***tangle

The first day I met him, I knew he had a girlfriend. Everyone knew they were together because it was obvious. They were cute together and everyone kept gushing about it. What can I say? They really were an adorable couple. A trumpet and a color-guard; they just fit together for some reason. But the knowledge of him having a girlfriend didn’t stop me from developing a tiny crush on him.

It wasn’t a very prominent crush; it was more like he was someone I would date if the chance ever came up. He had a great personality and he was pretty adorable himself. But I was two months away from 17 and he was only 14, so I never put much more thought into it.

My friend Justina had the same outlook as me on dating him. He said something hilarious one day on the practice marching field and she turned to me and said, “Oh, if only he was single.” But of course, she was nearly 18, so it would have been an even larger age gap.

He just had that kind of personality; that captivating, effervescent personality that just draws people in and makes them want to be his friend. And that’s what happened; we all became good friends with him. And because of that, we got to know his girlfriend really well too.

She was a hard character to pin. Usually I'm fairly good at reading people and being able to tell what they’re all about. For some reason, I couldn’t quite fix a certain personality to her. At first I thought she was a stuck up bitch; she had that look about her. But then other gaurdies told me that she’s really nice, so my assumptions were shot down. Even then, I had a slight feeling that she wasn’t all she seemed to be.

It came to be the end of summer practices and close to the beginning of the school year. Many band social events came up; each one, he went to. Everyone seemed to ask him where she was. His excuse every time was that her parents are assholes and don’t like her doing anything that she isn’t required to do. It was a believable story, yes, but I just couldn’t bring myself to actually believe it, for some reason.

There were things about her that I just did not believe. Things about her that I just could not figure out. Things that made me think she didn’t deserve a guy like him. That she didn’t deserve him. But who was I to comment on their relationship when I've known them for less than two months?

Of course, I wasn’t the only one that thought something was up with the girl. Tara agreed with me completely when I said it seems like she changes when she’s with him. She even said that he changes her for the better, but only when they are together.

Something was fishy in that relationship, and I wasn’t the only one catching on to it. Although, within the next few months, people would start thinking that I was the ‘something fishy’ and that I caused their relationship to go downhill.

What none of them know is that I only followed what he started. I was the final straw that broke the back of their relationship’s camel. But that camel was limping before I was introduced to it.