Stone

A few months after Brad left, my friends started forcing me to go to parties. They had started going almost every other weekend and had deemed it time that I tag along. Their definition of "tag along" was dressing me up, putting cups of beer in my hand, and sitting me down with whatever boy they thought was "perfect" for me.

They were usually wrong.

The boys were always "hot" or "sporty" or "mysterious." They were never interesting, particularly polite, nice, or considerate. Sweaty hands and hot fingers grabbed my arms and rubbed across my knees countless times. My face was sprayed with hot, beer-tinged breath. Smoke stung my eyes. More than half of them got my name wrong.

I wasn't comparing them anymore.

I just didn't want to be around them. Not a single one.

When my friends began to realize that the party approach wasn't working for me, they started pushing me toward the opposite sex in more subdued settings.

In lab, Kelsey said I should pair up with Jeremy because her boyfriend at the time was extremely possessive and he wouldn't get upset if she partnered with Lauren. Then Lauren invited him to study sessions at her house before midterms, making us sit next to one another on the sofa. Alexis told him that he should come with us to get pizza after the last midterm, then cancelled and insisted we go without her and her beau instead.

Jeremy asked me out after Christmas. I told him I'd think about it. Brad had left in April. Kelsey, Lauren and Alexis all told me to go for it. I told him yes three days later. He kissed me on our first date. It was sloppy.

We dated for months. He turned out to be a decent boy. He liked making out and watching sports on television, not necessarily in that order. We went to junior prom together. He wanted to have sex afterwards. I said no and went home. He dumped me the next morning.

After that, the girls didn't push me that hard. For the first few weeks. But then it was summer.

They determined that the three weeks from prom to June was enough time to get over Jeremy, when in reality I'd never been into it at all. I didn't need three weeks. I didn't need a day. I couldn't even spell his last name come the Monday after it happened. He was just a ghost to me.

We went to the beach at least three times a week. We partied every weekend. All of us were single except Lauren, who's boyfriend was already off at Georgetown, where "what he didn't know wouldn't hurt him." We laid out tanning. We shopped for new summer clothes. We ate ice cream and pizza for every meal and ran in the mornings to work it off.

We did stuff like that almost every summer. Not as frequently as that summer, the summer before senior year, but we had always been inseparable during the summer months. It had never bothered me before. However, that summer I faked sick from sun exposure three times. I couldn't breathe anymore. I felt suffocated by all of them. I would come home from the beach with sand in my shorts or a top I really didn't need in my shopping bag, and feel like they were still there. Lauren's giant blond curls pressed to my mouth, Alexis's pink nail polished fingers grabbing onto my arm to pull me this way and that, Kelsey's laugh clouding my brain and making it hard to think. They were everywhere.

They were too much.

When school started, I was able to separate myself more without their hasty concern. I got a job as a cashier at the Walgreens in town. They visited me sometimes after school. They bought bubble gum and soda, laughing too loudly when they spoke with me. Once, Kelsey's new boyfriend came in and bought condoms. I told her about it later. She just smiled.

When I was able to hang out, which I wanted to do on occasions, I began to feel like I was being pushed out. They'd make plans and then cancel last minute. I was left out of the loop of communication. It wasn't KLAK (Kelsey-Lauren-Alexis-Kaylin) anymore. I mentioned it one weekend, to Alexis, when both Kelsey and Lauren had cancelled. She told me to stop worrying, that we were all just busy now, and hey, why don't we go get an ice cream?

I figured she was right. I was working. Lauren was in the school play. Kelsey had a boyfriend who she was devoted to (sexually) and Alexis... well, she was Alexis. We were all busy. Besides, we wouldn't all be together this time next year, either. Might as well get used to it.

Alexis told the other girls.

Kelsey came into Walgreens. She bought bubble gum, a sixteen ounce Mountain Dew, and a box of condoms. I checked her out, sliding everything into a bag before I had time to think about its contents. She was talking to me.

"So, I'd invite you out tonight, but you have to work right?"

"No," I said, because I didn't have to work. I pressed a button on the register and told her her total. "I'm free actually, what are we doing?"

"Oh," she said, handing me a bill. "Nothing," she frowned. "I'm hanging out with the boo tonight, actually."

"Oh, okay," I said, trying not to think about the box in her bag. I handed her back her change and her bag. "Well, um, I guess. Have a good time!" She nodded, taking a second to wink back.

I offered to cover someone else's shift that night, since I had nothing to do at home. I wouldn't get off until eleven. About ten thirty, they rolled in.

They didn't see me. They grabbed a cart, rolled it through the aisles, back to the frozen section and through the candy aisle. I was the only cashier. They seemed surprised to see me.

"I thought we weren't hanging out tonight," I said, starting to scan the Snickers and Twix they'd piled onto my counter. "I told you I wasn't working, Kels."

She looked at the other girls. "We're hanging out, but not with you, Kay."

It took me a second. They were quiet. The scanner beeped as the candy bar in my hand's bar code was read by the red light reader.

"Excuse me?"

"We, just... you've been really busy and couldn't hang out, so we started doing things without you. Then you just expect to get back into things after blowing us off... that's not fair, Kaylin."

"I have a job, Alexis. I kind of have to come and do what I'm supposed to. It's not optional, like you seem to think school is."

"See, that's just not fair to say! We were only ever good to you and now you're being a brat."

I bit my lip. I finished scanning their items. I had nothing nice to say. I took their money, handed Lauren the change without touching her, and wished them a good night. Maybe they would grow up and apologize to me. Maybe they wouldn't. I could care less.

When I was driving home, I turned the radio on louder than I ever had before and I screamed. Betrayal. I had simply given myself space from them for just a few nights a week and I was repaid with the harshest of slaps. We had grown up together. We had promised to not let ourselves get carried away like girls did in other friendships; we were civil, we were kind, we were understanding. We were. They aren't, anymore.

At school, I learned that rumor had spread that the three of them weren't speaking to me. Which wasn't much of a rumor, seeing as it was one hundred percent true. The next few rumors that followed were false.

Apparently, I had hit on Kelsey's boyfriend when he was at the Walgreens purchasing rubbers. I had come on to him and said something along the lines of if he needed time emptying that box while Kels was away, I could help him with it. I had told Alexis that I was getting tired of hanging out with Kelsey and Lauren. Oh, and I ran over Lauren's dog. Which, in my opinion, might have been the worst of the rumors - I loved dogs! Especially Lauren's, which I noticed was alive and barking in her backyard.

Just like that, I was a bad-friend, boyfriend-stealing, dog-killer.

What hurt the most was that they never said a word about it. I never once heard them say that it was true, or that it wasn't, or how they felt. They just let it circulate for weeks on end. They let our friendships fizzle out faster than a firecracker. I could care less about the rumors - I knew they weren't true. I just wanted one of them to own up to it, somehow. They never did.

I graduated best friendless.