Everything about Laila

Laila was magic, or so I had always thought. Her confidence, humor, and beauty all made her incredibly mesmerizing. She was like a siren—the way she lured people into her life, making everyone fall in love with her with only her voice, and then the way she tore apart the very people who loved her. 

May 12, 2023.

"Hey, I can't come today," the text read. It was 6:17 am, but I read the text at 9. "I'm going to call in sick for work, too; I just feel super nauseous." 

Laila and I worked together all week, planning our perfect Friday, so the text was a little disappointing. Still, Laila wouldn't call out of work for no reason, so I didn't pry.

"Okay," I texted back at 9:02. "Feel better; we can meet next week." 

May 10, 2023.

Laila and I shared a desk in the office, so every time I looked up, I could see her shining face or pursed lips, trying to make heads or tails of the new code we were working on. She was wearing a pink polo top with brown jeans and open-toed sandals. It was the first time she had worn shoes like that. 

"Like my manicure?" she asked, wiggling her striking blue toes under the desk. I leaned back in my chair to see them. 

"Very much," I replied. "You could make a killing selling feet pics, you know?" 

Laila laughed—a beautiful sound that makes you forget all the trouble in the world. "Oh, you would like that, wouldn't you, Charlie?" she asked, pulling her feet under her chair so I couldn't see them anymore.

"I'm just saying," I shrugged. "We could be rich by now. If only you weren't such a prude…"

Laila rolled her eyes but fell silent. I could see something was bothering her. Something had bothered her for months, but she wouldn't talk to me about it. Maybe I shouldn't have expected her to, but I told her everything and wanted her to feel like she could tell me anything, too. After all, I already felt like we had known each other for a lifetime, even though it had been only a year. 

May 12, 2023.

"Have you heard from Laila?" The phone rang three times before I picked up. It was a call from our mutual friend Hari, who Laila had introduced me to a few months prior. 

I didn't know what to say. Her last text said she wasn't feeling well at 6 a.m. Although I had sent her a few texts throughout the day, she had yet to respond, leaving me uneasy. Hari's call was the brick that came loose, breaking the dam of anxiety. 

"Not since this morning," I said, trying not to let my voice shake. It was unlike her to go radio silent for hours, and now Hari was calling me. "We were supposed to meet after work, but..."

My voice faltered, and my mind raced through a million possibilities. Was she in trouble? Why would Hari be calling me?

"Her parents haven't heard from her all day," Hari's voice said on the other end of the line, but I was having difficulty focusing on it. "She told them she was going to Burlington, but she's disappeared and not answering any calls or texts." 

We were both silent for a moment, my anxiety mounting with each passing second.

"Are you there?" he asked after a moment. 

"Yeah," I said, but my voice cracked. "But I haven't heard from her either."

I thought Hari nodded, but he didn't say anything else.

"Call me if you hear from her?" I asked.

"You too," he said before he abruptly cut the call. 

I was left staring at my phone before tears welled up. 

"It's okay," I told myself. "She's fine. She's my best friend. She has to be fine." But the tears streamed hot down my face, and even I couldn't believe my words of affirmation. 

May 8, 2023. 

"Charlie?" Laila asked. We were sitting at work, but no one was around. On Mondays, no one generally showed up except me, Laila, and a few others on our data science team. No one else had shown up today, so Laila and I had the entire back of the office to ourselves. 

I looked up from my computer, which I was only pretending to be working on. 

"Is there anything I can do to get you to hate me?"

The question was so ridiculous and out of the blue that I almost laughed, but when I looked at the deep frown on Laila's face, I knew she wasn't kidding. 

"No," I said solemnly, and I meant it. Nothing I thought she could do would make me hate her. "I mean, even if you stopped talking to me for no reason, I wouldn't hate you. I would try to understand why you stopped talking to me. That's all. Why? Is there something I could do to make you hate me?"

Laila's frown lessened. "Maybe, if you, like, killed my entire family, I feel like I'd hate you." 

I laughed, but so did she. "Why would I kill your family?" I asked. "I've met them, and I like them." 

May 12, 2023.

I called Laila for the 13th time in about an hour, but there was no answer again. My mind raced with every possibility that could have happened. She told me she wasn't feeling well but told her parents she had gone to Burlington. It made no sense at all. I didn't sleep that night and went home to see my parents. I just really needed my mother. Laila was my closest friend, and even though she may not have told me everything that was bothering her, she did tell me everything. I knew her bedtime routine, her morning routine, the foods she liked and disliked, her favorite TV show, her favorite actors, and what she liked to do in her free time. I knew her. We talked every day for a year; I knew her. I thought I knew her. 

I reached out to her other friend through Instagram. She talked about Sarah constantly, and I had seen her Instagram page a few times, so I found her handle easily. Sarah had known Laila about a year longer than I did, so I hoped she would have more answers, but she didn't know anything. 

At 2 am, Hari called me, asking if I had any updates. He was at her house with her parents to track her down. Of course, I didn't know anything; I would have called him if I did. We tried everything, from paying money to some app to track her phone to driving to Burlington to see if her car was there, but there was no trace of anything. It seemed that she had just vanished into thin air. 

May 4, 2023.

I called Laila four times to see where she was at 10 in the morning. We were supposed to be in the office, but she was generally never late. I don't know why my anxiety spiked so much because she was an hour late. I couldn't reach her, and terrible images formed in my mind. Had she been in an accident? Was she not feeling well enough to get out of bed? Something about even the idea of losing Laila made me feel anxious, and even though there was no indication anything was wrong, I just felt like something was going to go terribly wrong. 

At 10:43 am, a very disheveled Laila entered the office and plopped her bag at her desk to pull out her backpack. That's when my stomach finally settled. 

"What happened?" I whispered. "I called you like four times. I thought you were dead!" 

Laila looked surprised. "Did you?" she asked, pulling out her phone. "I didn't get any of your calls for some reason." She showed me her call log, and she was right; my calls had never gone through.

"I was stuck in traffic!" she explained. "I made the mistake of starting at ten instead of nine like I generally do, so it was brutal." 

"Well, lucky for you, our boss isn't here yet, so you're good." 

I didn't want to sound crazy, but for whatever reason, I felt like something terrible had happened to Laila when she was late, and I couldn't reach her. I knew this feeling wasn't okay, but what could I do to stop it?

May 13, 2023.

Hari called me, telling me they tracked her phone to somewhere in Oklahoma, two hours from where we lived in Texas. They, meaning he, Laila's dad, and a couple of other people, were going to track it down. Apparently, a large group from the neighborhood had joined together to form a search party for Laila. 

Long story short, they didn't find her. 

May 1, 2023.

Laila came over, and we baked brownies together.

"This guy messaged me on Instagram," Laila told me out of the blue. 

"Who wouldn't want a piece of you?" I joked, and she rolled her eyes. 

"It's not like that. He's very sweet, and we've been friends through Instagram for a few months. He's really into spirituality, and we've been talking." 

I nodded, adding an egg to our brownie mixture. "So, you like him?"

Laila shook her head. "I wish I did," she muttered. "Things would be so much easier."

"Easier?" I asked, swirling the egg and breaking the yolk.

"My parents want me to find a nice Indian boy and settle down."

She looked sad, and I didn't know what to say. We had talked about boys and relationships before, but she had always said she wasn't interested in finding anyone to settle down with. She said she liked being a free-bird with no one to answer to and hadn't met a boy she would even consider settling down with. 

"Well, you know you have my unconditional support, right?" I asked. "No matter who you choose, you'll always have a place to go." 

Laila gave me a sad smile. "Well, you don't need to worry about that," she said. "Because I've never had a boyfriend and don't plan to get one soon."

"Guess we'll just have to be spinsters together?" I asked, licking the brownie batter off the spoon.

"As long as you don't put that spoon back in the batter!" 

May 13, 2023.

I was losing my mind at home. I couldn't go to Oklahoma but didn't want to sit in my house all day. I tried calling her repeatedly and sending multiple text messages, some of which were delivered immediately and others that weren't. 

Finally, around three pm, I got a phone call from a number I didn't recognize, but I picked it up anyway since I needed something to do. 

"This is Maya," a girl's voice said on the other end of the line. I'm sorry. Hari gave me your number. I'm Laila's cousin, and we had to involve the police. I need you to tell me whatever you know about Daniel."

The name Daniel sounded foreign to me. I had no idea what she was talking about. 

"What?" My mouth felt like cotton, and my ears rang. I stood when I picked up the call but immediately fell onto the nearest chair. I was so glad I wasn't in public because I was about to throw up. 

"Daniel," Maya repeated. We found his number on her phone records; it was the most called number. They've been together for five years." 

If Maya said anything else, I couldn't hear it. The bile was building up in my throat. I felt a sense of betrayal followed by a heartbreak that only one who had been lied to for months could experience. Laila had lied to me for a year about having a partner. Had she trusted me so little that she couldn't share that information? Did she think I would go running to her parents or expose her relationship without her consent? Every time we had a heart-to-heart talk about a potential suitor, every time we joked about being single, every word, every feeling, every emotion, every tear, every laugh—it had all come from a place of lies. Because Laila had been telling me one thing, and Daniel, "I love you," every day for five years. 

"Charlie?" The voice came back into focus. It had been thirty seconds since I had tuned her out. 

Sorry," I muttered, swallowing painfully. "I don't know Daniel. I never even knew he existed."

This time, Maya was quiet for a few seconds. "You too, huh?" she asked quietly. 

"Did you find her?" I asked. 

"No, not yet. We found Daniel, though. He'll be over soon." 

Neither one of us said goodbye before hanging up.

May 14, 2023.

After 48 hours of searching for Laila, she was discovered at a lake in Oklahoma. The police tracked her phone there after the 48th hour of her officially being a missing person. Flyers with her face circulated around Texas, and eventually, even our bosses got involved in the search for Laila. 

Sarah texted me at 6 am. At that point, I hadn't slept for two days, so I had fallen into a disturbed sleep around 2 am on May 14. Sarah's text woke me up, though. 

"Did you see this?" she asked, linking to a Facebook article. 

I clicked on it with shaky fingers. Laila's body had been discovered in Oklahoma late at night, around the time my body finally gave in to sleep. 

Sarah didn't know if it was true, so I called Hari in a panic. 

"Is it true?" I asked, my voice breaking.

"Who told you?" Hari's voice was empty—no empathy, no sorrow, nothing. It was hollow, almost empty. I'll never forget it. 

"Sarah sent me a Facebook post," I said quietly. I know he had been in the thick of the 'action' for 48 hours, but hearing him speak with nothing in his voice shook me. "Is it true?" I asked more firmly, but his previous answer had been enough. 

"Are you okay?" I asked him. 

"I can't talk about this now," he said before hanging up. 

That was the last interaction I ever had with Hari. 

May 15, 2024.

The first day was the hardest, and the lie was hard to digest. It shouldn't have affected me as much as it did, but the hours that Laila and I spent talking about our futures, potential partners, and so much more that never factored in Daniel were too much for me to handle. I had known her for almost one year, and it had been the best year of my life until Laila ripped it out from under me. 

I didn't attend her funeral. Her family didn't want anyone there, not even her closest friends, and I suddenly did not feel like one, especially after the news about Daniel came to light.

Going back to work after that was a punch to my gut every time I walked into the building. Laila's desk had been taken over by a new hire when I requested to move. I couldn't bear to sit there anymore, knowing that just seven days ago, Laila had sat there, asking me if she could do anything to make me hate her. As I sat at what was once our shared desk, I realized that, yes, there was something that could make me hate her: the lies and deceit, but more than that, disappearing without saying goodbye and knowing that she might have seen some of the desperate messages that I, along with her other friends and family, sent her and still choosing to ignore all of it, all of us. I could hate her for lying to me, to my face, and choosing not to trust me, and I did. I hated Laila. 

July 23, 2023.

I met with Daniel. I wanted to meet him, and he wanted to meet me. At the very least, he knew my name, which meant that, for whatever it was worth, I was important enough to Laila that she mentioned me to him. He told me how they met and a little about their years together, and with each word, I felt like he was trying to strike me down. I never really spoke to Daniel again. I tried to. He was a good man and I knew he was hurting the most, but I never could look him in the eyes knowing Laila didn't want me to know about him. 

July 24th, 2024.

That's the thing about Laila.

It's been one year, almost exactly. I never stop thinking about her. Not really. But the pain has gone down. I think about our good times, the jokes, and the future we spoke about—one that kept the other in our lives. I remembered the times she acted like a big sister when I never had a big sister growing up. I think about every word I ever told her, every time she made me feel special, every smile, every hug she initiated, every mall trip, and every meal we ever shared. I will never forget Laila, but I think I'm okay with that. I keep in touch with Sarah; she's a vibrant woman who reminds me so much of Laila, but maybe that's just because I want to see Laila in her. I'm not sure. Sarah and her boyfriend Emilio have a cat, and they're building a life together. A real one—one they don't hide from their friends and family. 

I thought I knew Laila well; she called me her best friend and sister. Even though the truth about Daniel was a terrible blow, I still choose to believe that she meant it because I don't care enough to put myself through any other possibility.