Her name was Marie. We met the first day of sixth grade and almost instantly became best friends. We did all the things preteen best friends do – passing notes in class, sleeping over at each others' houses on the weekends, giggling and laughing and carrying on whenever we were together. I was always a shy kid, never good at making friends. I'd never had a friendship so close. It was glorious, this wonderful, shining thing in my life.
One day, it vanished. There was no warning. Marie walked past me in the hallway without so much as acknowledging my presence. Startled, I called her name. She paused and finally looked at me. “Don't talk to me.”
My jaw dropped. “What? Marie --” But she was already walking away. Stunned, I didn't move to follow her.
Instead, I did what we always did: I wrote her a note. I asked what was wrong. Was she mad at me? I apologized for anything I might have done. I asked her to tell me what was going on. I signed the note, folded it up, and tucked it into her desk.
When I came back to my desk later, I found that note inside my own desk. It must have fallen on the floor, I reasoned. Someone put it in my desk by mistake. I held the note out to Marie directly. “Here, this was for you.”
She looked at the note and then at me. “I don't want it,” she said, her voice shockingly hard. “Don't write me any notes. Don't talk to me. I don't want to be your friend anymore.”
Everything inside of me turned to ice. My heart stopped beating. I couldn't breathe, couldn't think, could barely even process the words.
She didn't want to be my friend.I'd experienced rejection before, but never like that.
Never like that. Death might have been kinder, a sword through the gut less painful. In the face of that pain, I did the only thing I could do: I fled. The girls' bathroom was my refuge, a safe, quiet place with no people. No one to see me sob until I choked. No one to see me curl up on the floor. No one to hear me begging the universe to tell me
why, why why why whyEven when the sobs passed, I stayed there, shaking and exhausted. Eventually the door opened and a classmate came in. Danielle was an acquaintance, a friendly person I'd chatted with throughout the year. She sat down on the floor beside me. “You okay?” I shook my head. “What happened?” she asked.
I thought I'd cried myself out, but the tears came back as I told her. When I was done, she hugged me, murmuring that she was sorry, that it was terrible, that I'd be okay. I leaned into her, my breathing calming and tears slowly drying.
When Danielle pulled away, she asked, “Think you're ready to go back in there?”
I scrubbed my face with both hands. “I... guess.”
She stood and gave me a hand up. “Let's go talk to Mrs. G.”
With Danielle's moral support, I told Mrs. G what had happened. The teacher nodded in sympathy and understanding. When I asked if I could sit somewhere else at lunch from then on, she agreed. I could stay as far from Marie as I needed.
Two months passed. I ate lunch in the center of the lunchroom with my friend Faith, rather than at one of the class tables along the wall. I didn't speak to Marie, and she didn't speak to me. It sucked – a lot – but I got used to it. I had Faith, and I'd made friends with another girl, Nicole, so I wasn't alone. The wound started to heal.
One day after school, completely out of the blue, Marie walked up to me. “Can we talk?” she asked timidly.
I eyed her, surprised and wary. “Okay.”
She explained that her aunt and uncle had split up, and it was horrible on her – she was super close to that aunt, but they were only related through marriage, not blood. It was so painful for Marie that she had to do something to reduce the stress in her life. She did that by cutting me out.
It didn't make any sense to me. In times of pain, you're supposed to lean on your friends, not ditch them entirely! And why had it been
me that she cut out? Was I really that much of a burden?
She seemed to honestly regret it, though. She wanted forgiveness and to try being friends again. I couldn't say no. I didn't have many friends, and if she was sincere, it was worth giving her another shot. I cautiously agreed, even though I knew it would never be the same.
We did get relatively close again for the rest of that year and summer, but we drifted apart in seventh grade. After that, we went to different schools, so we barely saw each other. Eventually, “barely” became “not at all.” I didn't really mourn the loss. Her betrayal had revealed a cruel side to her that I could never forget.
Nearly 20 years later, I still think about her sometimes. I still wonder the real story behind her actions. I've thought about looking her up on Facebook, but what would be the point? The wound might ache occasionally, but it's long since closed. The past is probably best left in the past.
