Monday night dinner with your parents probably isn’t the most exciting thing to do for some but for me, it’s one of the bigger highlights of my week. My family and I are close but living in the expensive Oregon neighborhood that we do, both my parents have to work… constantly. During the time my mom and dad were gone at work and me being an only child, I always hung out with my best friend Brody. He only lived a street over so it was pretty convenient that we could hang out whenever we wanted to. 
The day I went off to high school was one I will never forget. The most popular girls of our freshman class asked me to sit with them. I thought they were joking at first but then I realized a true friendship had grown between us all. I saw Brody every once in awhile but I knew he would eventually find some new friends to sit with at lunch. I thought it was normal for us to grow apart a little, I knew Brody would understand the opportunity I had. That day when I came home, I also learned about my mother’s cancer. I walked into the house and she almost played it off like it was just a cold. “Everything will be fine, Miranda. Don’t worry about it,” my mom said quietly.  It obviously wasn’t a good thing to hear but I wasn’t sure how bad it was because she wouldn’t go into detail about it. Brody was the first person to come and try to talk to me. I pushed him away upset and not wanting to talk to him or anyone else. I felt bad later but I couldn’t stand going up and apologizing to him without crying, so I didn’t say anything to him.
Three years later heading back to my first week of senior year, my mother took her last breathe. It was the first time I had ever seen my dad cry. My father and I were both holding her hands. “Always remember I love you,” she whispered. The greatest last words I could have ever asked for. The funeral was held not much longer. It felt like the tears never stopped. I sat with my Grandma, Dad, and some friends who came to support me. People came up to me who I had never met before. “I worked with your mother, she was such a great lady. I’m going to miss her. Please tell me if you need anything,” said a lady dressed in the same kind of work attire my mother wore. By the end of the service I was tired of listening to people come up to me and say the same thing one after the other. I didn’t even know half of the people there and I didn’t care what they had to say. Brody was there. He tried to come up and talk to me but I walked away. It was to hard. He reminded me of the days my mom would take him and me to go get ice cream on her days off. He reminded me of when we went to Kindergarten together and he held my hand because I didn’t want to let go of my mom’s. He punched a boy who would creepily follow me home from school and my mom high fived him for that. Any stories I could think of with him linked back to my mom. Back at home after the funeral was over and done with, I cooked up one of the hundreds of lasagna we were given. I yelled up the stairs for my dad to come down. We sat in silence. I tried to say something but before I could he interrupted my sentence with, “Miranda just stop.”
The next day I woke up thinking that when I came down my father would be there. He was gone at work. How could he go back to work when we just had the funeral the night before? I sat on the couch for awhile. It was freezing inside. My mom was normally the one who kept the thermostat in order so it looked like that was my job now. I turned on the fire and went onto my laptop. Day one and I was already extremely lonely. I felt that no one I knew could relate to my pain and obviously my dad didn’t want to talk about it. I decided to go onto a website called hiddenmessage.com. I felt like a little kid going onto a website so stupid. It’s for people who have problems going on in there life and you chat with people who live close to you to talk about your problems. I think that therapy is for people who are crazy so I’ve never wanted to go see anyone. The website first asks, “How can we help?” The first set of questions came up with varieties of different choices to choose from. All the way from breakups to people who hated themselves. I clicked the box next to family death. People can request to talk to you based on what choices you made. I talked to a couple different people but eventually after hearing the same advice from person after person, I was about to leave the site when a new message popped up. 
“Hey.”
“Hi,” I responded back.
“What brings you to this site?” the message asked.
“My mom recently passed, and I feel alone. I feel like no one understands what I’m going through,” I responded back.
“I’m sorry! I’m here to talk. I know losing a loved one can hurt,” the message replied back.
“What about you?” I asked, “what’s going on in your world?”
“The girl I’m in love with hasn’t talked to me in forever. It’s almost as if one day we were friends hanging out when we were younger and the next she’s more interested in going to football games and being with her other friends. She’s the only decent human being I’ve ever met and I lost her.”
“Rough,”  I said, “one day she’s gonna realize the mistake she made,” I said back to him.
He waited awhile to respond after I said that. “What’s your name?” he asked me.
“Miranda.”
“Miranda who?”
Every thing in my body told me not to give him my last name. Hearing all of those speeches about “there are predators online,” and “you’re gonna get kidnapped talking to random people,” but I didn’t care. I really didn’t care.
“Miranda, Miranda Taylor.”
“Oh. I think I’ve heard of you once before. I use to go to your school,” he told me.
“Cool. Everyone at my school now is either just a jerky jock or an idiot. Of course my friends aren’t like that but lately I don’t have the patience to listen to them talk about how hard their lives are based on them being too “fat,” when really they’re all size zeros and all they do at lunch is pick at their salads while I’m the only one who actually eats a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.”
“Don’t you have any other friends who aren’t like that?” he asked.
“Only one other and I can’t stand to look at him right now. I haven’t been able to for awhile.”
“I think you should give him another chance. Just because something happened between you and this guy doesn’t mean you should just give up on him,” he said rather strangely.
“So what did you say your name was?” I asked.
He paused for a moment but responded back later with just Dane. Dane had been the best thing that had happened to me in quite some time. We talked and talked and talked.
Once I went back to school after about two weeks Dane and I had talked nearly every day within that time span. I told my friends the story about Dane. All of them agreed that it wasn’t a good idea to talk to him.
  “You don’t even know who he is,” I told them.
“Miranda my Dad has seen several different cases about creepy guys online who start stalking the people they talk to,” my closest friend Violet yelled at me, whose Dad also happens to be one of our county cops.
“I know him well enough!” I argued. I was furious they weren’t as happy as I was that I had met somebody who I had connected with. What I hadn’t told them was that I had planned on meeting him the next day at our local coffee shop. Really really glad I didn’t tell them that. I couldn’t just stop talking to him. So… I went to meet him the next day anyways.
As I headed to the front door of the coffee shop of course all 3 of my friends happened to be standing in line for coffee. I had to leave before they saw I was there meeting up with Dane. I told Dane the meetup was off. He was furious. He had never gotten upset at me before. He said I was acting stupid for not wanting to meet with him. I thought I had wanted to meet him, up until that moment. I went home crying. I thought that he was different. My dad was sitting on the couch reading when I got home. He asked me what was wrong.
“What?” I was shocked. It seemed like he hadn’t talked to me in forever. I sat down and slowly spilled out everything that had happened. He sat there and the real him started coming back.
“Everything is going to be okay. From now on I’m always here and open to talking. I’ve been going to a therapist for the past few weeks and everything is still hard but I know how you feel and I know I need to be here for you. We’re in the same boat kiddo.” I went upstairs happy for once and deleted my account on Hidden Message with Dane, happy to start a new and fresh chapter in my life.
A few days after the Dane incident, I was at home trying to finish up all the projects and papers I had to do, four hours later when I finally completed them, a nap sounded pretty good. In my sophomore year of highschool I would’ve been out at a party on a Saturday night but here I was a senior sleeping instead. I woke up to the ding notifying me I had a text. I must of somehow slept through the other 80 dings from the multiple texts I had gotten earlier. At first all I had thought was the girls were texting in the group chat again. I looked down and an unknown number appeared.
“You shouldn’t have gone home. Why do wanna avoid the best thing that could happen to you? Miranda you can’t just ignore me. We were meant to be together!”
I didn’t have to ask who it was to know. I was so confused. How did he get my number? I never did anything wrong. But most importantly, why was he so obsessed with me? My Dad was still back at the office working. I knew it wasn’t a big deal, but I called Grace anyways and she told me she was on her way over just when the doorbell rang.
At first I was heading downstairs to go and get the door but I decided to plug my phone in first when Dane sent me a photo. A picture of the welcome mat we have on our front porch gave me a clear image that I probably shouldn’t go to the door. Pounding began to start.
“Open up Miranda! I know your home!” he screamed through the door. The banging stopped when the sound of breaking glass occurred. He threw a rock through our window. I tried to run but before I knew it he was holding me on the stairs screaming. “Why couldn’t you just love me? I’ve known you all my life and one day your buddy Brody comes up to me and breaks my nose telling me to back off from you. I thought I got lucky when you stopped hanging out with Brody when High School started because that was my chance to get close to you again but all of the sudden you just become popular and even more harder to talk to. All I wanted you to do was love me back the way I love you.” He looked back down crying.” I didn’t realize until he mentioned Brody breaking his nose that he was the kid who would follow me home when I was younger. I closed my eyes not wanting to think about what was going to happen next when Dane pulled me to the front door. Out of no where Brody was at the front door and punched Dane straight in the face. I couldn’t look. Brody apparently held Dane off long enough because before I knew it the lights of Grace’s Dad’s cop car were shining through my broken window. I realized after everything that happened, not paying attention to Brody was the most stupid thing I had ever done. Even when I stopped talking to him he never gave up on our friendship. The police report had been finished with Dane locked up in jail when Brody, my dad and I sat down and had Monday night dinner.