Who Killed Amanda Stone: Invisible (Prologue)

  You want to know who killed Amanda Stone? That's what everyone's been asking me these days. "Whose fault was it?" Everyone wants to know why she died, and for some reason, they think I have the answer for them. Unfortunately for them, the answer to that question is something no one really wants to hear. They ask to ease their troubled minds, not out of any desire to pursue justice for a girl whose life ended far before she actually died. The problem with people is that they allow others to slip through their fingers. They too often allow someone to be forgotten and ignored, abused by the few who notice them. People don't notice you when you're here; they can only tell when you're gone.
  Anyways, people ask me what happened to her because aside from her abusers, I was the only one who even bothered to take a second glance at her. If  you're wondering who I am, don't bother. I am just another face on the street. I'm the one you cut off on accident on your way to work. My face blends into the crowd until I become a part of it, someone you always see but you'll never notice again. The person who held the elevator for you and you forgot to thank them. I'm the person who sits in front of you on the bus each day, but you can't seem to remember my face. I am one more face you won't remember tomorrow. It doesn't matter what I ask you to call me, because none of this is about me, and tomorrow, you won't remember that I have a name. Call me Jane, plain Jane.
  To make a long story short, for Amanda, every day was "one of those days." To her, life was one big mistake after another, always another problem waiting for her around the corner...I didn't think you would be satisfied with that answer. No one ever is. They all want to hear all the gory details of her death and how it happened. Well, if you want the gory details, you're getting them. I guess it really all started the day she decided to become invisible. In ninth grade, a new girl walked into Amanda's first class of the day, alone. No one bothered to talk to her, or even learn her name. She was one more face in the crowd that they wouldn't have to remember the next day. In a big city high school like theirs, no one mattered but who looked back at them in the mirror and those who pointed out how great they looked in it. The teacher stared coldly at the student without a name and pointed to a broken desk at the back of the classroom. She walked slowly to it, avoiding the silence the others threw at her back, towards her future as a passerby. The mouse of a girl sat carefully down in her assigned seat and pulled out an empty notebook and a mangled, old pencil. Five minutes later, a crumpled ball of paper hit her foot. Her desk creaking the whole way, she leaned down to pick up the paper and swung quickly, and not so quietly, back up. The whole room turned to look at her, and the teacher's eyes demanded an explanation.
  "I dropped my pencil," she murmured, holding it up for the class to see, as if it could prove her point for her. A Hispanic girl near the front rolled her eyes and whispered something to the students around her, causing uproarious laughter in the entire classroom. The teacher glared at the new girl, blaming her for the other students' misbehavior, then swiftly turning back to the whiteboard to continue on with the lesson. The student in the seat in front of the girl turned as if to say something, but shut her mouth and instead motioned to the abandoned paper ball lying on the desk. The new girl uncrumpled the paper and laid it on her desk, amazed at what she saw. On it was a doodle of her walking into the classroom, and underneath it a note that said, "Smile, shy girl. My name's Amanda. What's yours?"
  That was how Amanda Stone chose to become invisible. That day, she made the decision to talk to a new student and extend a hand of friendship to someone she'd never met before in her life. Due to her kindness to the other girl, all her other friends abandoned her. They couldn't understand Amanda wanting to make new friends, and from that day forward mercilessly persecuted her for it. But that's another part of her story, one I don't have the patience to explain to you today. One last thing I want you to know is this: I still have the drawing she drew of me that day. I have it in a box filled with all the other things my best friend gave me before she died. She became invisible for me, and I'll keep what I have left of her.