If I Could Take It Back

"So, then guess what happened after that?" Aaralynn demanded angrily, as she dumped her bag down onto her desk with gusto.

"What?" her best friend, Yvonne, asked. Aaralynn didn’t pay any attention to her bored tone, as it was rare that she noticed anything when she was having one of her famous rants.

"She turns around as says to me that I can’t get my hair done at all! Can you believe that? I got one fail in the whole assignment, and she goes and says something like that! Sometimes I think I have the worst parents in the world, especially my mother. She does nothing but ban me from things and Dad never actually says anything to stop her, even when he knows she’s wrong. It annoys me so much …"

Aaralynn was off, and Yvonne sighed, zoning out to her friend’s ranting. Aaralynn knew she had, but she didn’t care. It was nice to vent and she didn’t care that the rest of the homeroom was having to hear about her argument with her mother.

"Can you keep it down?" Yvonne eventually hissed. "You can be so loud sometimes!"

"Hey!" Aaralynn protested. "I’ve been wronged! I have half a mind to sue!"

"Look, you could have it so much worse! So you can’t get your hair done? Wait until next week and then ask again! Jeez, Aaralynn, you’d have thought your mother wanted your kidney or something."

"What’s up with you?" Aaralynn asked her friend. "You’re in a right bad mood today. Having another emo day?"

Yvonne raised her eyebrows.

"Aaralynn, how many times do I have to tell you I’m not emo?"

Aaralynn laughed.

"You know I’m only joking."

However, she reached out and flicked her friend’s bangs. Yvonne groaned and flicked her friend’s fingers away.

"I just get frustrated with you sometimes, that’s all," Yvonne confessed. "You can be such a drama queen, and sometimes it gets a little embarrassing."

"Why would it be embarrassing?" Aaralynn demanded.

"Well, some kids in this place have it so much worse than you, yet you storm in here every day with some new drama, like you can’t get your hair done, or you’ve forgotten your text book, or you couldn’t find two socks that were the same, or dirt’s on your shoe, and you rant about it as though it’s the apocalypse come early for the whole day. Aaralynn, there’s kids in this school who have lost parents or who are in care or who have mental disorders, and you rant because you can’t get your hair done? That’s a little shallow, don’t you think?"

"Not really," Aaralynn shrugged. "How am I supposed to know what’s wrong with them? This is my life and I can rant about my problems. What’s it to you, anyway?"

Yvonne suddenly looked incredibly annoyed, and Aaralynn blinked at her friend, surprised. Yvonne wasn’t usually the annoyed type. She was quite happy to sit quietly while Aaralynn ranted.

"You can be so selfish!" Yvonne hissed – the two girls were having to whisper now as their teacher was calling the role. "Have you ever once asked me how I am? Have you ever once asked any of your other friends how they are? When Becky’s parents separated all you could talk about was how you’d love it if your father moved out because he annoyed you – and Becky was in tears! You need to work yourself out, Aaralynn!"

There was a long awkward silence, and when the bell rang, signalling the start of the first period, Yvonne stood up and stormed off before Aaralynn could say anything to her. Aaralynn blinked, shocked. There had been tears in her friend’s eyes.

"Someone’s PMSing," Aaralynn muttered, standing up. She heard a soft chuckle behind her and turned around to see Clarissa, another friend, standing behind her. She looked a lot happier now she and her boyfriend had patched things up.

"Perhaps you should go after her?" Clarissa asked softly. "I think that was a cry for help if I ever saw one."

"Why would she go to me for help?" Aaralynn asked. "She just spent the last ten minutes telling me how shallow and selfish I was."

"Well, Aaralynn, you have to admit to yourself that, when you have a problem, the whole world knows about it," Clarissa shrugged, pushing her chair in. "You really are a drama queen."

Aaralynn stood there, biting her bottom lip, as Clarissa caught up with her boyfriend and they left the room as well. Aaralynn finally dragged her heels out of the room and headed to History class, wondering if Yvonne would already be there. Sure enough, she was all ready, standing at her desk, bent over her bag. Aaralynn approached awkwardly.

"Um, Yvonne?" she asked, and Yvonne must have been surprised at the shyness in the voice of her usually feisty best friend, as she turned around with her eyes wide. They were still teary.

"What?" she sniffed.

"Do you … um … do you want to go somewhere?"

Yvonne looked defiant for a second, before her bottom lip trembled. Aaralynn gently took her friend’s arm and pulled her from the classroom, and they headed down to the girl’s bathroom.

"Now, what’s wrong?" Aaralynn asked quietly. "Come on, I’m all ears. It’s your lucky day."

Yvonne managed a teary laugh.

"I don’t know who to tell, Aaralynn," she said softly. "I mean, I know I could tell you but you’re always so feisty, and you have a habit of telling people to just get on with it because it’s not that bad. I mean, I know that’s your philosophy in life, but … well, no offence, but your problems aren’t exactly serious. Well, to you they are, but come on, Aaralynn, admit it."

Aaralynn shrugged and muttered something incoherent before finally sighing.

"All right, all right, so I exaggerate a bit," she shrugged. "That’s just who I am. And I guess if I’ve neglected your feelings I’m sorry, but I don’t really realise I’m doing it."

"Well, you do. And Aaralynn, I’m going through a really rough time right now." Yvonne sighed. "And I don’t know who to tell."

"Well, you can tell me. I mean, I’ll try my best. Perhaps I’ll be able to give some advice, or sometimes it helps to have someone to listen, and to rant to."

Yvonne smiled thinly.

"You promise you won’t tell anyone else?" Yvonne asked quietly.

"I promise," Aaralynn said firmly.

The two girls spent an hour and a half in that bathroom, and Yvonne cried, and Aaralynn cried, and they talked and talked and Aaralynn listened in shock as Yvonne finally told her all of the secrets she had been keeping to herself for so long – that she wasn’t getting on with her parents, that she thought she was useless, how her parents were thinking of divorcing, how her brother had gone off the rails and had hit the bottle, how she herself thought she couldn’t cope and couldn’t be bothered with her schoolwork anymore … Aaralynn listened in horror as her friend told her that she was thinking more and more about killing herself and how she thought she had no one to go to, and how she hated the way her life had gone from near-perfection to this horror movie all in the space of a few months, and how she felt she had been falling and no one was there to catch her.

By the time Yvonne had finished confessing all of these things, both girls were in tears and hugging one another.

"Yvonne, I had no idea!" Aaralynn gasped. "Oh my Lord, all of this time I’ve been ranting about all these stupid things and there you were, trying to fight all of this stuff by yourself … why didn’t you slap me, you silly girl?"

Yvonne managed another teary laugh.

"I don’t know, I thought if I ignored it, it might go away, but it never did … Aaralynn, I don’t know what to do anymore! You will help me, won’t you?"

"Of course I will!" Aaralynn gasped. "Yvonne … I’m really, really sorry. I never realised how caught up in my own world I was. I don’t have it bad at all, do I? Not compared to what you go through … and all this time I’ve bored you to tears talking about my stupid hair or the fact I forgot a book or perhaps – shock horror – my mother refused to do my washing even though I’m seventeen and should do it myself … those boys the other week were right. I am a spoiled drama queen. I need to sort myself out. I exaggerate way too much."

"That’s who you are, though, Aaralynn," Yvonne sniffed. "I know I can’t change you. I just want you to take notice of what’s going on around you. Oh, God, I don’t think I can go back out there. I might go home. You don’t mind, do you?"

"Yvonne," Aaralynn took a deep breath. "I don’t think you’re going to like what I’m going to say, but I think it would be best of you went to see the councillor. I mean, thinking about killing yourself is serious, and she can help with these sorts of things. I know you probably don’t feel like it, but I’m worried about you."

"No," Yvonne shook her head. "I don’t want to do that, I’ll be labelled a freak, people will think I’m nuts, I can’t, Aaralynn!"

Aaralynn’s eyes had that familiar determined glint in them.

"All right, here’s the deal," she said. "We’ll go in together. That way, if anyone sees us going in, they won’t know if it’s for me or for you. How’s that? And we’ll refuse to tell. That way, they tease both of us, or neither of us."

Yvonne looked at her friend in shock.

"You would do that for me?" she asked. Aaralynn nodded.

"I feel I owe it to you," she smiled. "I don’t want you to be by yourself anymore."

Yvonne’s bottom lip wobbled again and she flung her arms around Aaralynn.

"You really do have a good streak in you, do you know that?" she asked, and Aaralynn laughed.

"All right, let’s not get too soppy. Here, wash your face and put your eyeliner back on, it’s all smudged. We have to look our best, you know."

Yvonne laughed properly as she went to the basin and splashed water over her face, getting off the smudged eyeliner.

*

"I don’t think I’ll ever be able to thank you properly for what you did today, Aaralynn," Yvonne said, as, later that day, the two girls made their way out of school. It had been an emotionally tiring day for both of them – Yvonne, finally facing her demons, and Aaralynn, realising just how selfish she’d been.

"It's no problem at all," Aaralynn smiled. "Seriously, it’s not. You know I like a little drama." she winked, and Yvonne smiled.

"I bet it was a little epiphany of sorts, eh?"

"You could say that," Aaralynn smiled. "Here, let’s head over to that wall, can we?"

"Why?"

"I think there’s something I wanna add to it."

"You want to add to the wall?" Yvonne laughed. "Only yesterday you were saying it was lame."

"Well, I’ve changed my mind about a lot of things today." Aaralynn smiled.

Yvonne watched, interested and curious, as her friend scratched her own message onto the wall, and she smiled softly when she read what had been written.

I REGRET BEING SUCH A DRAMA QUEEN.

"Do you really?" Yvonne asked, as her friend turned to face her.

"I do. Yvonne, I’m really sorry, I truly am. I can’t believe how hard I thought my own life was and all around me people were going through such hard time, including my own best friend. I let you down, and I can’t apologise enough. I just hope that I can make it up. It was Clarissa who put the idea into my head, you know. She said to me that she thought you storming off was a cry for help, and I thank her for that. You know me, if Clarissa hadn’t put the idea into my head, I would have probably ignored you until you spoke to me again, and then we would never have started to put these problems right again. I’m so, so sorry. I just hope I can learn from this. I hope I can learn to pay attention to the people around me more, and not get caught up in my own superficial problems."

"Just the fact you’ve realised that is making it up to me, Aaralynn," Yvonne smiled, and Aaralynn returned the gesture.

"I have seen the light!" she declared dramatically, and Yvonne laughed, starting Aaralynn off.

"I know you’ll never be completely sane, Aaralynn," Yvonne giggled, and Aaralynn grinned and linked her friend’s arm though her own.

"Come on, what’s saying we go get ourselves a coffee?"

"Sounds great to me!"

They hurried off, leaving the wall behind them. Aaralynn gave it a sneaky glance as they rounded the corner, and she smiled. She hoped that this was the beginning of an awakening for lots of people, not only her. She was still shocked, knowing that if she hadn’t have accepted her faults, things with Yvonne could have gone so differently.

Aaralynn looked at her friend.

"What?" Yvonne laughed.

"Nothing," Aaralynn grinned, and they hurried out of the school grounds. Aaralynn forced herself to look at the bright side of the day – at least now, she had realised that her own life wasn’t half as bad as she had thought.

What’s not getting a new hairstyle? she thought to herself. I could have lost a best friend.