Friendship

After dinner, Allison arrived at Michelle's house for their usual gossip hour.  It was a busy week; school would be starting on Monday and everyone was trying to cram all they excitement they could into their last week of freedom.  Allison was surprised, however, at how excited Michelle looked.  The sparkle in her hazel eyes made her look almost pretty, and the flush in her cheeks relieved the pallor brought about by her lank, dyed black hair.  The party scene wasn't really Michelle's thing.  What was up?      Michelle, on her part, was fighting to keep her mouth shut.  Normally she would be happy to listen to Allison's incredibly accurate calendar of events.  No party or other social event got by her, and usually it was a lot of fun knowing about what each and every person worth mentioning was planning to do each week.  This was an unusual situation; there was plenty Michelle wanted to say that she considered more interesting than a few parties.  She tried to hide her impatience, though.  The effect would be better if she sprang her news on Allison after Allison had already run out off things to say.  It wasn't too much of an effort.  Allison's gossip was quite interesting.      "Mike Harris is having a party over his house tonight," Allison was saying.  "Everybody's gonna be there.  He's fair game since Alexis dumped him last week.  Did you know that she did it at Vito's in front of the whole football team?  Thank God she's such a bitch so he;s not catching too much flak over that, but he had to be so embarrassed!"      Michelle stored that information away for future use.  If she ever wanted to humiliate Mike, all she would need to do was mention that particular incident to him...in front of a large audience of course.  She smiled slowly as she imagined it.  Having dirt on people was so much fun!       "But anyway," Allison went on, "he's up for grabs now and tonight's gonna rock with all those girls fighting over him."  Allison's brown eyes brightened as she considered the spectacle.  She wouldn't be involved directly; she went out with a close friend of Mike's and he'd be sure to find out if she and Mike got together.  Oh well.  She'd have a chance later.  He never kept a girlfriend for very long.  They all bored him.       Michelle grew impatient at Allison's silence.  "What was it Alexis said to him yesterday?" she asked, fishing for more of the kind of details she could use.       "I don't know.  It doesn't really matter.  Everybody will forget by next week anyway.  What's important is that the Harris' house is all alone on that street, right up against the woods, and his parents won'y be home.  It should be an awesome party."  Allison's expression became slightly troubled.       "What's wrong?  Are you grounded or something?"      "It's not that," Allison said sadly, "it's that Dave and I are s'posed to go over Kyle's tonight.  He managed to get a few cases and we're s'posed to go out somewhere and drink them all with a bunch of his friends.  I'll have to skip Mike's party after all."    Michelle could see the disappointment in her face as Allison frowned in contemplation of all she would miss.  Allison's bad mood would be short-lived if Michelle had anything to do with it though.  She broke into Allison's thoughts, jumping in with her own news.       "I know something that'll cheer you up.  Guess what I did today?"      "I don't know, Chell, what?"  Allison wasn't really in the mood to listen, but Michelle's excitement was contagious.       "You know that little leech next-door who's always whining to me like I'm her friend or something?"  Michelle didn't bother to wait for an answer.  "Well, I had this great idea, and I took her to the woods, you know, behind the playground?  Turns out she's never been there before, and you know how confusing the paths are."       Michelle's eyes may have shown with childlike amusement, but the cruel note in her voice was accompanied by a cruel twist of her mouth.  Pretty?  Maybe; but so's a snake.       "So what'd you do?"  Missing Mike's party was almost completely forgotten as Allison leaned forward to hear the rest of the story.       Michelle also leaned forward conspiratorially as she resumed her tale.  "Well as soon as we got back there I started telling her all these scary stories.  You know the woodpile?  I told her they used to burn people there as part of, like, some Satanic cult or something.  And the fence with the red paint dribbling all down the back?  I told her the paint was blood."       Allison rolled her eyes.  "Yeah; right Chelly.  She might be stupid, but nobody's that dumb.  She was probably laughing at you all the way home."      Michelle burst out into wild laughter that finally bubbled down into a fit of giggling.  It was quite awhile before she regained control of herself, with Allison growing more disgusted by the moment.       "All (giggle) the way (giggle giggle) home!  Yeah right!  That's great!"      "What're you talking about?"  Allison's foot tapped impatiently on the carpet.  She didn't like to be laughed at.       Seeing the look on her friend's face, Michelle managed to get her mind back to her story.  "First of all," she said, "don't sell me short.  I made the fence story good.  I told her old Mr. Harris that used to live there went, like completely postal, and killed his whole family and cut them up with a chainsaw.  When his neice and nephew finally caught him, he was laughing and painting his back fence with his kids' blood.  They took him away, but the blood on the fence never washed out."      "Ooh, spooky."  Sarcasm dripped like venom from Allison's disdaining lips.       "Don't laugh," Michelle retorted.  "You know it's bullshit, but she ate it up.  Little, gullible Miss Julie believed every word.  And after I finished those stories, I told her to wait a minute while I went to check if the path was overgrown.  I left her there, sitting on a rotting stump, and for all I know she's still there."       This time Michelle and Allison both burst out laughing, and if Julie, wherever she was, could have heard that could laughter, it would have turned her blood to ice.  When their laughter finally began to subside, Allison looked at the clock and realized it was time for her to leave.  She walked out the front door absolutely tickled pink by the picture of Julie lost in the woods.  Taking vicarious pleasure in Michelle's cruelty, she felt at the same time almost virtuous.  She would never have had the nerve to do that to anyone.  It was great to have a friend with so much guts.       Michelle was still laughing to herself as she turned on the television and lounged on the sofa in front of it.  Her eyes, bright with merriment, flickered eerily in the blue light from the screen.  At almost every single commercial break she would begin to giggle once more, especially because she could not see lights on in the house next-door.       At midnight or so, Michelle turned off the TV, climbed the stairs to her bedroom, and got into bed, pausing momentarily to glance out the window at Julie's dark and silent house.  She fell asleep in a better mood than she'd been in for a very long time, and for awhile her rest was calm and untroubled.  After an hour or so, however, her dreaming mind found itself on a path she did not want to follow, and Michelle began to toss and turn fitfully.