My first best friend was Ashley and we were four. Every day at day care, we played with blocks and fake kitchen sets and went on the best imaginary adventures. We spent every single day together through the week and sometimes hung out on the weekends, too. Something happened one day, though, because I remember going through elementary school and my mom requesting she and I not be in the same classes because we couldn't get along. Over the years, I had friends here and there that I knew well enough to come over and hang out but none I considered best friends. At least, not until seventh grade.
One day, I was partnered with this girl in woodshop I'd never met before. At first, she was kind of quiet and that wasn't really my style so I asked her a bunch of questions until I found something we could talk about. Her name was Emma and after that first day, we were the absolute best of friends. I'll always remember that friendship because of what happened the day after I first met Emma. I walked into homeroom and some popular girls were laughing about something. I sat down next to one and asked them what was going on and they told me. I don't remember what it was exactly, I just remember they were making fun of Emma. At that moment, I was faced with a tough decision because middle school is the peak of life when popularity matters the most. Up until then, I was pretty good friends with the popular girls and I knew I could make fun of Emma with them and be in the in-crowd for the rest of my grade school career. Instead, I got up from the desk I was sitting in and walked over to sit down next to Emma, ignoring the popular girls. I knew it would ruin my repuation but I liked talking to Emma and being a friend to her felt way better than being friends with those other girls. I introduced Emma to some friends I'd already had when she told me she just moved from Ohio. She introduced all of us to Sara, who also just moved from Ohio. So the five of us kind of stuck together for seventh grade and I can honestly say it was one of the best years of my entire academic life. Emma and I hung out all the time. We had sleepovers and watched horror movies like the Grudges but also watched chick flicks like She's the Man and John Tucker Must Die.
Truthfully, Emma and I never stopped being friends. We were put into separate sections in eighth grade and slowly grew apart as we made new friends. She decided to hang out with a crowd of people who were pretty much the entire opposite of me. I missed her and I missed having someone close but that was part of life. At the end of eighth grade, her mom was tired of her misbehavior and she pulled her out of school and moved the family back to Ohio, cutting Emma off from our town in the mean time. That was hard but it got to the point where it was a fun surprise getting an email from Emma and it was like having a virtual pen pal when I wrote her messages about my life and read messages about hers. Nowadays, we're friends on Facebook and she and I would have never kept our friendship thriving had she stayed in this town. I'm more traditional and old school and she's picking up new trends like piercing her septum and going to school for art. She's happy though, and I applaud her for that. I miss the confidence she used to instill in me.
Losing Emma was hard. Sara and I became really good friends in eighth grade but it wasn't the same because Sara wasn't someone I wanted to hang out with outside of school. In ninth grade, I became closer friends with Caitlin and Emily from seventh grade and even met some of the friends they'd made in eighth grade. My next best friend was someone I'd met during softball in middle school that I had homeroom with in ninth grade. We were comparing schedules on the first day and realized we had tons of classes together so we grew pretty close. Her name was Victoria and we were a pretty great team. She had the answers I didn't and I had the answers she didn't. She pushed me to be the best I could possibly be and I taught her to relax sometimes. We were at each other's houses all the time and I don't think an hour went by that we weren't communicating somehow. She and I were best friends all through ninth grade and tenth grade, despite her disapproval of my first boyfriend. There were other fake best friends between tenth and eleventh grade but Victoria and I were the ultimate best friends. We even went to homecoming together in eleventh grade. What happened, you might ask? It started with a major disapproval for my second boyfriend and everything just kind of snowballed until we just blew up one day and stopped being friends. In her absence, I mostly depended on my then-boyfriend for friendship and he loved the attention.
During my senior year, I became best friends with a freshman who was excited about high school and we blended so well because we were so much alike. On the first day, she needed somewhere to sit so I told her she could sit with me and my friends. She blended in well and she and I became so close we would spend entire weekends together and I actually used her shower.
