she left again. But I know one thing for sure.

She is alive.

And even if I never see her again, I will keep waiting by the lake every year, just in case she decides to come home.