Chapter 1 – Childhood Friends

By Evilution

Disclaimer: All characters belong to WWE, except Cici. The majority of this story takes place circa 2001, right after the WWE, or WWF as it was known back then, had bought out WCW and the WCW/ECW Invasion angle was starting.

Author's Note: I wrote this story back in 2001 and had it posted on another fan fic website. I made some changes to the original and I'm reposting it because I want to write a sequel to it. Enjoy!

Cici James and Amy Dumas were the best of friends. They had been since Cici's sophomore year in high school when she moved to Fort Lauderdale, Florida from Beverly Hills. After spending several years in private schools and being a very shy teenager, Cici had a hard time adjusting to the carefree, laid back atmosphere of West Lauderdale High. That was where Amy, who was a senior, stepped in. She took Cici under her wing, so to speak, and the formerly shy teen blossomed into a confident and beautiful young woman. But it hadn't been an easy task.

On top of all the normal angst that teen's experience, Cici had just lost her father that summer in a freak plane accident when his company's twin engine Cessna crashed into the Pacific Ocean. There had been mechanical failure and no one survived the tragedy. Many people whispered about foul play, but Anthony James had been one of the most successful investment brokers in Los Angeles as well as a very moral and upstanding figure in the banking community. On top of that, he was a faithful and loving father and husband to Cici and her mother, Elizabeth.

Since Tony's firm was worth several million dollars and he had very few liabilities, Cici and her mother were both well taken care of. Elizabeth James had been a semi-successful daytime television star, who parlayed her fame into an extremely successful career as a romance novelist. When Tony died, Elizabeth and Cici moved to Fort Lauderdale and into the family's beach house. It was an excellent atmosphere for Elizabeth to write her novels and she was sure that Cici would love West Lauderdale High, since it was one of the best schools in Florida.

The first few months had been tough. That is, until Cici met Amy. Amy lived a couple miles down the beach from Cici in a lavish home that was the envy of the entire community. Olivia Dumas worked in international real estate and she traveled for a good portion of the year, leaving her only daughter in the care of servants. Amy's parents had been split up since she was about four years old and it had just been her and her mother for the longest time. They were more like best friends than mother and daughter.

Of course, the fact that Olivia wasn't around much allowed Amy an extraordinary amount of freedom. As a result, she had a reputation as somewhat of a wild child, but it couldn't have been further from the truth. Amy was an honor student, who was such a homebody that she would have rather stayed home reading a book than going out partying. That's not to say that she didn't know how to have fun. Amy and Cici had their share of adventures and close calls during the year they spent together in high school and subsequent years after that. Elizabeth James was usually too wrapped up in writing her latest novel that she really didn't notice what Cici was doing. Liz liked Amy Dumas and she figured that since Amy was older, her daughter was in good hands.

When Amy graduated in 1993, Cici felt lost since she still had two years of school left. But that didn't stop the girls from being inseparable. Amy got a job at a local bookstore/coffee shop and enrolled at the local community college where she took courses in English and art, her two favorite subjects. Cici managed to get through her last two years of school, spending most of her free time at Amy's house or the bookstore.

Cici graduated from high school in 1995 and her mother pulled some strings to get her into Vassar University, despite her average grades. So in the fall of 1995, Cici very tearfully said goodbye to her best friend and moved to Poughkeepsie, New York to attend college. Cici was positive that she was going to hate going to school at Vassar, but amazingly, she adjusted well and even made some friends. Of course, she missed Amy and they tried to stay in touch, but they eventually drifted apart when Amy moved to North Carolina for some reason or another. When Cici graduated from college in 1999, she tried to contact Amy to let her know that she realized her dream of becoming a writer and she was going to be reporting for the Philadelphia Daily News, but she was unable to locate her friend. Even Olivia didn't have Amy's most recent address.
It wasn't until summer 1999 that Cici ran into Amy totally by freak accident. Two of the guys from the Daily News sports page talked her into going down to this bingo hall in downtown Philadelphia to see professional wrestling. Not just any professional wrestling, but Extreme Championship Wrestling. Cici remembered that she and Amy used to like to watch wrestling on TV, but ECW had a reputation for being extremely violent. In fact, Cici didn't really want to go, but since Nick and Todd had gone to all the trouble of getting ringside seats, she figured what the hell? Maybe she'd run into a story there or something. Although Cici reported the news, her real dream was to write fiction. Her only creative outlet was when she got to write the occasional editorial, but those were few and far between. Her boss often complained that her imagination was far too vivid to simply report the news. As it turned out, Cici ran into more than just a story.