By Monday morning my shame had turned to anger. Being pretty and popular didn’t give someone the right to trick people! I spotted Alicia on the playground, surrounded by the usual group of girls. I pushed my way into the circle. “What you did was mean, Alicia Whitman. I don’t want to be your friend, now or ever!” I stomped away.
“Wait!” Alicia cried. “What did I do?”
Right there, in front of God and all her friends, I told her.
Alicia was shaking her head. “I didn’t call you, Lou. It wasn’t me. We were out of town all weekend.”
Someone giggled and said, “Miss Brainiac got fooled.”
I ignored the name-caller. “Then who called me, Alicia? Who played that dirty trick?”
Alicia looked around the group. Her gaze stopped on Morgan, who was trying to hide the fact that she was laughing to herself. “It was a dirty trick, Lou. I don’t know who did it—for sure. But that person’s no friend of mine.”
Morgan turned bright red. “It was just a joke. Can’t you take a joke, Lou?”
“Some jokes aren’t funny. Right, you guys?” Alicia said, taking my arm.
Everyone nodded and closed in behind Alicia and me. Morgan’s hurtful joke backfired. We all walked away, leaving her standing alone on the playground.
Lou Kassem
©Lynn Johnston Productions, Inc. Distributed by United Feature Syndicate, Inc.
Best Friends
I thought she was my best friend
The best one I’ve ever had
Instead I found out the truth
And what I learned was sad.
We still call each other friends
But I feel we’re far apart
Though we see each other every day
I have a broken heart.
She has made new friends
And I have made some, too.
We are talking less and less
And inside I’m cold and blue.
Each and every night I pray
That she will finally see
How much I want our friendship back
And how much she means to me.
Whitney M. Baldwin, twelve
My Best Enemy
Examine the contents, not the bottle.
The Talmud
Once again, I was in a new school. So was a girl in my class named Paris. That’s where the similarities ended.
I was tall, with a big, moony face. She was petite and skinny with a model’s delicate features.
My thick, black hair had been recently cut short into a shag style. Her natural caramel blonde hair flowed to her waist and looked great when she flipped it around.
I was twelve and one of the oldest in the class. She was eleven and the youngest in the class.
I was awkward and shy. She wasn’t.
I wore baggy overalls, sweatshirts and lime-green hiking boots. Paris wore rhinestone platform shoes, little twirly skirts and expensive, size-one designer jeans.
I couldn’t stand her. I considered her my enemy. She liked me. She wanted to be friends.
One day, she invited me over and I said yes. I was too shocked to answer any other way. My family had moved six times in six years, and I had never managed to develop many friendships. No one had invited me over to play since I was young enough to actually play. But this girl who wore tinted lip-gloss and the latest fashions wanted me to go home with her after school.
She lived in a fun part of town that had two pizza places, an all-night bookstore, a movie theater and a park. As we walked from the school bus stop through her neighborhood, I tried to guess which house might be hers. Was it the white one with the perfect lawn or the brown-shingled three-story house with a silky golden retriever on the front porch?
Was I surprised when she led me into an apartment building, which smelled like frying food, chemical cleaning sprays and incense! She lived on the fourth floor in a two-room place with her mother, her stepfather, her two brothers and her sister.
When we got to the room she shared with her sister, she took out a big case of Barbies—which was my next surprise. I would have thought she’d outgrown them. I had never played with them. But we sat on the floor of a walk-in closet, laughing as we made up crazy stories about the Barbies. That’s when we found out that we both wanted to be writers when we were older and we both had wild imaginations.
When we got bored making up stories, she took out a small case of make-up and taught me how to put on lipstick and blush. I still thought that I looked like a clown; my face just wasn’t made for make-up. Unlike me, Paris looked about eighteen years old in make-up.
We spent that afternoon screaming with laughter. Our jaws ached from smiling so much. She showed me her wardrobe, which had mostly come from a designer clothing store down the block. The woman who owned it used her as a model sometimes for her newspaper ads and gave her clothes in exchange.
Paris had the whole neighborhood charmed. The bookstore owners lent her fashion magazines, the movie theater gave her free passes and the pizza place let her have free slices. Soon I was included in her magic world. We slept over at each other’s houses, spent every free moment together. Sometimes Paris and I stayed up the entire night talking. We never ran out of things to discuss, whether we were making detailed lists of boys we liked or talking about the meaning of life.
She was too poor to have a telephone, so when I was forced to be apart from her, I would dial the number of the pay phone in the pizza place. If I was lucky, Paris would be nearby and answer it.
She was my first real friend since childhood, and she helped me get through the rough years of early adolescence. My dark hair grew out and I learned to love being tall. Eventually, I found a shade of lipstick that didn’t make me look like something from Scream II.
Nothing bad happened in our relationship—except for growing older. We ended up going to different junior high schools and eventually drifted apart.
Since then I’ve had other wonderful friendships. But Paris taught me an amazing and very surprising thing about making friends: that your worst enemy can turn out to be your best friend.
Dakota Lane
Heaven Sent
You will suffer and you will hurt. You will have joy and you will have peace.
Alison Cheek
Making the transition from middle school to high school is always a tough one. Luckily, I had my five best friends, Kylie, Lanie, Laura, Mindy and Angela, to help me through it. We experienced our most important moments together and shared everything, the good and the bad. Their friendship completed me. With their help, I went from being a shy little girl to a confident and excited young woman. Life without them was unimaginable, or so I thought.
The unexpected all began on a beautiful spring day during my sophomore year. Life was perfect. It was a Friday and the weekend was upon us. After my friends and I made our plans, I said good-bye to each of them and gave them all a great big hug. As always, I told them that I loved them and we went on our own ways.
Laura and I decided to go to the mall and do some shopping before we went out that night. As we returned to her house, I noticed something very odd: both of her parents were home and waiting outside. I knew right away how peculiar this was, since even Laura seemed surprised to see her father home so early. As we approached the door, Laura’s father quietly uttered, “Reality is going to hit right now.” My stomach sank and my heart began to pound quickly. What was he about to tell us?
Once I found out, I no longer wanted to know what he was trying to say. Seeking comfort, I looked into the eyes of Laura’s mother but saw her eyes fill up with nothing but tears. As she tried to speak, she choked on her words. But slowly the words came. The five words that would forever destroy my life were, “There has been an accident.”
Images of the people I loved raced through my mind as my heart began to beat faster. My first instinct was to retreat to denial. Nothing was wrong, nothing had happened and no one was hurt. This would all go away and things would be back
to normal in the morning. Unfortunately, I couldn’t run away from the truth. I sat on the edge of my seat in shock as I was told the news.
My best friends had been in the accident. Lanie and Mindy had walked away. Kylie, however, was in bad shape. I soon realized that no one was telling me what had happened to Angela. As I prepared to ask, I took a deep breath and swallowed hard. Deep down inside, I already knew what I didn’t want to hear. I tried to ignore my instincts. After all, Angela couldn’t be dead. She was only fifteen!
Then the news came and there was nowhere I could run to escape. Angela was dead. After hearing the news, all I could do was laugh. This had to be some kind of sick joke. My inner refusal to accept what I had been told prevented me from crying. I had no tears. I was in shock, utter shock. From the moment the accident had happened, each of our lives had been changed forever.
As I arrived at the hospital, the first person I saw was Lanie. Even though it truly was Lanie, this wasn’t my Lanie. The Lanie I knew was full of spunk. As I looked into her eyes, I thought I was looking into the eyes of a stranger. For the first time in our lives, she was out of my reach. I was devastated to see her in so much pain. She couldn’t even speak to me.
As if that weren’t hard enough, I was then told that before I could see Kylie, there were certain conditions that I had to agree to. I was to remain calm and tell her that everything was going to be okay. The hardest part, though, was being told that I couldn’t cry, because this would upset her. I quickly agreed. I just wanted to see her.
I walked into the emergency room to find Kylie hooked up to many machines. She was screaming and crying. It was beyond difficult to pretend that all was well when all I could see was the hell that she was going through. My heart stopped. She was in agony and I could do nothing but watch. As I told her that I loved her, I felt my eyes well up with tears, so I turned and ran away.
Once I was outside of Kylie’s room, I tried to regain my composure. However, I panicked once again when I found out that Angela’s father was on his way over to the hospital to check on the other girls. My only instinct was to run, and that is exactly what I did. I ran as fast as I could to the other side of the hospital. I was not running away from him, but from the truth. I just couldn’t bear facing him. I knew if I did, I would have to face the truth that Angela was gone forever. I wasn’t ready for that truth. Somewhere deep down, I was still hoping that this was really an awful nightmare that I was going to wake up from any minute. Unfortunately, it wasn’t.
That night all of my friends gathered at Laura’s house. We consoled each other and reminisced about the times we had shared with Angela, times that we would have no more. At this point, I was still not allowing myself to grieve. If I did, it would mean that I believed it was true. I knew it was true but I could not accept it, so I didn’t.
Later that week was the viewing. The once-vibrant young woman lay lifeless and cold. That was not my Angela; I did not know or recognize that person. What followed was the funeral. That was where the spirit of the Angela that I knew actually was.
It was a beautiful sight to see the community come together to express their love for her. The microphone was open to all of those who wanted to share their personal memories or their love for Angela. Seeing all the people that were there to remember her made me realize that Angela not only touched my life but the lives of everyone she came into contact with. She was my sunshine, and now without her my days were darker. How does a person live without the love, warmth and security of her best friend?
I didn’t think my life could get any worse, but I was wrong. Without notice, I was told that my parents were getting a divorce. As soon as I heard the news, I automatically wanted to call Angela. After all, she was the one I always ran to when I needed someone to talk to or cheer me up. But she was gone.
All my friends were still hurting from the devastation of losing Angela, so I didn’t think that I could burden them with my new crisis. I ended up feeling completely lost and abandoned. I bottled up all my thoughts, questions and frustrations inside of me. I thought that meant that I was strong. It took me some time before I realized that there was someone that would always be there for me no matter what happened: God. He always had a way of coming into my life with open arms when I had nowhere left to run. I soon learned that God has a mysterious way of working. This time, he placed a situation in my life path that enabled me to grow as an individual.
Unexpectedly, Brenda Hampton, the creator, writer and executive producer of 7th Heaven, came to me and asked if I would be willing to do an episode about “dealing with the death of a young friend.” Up until this point, I had not let myself grieve over the loss of Angela. Simply put, I had been acting. I had put up this perfect façade that I was totally happy. When Brenda asked me if I was wiIling to do this episode, I suddenly realized that I needed to let out my emotions and fears if I ever wanted to get over my pain. As a result, I agreed to what Brenda proposed, and she developed “Nothing Endures but Change.”
At first, I wasn’t prepared for the emotional tidal wave that would be released. Filming that episode was both emotionally and physically exhausting. Emotions that I had ignored for so long were now being unleashed, and I did not know how I was going to deal with them. Luckily, this time around I felt comfortable enough to turn to my friends and family for the love, advice and security that only they could offer. I came to the realization that it was okay to hurt. Once the tears came, they didn’t stop until weeks after. That was when I realized that even though Angela wasn’t physically with us any longer, her spirit had never left my side.
One day, after visiting Angela’s grave at the cemetery, I was listening to the radio. I noticed that the songs playing were those that I always associated with Angela and our friendship. Five of “our” songs played back to back. As I came over a hill, I saw a beautiful rainbow. I immediately got chills all over my body. I knew that this was a sign and it instantly caused me to smile. To all of my friends and me, rainbows had symbolized our friendship with Angela. There she was, as beautiful as ever, just reminding me that she was still by my side and had never truly left me. I cried, but this time out of happiness and joy. I knew then that I have an angel watching over me, now and forever, and her name is Angela.
Beverley Mitchell
Keeping in Touch
There is one thing better than making a new friend, and that is keeping an old one.
Elmer G. Leterman
Two years ago my family moved. The day that we left, my best friend and I cried together in my empty bedroom for hours. I was miserable and homesick during the five-hour car ride to my new house. Life was unbearable.
When we finally arrived at my new house, I ran to the phone to tell my best friend my address and phone number. We talked for a little while, but I had to hang up because the long-distance call was expensive.
On the first day of school, I called her to tell her how it went. Then, on Halloween, I sent her a letter and a picture of my new friends and me.
Finally, she wrote me a letter. It wasn’t even a letter— just a bunch of pieces of paper saying, “Best friends forever.”
When I finally got her e-mail address, I e-mailed her the longest letter I have ever written. I never received an e-mail back, and by the third e-mail letter with no response, my messages grew shorter and shorter. With each passing day, I got angrier and angrier. I never received a reply from her.
Mom said that I could always call my other friends, that I didn’t need to always call her. Give up on my best friend? Give up on the person I had known all my life? The person that I had gone from diapers to Barbies to nail polish with, and who had been in the same class with me from the first through the fifth grade?
My first answer was automatically, “No way!” But after five more e-mail messages, three phone calls and two more letters, I started to consider what my mom had said. Every night for about a week, I stayed up in bed thinking, Should I give up? Should I keep trying?
The
way I looked at it, if I’m her best friend, she’d take a minute to push a few buttons on the phone, or type a short “hello” on the computer, or scribble a few words on a piece of paper. To me, keeping in touch is part of being a friend and is important. To her, it really didn’t seem to matter.
After two years of disappointment, I finally got a phone call from my best friend. She told me how sorry she was for not writing, and about how busy she had been. It was so unexpected, I forgot about everything that happened and how angry I had been at her. I forgave her. I guess keeping in touch just isn’t her style, and it didn’t mean she didn’t care about me.
I came to realize that true friends never really lose their special connection. Even after two years, it felt like we had just talked yesterday. Now she and I write regularly—or at least she tries to, and she tries hard.
What more could a friend ask for?
Emily Burton, eleven
Calvin and Hobbes
by Bill Watterson
CALVIN AND HOBBES © Watterson. Reprinted with permission of UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE. All rights reserved.
My Big Solo
The day had finally arrived: the day of my big solo. Everyone was there; my mom and dad and my little brother. Uncle Scott and Auntie Tammy had even picked up my grandma from the nursing home so she wouldn’t miss the big event.