Little Lost Angel by Michael Quinlan Read Free Book Online Page A

was waiting for Shanda in the school parking lot.
    “Melinda jumped out at us,” Shanda’s cousin remembered. “She had Amanda with her and she told Amanda to tell Shanda that she didn’t like her anymore. Amanda told Shanda to get lost and Shanda started crying.”
    Even though Melinda had won this face-off, she was growing tired of the constant worries. “It was the same thing all over again,” Melinda said later. “I just got fed up with it.”
    Melinda vented her frustration in this letter dated November 26:
Amanda,
Yes! I think we should at least talk this out. If you have noticed all these uncalled for fights have been because of Shanda! Yes, I’m hurt and pissed at you! I can’t believe you! You better straighten your act up missy! I’m sick of hearing and seeing Shanda!! I think we should let me cool off cause I’m still let down with you. You have not shown me no improvement yet. Shanda is not gone! You haven’t got rid of her. It’s your problem not mine! Until her name and writing is off of your shit I’m not going to hang with you and your problem. I’m real mad at you! I feel like I need to cry! I want Shanda dead!!
    Love,    
Melinda
    In early December, Amanda’s father found this letter and dozens of others in Amanda’s room. Disturbed by the sexual content of many of the notes, Jerry Heavrin was determined to put an end to Amanda’s friendship with Melinda. He took the letters to Virgil Seay, the county’s juvenile-probation officer. At Heavrin’s request, Seay contacted Melinda and told her that if she didn’t stay away from Amanda she could face charges of harassment in juvenile court.
    Melinda was livid. She felt that Shanda was responsible for all her troubles. Over the next few weeks she would tell one friend after another that she wanted to kill Shanda.
    One night Melinda asked her longtime friend Crystal Wathen how to go about disposing of a dead body. Crystal coldly answered that the best way would be to put the body in a barrel full of leaves and set it on fire.
    *  *  *
    Melinda didn’t know it yet, but the confrontation in the Hazelwood parking lot had been a turning point in Shanda’s friendship with Amanda. Amanda had contacted Shanda afterward and apologized for telling her to get lost. ButShanda had about had it with Amanda and her fickle ways. It turned out that Shanda was beginning to like her new school. She was making new friends, nice girls like those she knew at St. Paul, and boys who were eager to court the pretty new girl. Shanda joined the basketball team and started going with a boy at the school.
    “She was trying to get away from Amanda,” said Shanda’s cousin, Amanda Edrington. “She stopped writing Amanda and wouldn’t talk to her when she used three-way calling to get to Shanda. Amanda started calling me and asking what was wrong with Shanda. I told her that Shanda was meeting new friends now.”
    Jacque could see the changes in her daughter. Shanda was now spending every school-day morning jockeying with Jacque for position in front of the bathroom mirror so she could fix her hair. Shanda spent hours on the phone with her new friends at Our Lady of Perpetual Help, including a boy who called constantly.
    “After she got away from those girls at Hazelwood, Shanda became herself again,” Jacque said. “She wanted to do things. She wanted to go shopping. She wanted to lay on the couch with me and watch television. She’d laugh and joke. She was Shanda again.” By the time Christmas break rolled around, Jacque was feeling secure in the normalcy that had returned to their lives.
    Then on Christmas Day, the phone rang and Jacque answered. It was Amanda.
    “She asked if she could wish Shanda a merry Christmas,” Jacque said. “I told her that she could not. She said, ‘I know you think I’m a lesbian but I’m not.’ I said, ‘Amanda, I don’t give a damn what you are. It’s none of my business. I could care less. But I will tell you one