The Amy Rat
by JoJo

I love coffee.

Every morning I go to this little shop in the good section of L.A. (as opposed to the 'I'm-poor-and-I-can't-get-a-break' section in which I reside.) to order some sort of caffine infested drink and sit in quiet contemplation of my tax returns or some awful thing like that. Sometimes as I sit I'll read through an audition script, but I stopped doing that last week when I spilled my cappucino all over the cover and the preceeding fifty pages.

But, as I was saying, I love coffee. And when I don't get my coffee it gets me really irritated because drinking coffee in that little shop is the only thing remotely 'Yuppie' in my life. So you can see why I'd be more than a little peeved today when I discovered that the shop was closed for the Fourth of July weekend. I didn't even know it was July...but that's not the point.

The point is that I have to spend like this my entire Sunday morning at the most degrading restaurant chain the the World: McDonalds.

But Angel likes it when I look on the bright side so I started thinking, *Hey, if I get coffee here then I could spill it on my lap and make a fortune in some lawsuit.* But then I realized that I could absolutely ruin my favorite pants so I just ordered milk. I mean, that's close to coffee, right? You put milk in coffee...

I know; there's no comparison. Anyway, it was cheap. (Who'd have thunk that I'd be so pathetic after high school that I'd actually be sitting in a McDonalds comparing milk and coffee?) But see, I was sipping with my straw when I noticed the side of the milk carton. Normally I don't read those 'missing persons' notices because of all the hundreds of people I've known over the years maybe only one or two was ever missing, but this picture was different.

It was Amy Madison.

You know, the witch cheerleader-wannabe from my sophmore year? The one that cast a spell over the entire female population of Sunnydale?

So now I'm sitting here contemplating something other than my lack-of-income. Maybe coming here wasn't so bad after all. Only this is really depressing because I knew her...well I guess I knew a lot of people from Sunnydale that shared a similar fate, but for some reason this is really sad. She was one of us- the few that really knew what was going on in the world- and now she's just gone. Everyone knows that a missing person from Sunnydale is just another name for 'Killed in the line of fire.'

So what was it? Vampires?

You know, she was the one that got Xander and me back together...sort of. If it hadn't been for that spell she cast I would never have known how wonderful he was! Of course, I might have been saved a lot of pain in the end. Still, as much as I might like to I don't think I could ever give up those moments I had with Xander. Or even the rest of his loser buddies. In the end Buffy and Angel proved to be truly great friends; irreplaceable.

All because of Amy. Say, when was the last time I saw her?

Let's see....homecoming? No...oh! When the town went all Salem and she turned herself into a rat.

Wait a second; she's still a rat. Thanks to Willow's incredible non-talent I bet she's still running around on that rodent wheel while I sit here and waste time.

Time! I have to go to the butcher before they throw all the blood out!

Ugh. I hate milk.