Chapter 1: Prologue
Maka's POV
Soul had been my friend for a very long time, since we were around 10. Our fathers were friends, and often I was dragged into going to the small parties his family threw. There were usually four or five families invited, and everyone would bring food. The adults and teenagers would sit around a large table that fit cozily in their small dining room, while he and I would sit at a small table in the adjoining living room. His mother would turn on a "perfectly lovely" show for us to watch, but looking back on it, I'm fairly certain it was really meant to drown out the drunken profanity that was being spewed by the men. We were awkward with one another at first, but soon we started getting along and sneaking off to his room to play video games. I started going over there on weekends when there weren't parties, just to hang out; then I started visiting after school also, and by the time we hit eighth grade I was at his house practically everyday.
There had never really been anything romantic between us. Sure, hormones were crazy, but neither of us saw the other one as anything special. He called me a bookworm and told me I had fat ankles, and I called him lazy and nagged him to study more. We fought a lot and were often not on good terms, but at the end of the day we were there for each other and always got over any arguments. The first time he was asked out by a girl in freshman year I felt a small tang of jealousy, but that could just be chalked up to my worries that I might have lost him as a friend. It was also a little less than a year after my parents' divorce, and I was quick to assume infidelity in men due to my father's newly discovered habit of sleeping around behind my mother's back. Ultimately Soul's relationship lasted no more than a few weeks and nothing extraordinary came of it.
After sophomore year Soul and I both wanted to attend a pretty prestigious high school a few hours away from our town. The school was meant to accept students from all over the nation so within its campus were apartments for sale. After begging my dad and his parents for weeks they finally decided that they'd pay for us to live in one of them. The semester started in late August, and we were set to move into our new place in July so that we'd be completely settled. The apartment was somewhat like a dorm in that it was partially furnished. There was a living room, kitchen, bathroom, and two bedrooms. The living room had a couch and tv, the kitchen had all the necessary appliances, and each bedroom had a twin sized bed along with a matching bookshelf and desk. Soul decorated his grey walls with music posters and filled his bookshelf with nicknacks and pictures. He had an electric keyboard off in one corner of his room, and his desk was covered with stray papers, sketches, and random textbooks; his floor was littered with dirty and clean clothes, and his bed was never made. My pale green walls were nearly empty, and my bookshelf was overflowing causing me to have neatly stacked books filling any unused areas. My desk and bed were kept clean, and my closet was perfectly organized. We met somewhere in the middle for the living room with posters hanging on the walls and a shelved coffee table filled with books.
We were happy when school started, and we ended up in the same class. We made friends quickly, and by Halloween Soul had his first serious girlfriend. Her name was Kate, and, to me, she was absolutely gorgeous. She was pale with long, messy hair that was light brown near the top and black at the ends. Her eyes were big and grey, her mouth was of average size with a slightly plump bottom lip, and her eyebrows were always perfectly arched and plucked. She was about two inches taller than me but still a good half a foot shorter than Soul. We met Kate after our school's October talent show in which she sang a relatively unknown Cage the Elephant song that Soul loved; he insisted we go talk to her to tell her how great she was, and I guess they really hit it off. Kate was cool with him having a roommate that was a girl and was at our apartment often to hang out with Soul. They seemed head of heels for each other, and up until that December night I thought nothing could possibly go wrong for them.