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Best Friends and Those You Think are Your Best Friends

At some point in his or her life, everyone is going to meet someone who seems like a great friend but in reality is not. When you rush into friendships, declaring someone your best friend three days after you meet them, trouble can come of it.

My not so good friend came in 9th grade. It was the first day of school and I saw the new girl in a corner. Just looking at her sitting by herself with an attitude that said "I'm cool, don't mess with me" made me curious right off.

So for a couple of days I made small talk starting with boring questions such as asking about her previous school, moving up to asking her to eat lunch with me. In my naive mind I felt so cool. I made friends with the new girl. I was enraptured that she wanted to be friends with me.

She has enough stories to fill a book, and she was telling them to me. She had experienced things that I hadn't even dared to dream of. When I was around her I felt like I was in a whole new world that I didn't know existed. For months all I wanted was to be just like her. I tried to talk like her and look like her but I never could match her.

She always said how cute I was, but I didn't want to be cute, I wanted to be her. She was on a higher level than me, she knew about life and what it was like to actually be doing the things you hear about on the new. I was just a little girl compared to her; I knew nothing.

Of course she never said this to me, but there was a tone in her voice sometimes that made it clear that I was naïve. By Christmas time, however, her stories seemed to be getting wilder and wilder. It was getting hard to pick the truth from the fiction. Everyday she had something new to tell everyone about.

It was like, if she didn't have anything real to talk about she made up some far-fetched tale. And people wanted to listen. It could have been the entertainment value of the stories or they felt sorry for her or maybe they believed them. Whatever the reason was, whenever she had a story, she had an audience.

I was always listening, no matter what the story. I always had sympathy for her even if her story was bizarre. Then one day, for no reason it was like the wool was removed from my eyes. I was suddenly seeing the truth in her. I saw that some of her stories were too wild to be true and I noticed that she was a drama queen.

I didn't say anything about it except to one of my other friends who had been noticing it to. Everyday that she had a new story, we pretended to be interested and then later discussed the truth in it. Slowly we distancing ourselves from her and she didn't even seem to care. It just gave her something else to create drama about.

That hurt me. I thought we had been friends, but yet she didn't even seem to care that I wasn't a part of her life anymore. I didn't want to be friends with someone like her but I wanted her to at least acknowledge the fact that I was gone. I didn't understand why she didn't even have feelings for me after six months of sharing our lives with each other.

Just as suddenly as I had noticed her lies, we went from being apathetic towards each other to being enemies. There was a sudden hostility between us. Whenever someone mentioned her to me, I rolled my eyes and changed the subject. When she said something ignorant in English, I made a noise as if saying "Oh my gosh will you just shut up?"

She was the same way to me. She talked about me to other people and rolled her eyes when I raised my hand in class. She was more violent then me though. She would go out of her way to bump me into my locker when we happened to pass each other in the hall. Then she disappeared from my life. She moved to Chattanooga and she was gone forever.

Sure, I heard people talk about her from time to time but I had no more contact with her. As glad as I am that she left, I can't help but wonder how things are going for her. Perhaps she got her life straightened out and decided to be herself.

Even though I don't like her, I know I learned something valuable from her. I know now that friendships should be taken slowly. You need to know the true person before you can be best friends.

And she also showed me that no matter how boring my life may seem to be, I know that I don't need to make up stories. People love me for me.

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