By the beginning of my eighth grade year I had developed a strong group of friends—Ginger, Abbey, Emily, and Nicole. Of course I’d had close friends before, but this was my first clique. The five of us were inseparable. Like most cliques, we did everything together. If one of us was absent from school, teachers automatically asked the others were she was, and we always knew. We went on family trips with each other and every night of the week at least one of us was at another’s house.
Like most small groups, while all five of us were friends, some of us were closer than others. Abbey and Emily, and Ginger and I, had been friends before the five of us came together, so naturally each pair was closer to one another. That left Nicole on the outs.
However, unlike some cliques, we had friends outside the five of us, friends we all knew and talked to and hung out with, and friends we each had individually. Robert Carter and I had been friends for over a year and hung out regularly. On days I had swim practice, since his house was in the same direction, he and I walked together, and he sometimes hung out at the pool while I practiced. Earlier in the year there had been talk of Robert and me going out, but he said he would never go out with me because I dressed too weird. I was ahead of the times in fashion, into alternative and punk before it became mainstream, featured in Seventeen magazine, and thus acceptable in rural America. At this time, however, Robert Carter wasn’t boyfriend material for other reasons—he was Nicole’s boyfriend.
It was sometime in November when Robert asked me to come over to his house to help him with his new computer. This was the early nineties, and for many households personal computers were a new thing. My dad had always been pretty tech savvy, so I’d grown up more experienced with these things. We were one of the only families in La Grande, where we lived until I was in the fifth grade, to own a computer. My older brother and sisters’ friends loved to come over to play Frogger and Pong. I spent many summers playing Oregon Trail and Where in the World is Carmen San Diego. My freshmen year I was introduced to the internet, and specifically remember asking my dad “What’s the World Wide Web?” which someone in an intranet (notice the intranet, not internet) chat room had asked me if I had. Thus, Robert asking me to help him set up his new computer seemed logical, since I was one of only a few students at Ontario Middle School who actually could help him, and probably the only one who was cool enough to be hanging out with Robert. As there usually is with thirteen-year-old male-female friendships, there was an underlying sexual tension between Robert and me, one which he and I openly denied and secretly encouraged. Seeing as how Nicole was not the most understanding girl in our group— really she was just plain mean, a bit of a bully—Robert and I decided it was best not to tell her we’d be spending time together without her. Robert and I made our plans for Friday, each coming up with intricate lies as to why we weren’t available that night. Robert was staying home with his brother (not entirely untrue…) and I was going with my mom to visit her friend in Adrian, another nearby small town. The problem, however, is that I forgot to let my mom in on this little scheme. That night, at about eight o’clock, my friends called my house to see if we were back yet and if I wanted to go to a movie with them. My mom told them I was over at Robert Carter’s house and why don’t they just give me a call over there. They did, and Nicole proceeded to tell me what a lying little slut I was.
Immediately realizing my mistake, both of lying and of not covering my ass, I began to apologize profusely. I started to backtrack, beginning about how our plans had changed and this just came up, but stopped, understanding that a lie was what got me into this, and it surely wouldn’t get me out. My apologies did me no good. Her insults continued until I finally just hung up and, crying, called my mom to come get me.
After giving them a day to cool off, I spent Sunday night calling all four of my friends, explaining why I did what I did and apologizing for my actions. Oh, yeah, Michelle, they each said, I understand. I would have done the same thing. Nicole can be such a bitch sometimes. Don’t worry about it. She’ll get over it. See you tomorrow. And that was it. Nicole refused to answer my call, and I intended to talk to her on Monday at school, to beg for forgiveness, to plead to her to not disregard our friendship. Everything would be fine between the five of us.
So I thought.
Monday morning I arrived at school and made my way to find my friends. They saw me coming, looked at me, and turned away. I was shunned. The girls who only hours before said we’d be friends for life ignored me. I sat alone at lunch that day.
Figuring they’d get over it again soon, I hung out with my backup friends—the group of girls I talked with in class and was friendly with at lunch, but never much more than that. Surely Ginger, Abbey, Emily, and maybe even Nicole, would come to their senses soon and we’d go back to being inseparable. But two weeks later—the equivalent of two years for a thirteen-year-old—and they still hadn’t.
About that time, things between the group and me got terribly worse. Secrets I’d confided to the girls began surfacing around the school. Most of them didn’t bother me, and I was able to blow them off, ignoring whispers or confronting them head on with a “yeah, so?” comeback. Until Nicole spread through the lunchroom the story I’d relayed to her about an afternoon I’d spent with my then boyfriend Ian Poverrelli. I told her he’d fingered me. But the truth was, it never happened. I was spending the night at Nicole’s and she and I were up late, talking. She was telling me things that she had done with her boyfriends and I felt like a prude. I exaggerated what had happened in Ian’s and my make-out session, knowing that since he had moved it would never come out that I was lying. And I trusted Nicole, as my best friend, to keep this confidential. But soon the whole school was whispering about this fake incident, and my reputation as a slut—already present because of my C-cup breasts, since in middle school a girl’s reputation is in direct relation to the size of her breasts, despite what sexual activities she may or may not have participated in—soared. But I couldn’t deny it, as people either wouldn’t believe me, or I’d be ridiculed not for being a slut, but for being such a loser that I had to lie about being one.
A week later, I was sitting in pre-algebra, waiting for class to start, watching my ex-best friends outside the door talking to Robert. The bell rang and they scattered. Garrett , Abbey’s boyfriend, came in to class and sat next to me. Garrett had a mind of his own, and continued to talk to me despite warnings and derogatory comments from his girlfriend. What was that all about, I asked. Apparently Nicole, although still unwilling to forgive me and still declaring what a slut I was every time she saw me in the halls, had forgiven Robert for his indiscretion—despite him never apologizing or asking for forgiveness, as I had—and asked if he would go back out with her. He said no, that he’d wanted to break up with her before any of this ever even happened to but didn’t know how.
You have got to be fucking kidding me. You’ll forgive him, but not me.
It was then that I had my first epiphany. Why would I want to be friends with someone who would drop one of her best friends for a guy? Why would I want to be friends with people who would betray your trust and friendship because they were scared of another one of their so-called friends? These are not the kind of people I want to associate with. The girls I had been hanging out with for the past couple weeks had been better friends than the others had ever been. They didn’t judge me because of one mistake I made. They supported me, even knowing that if the other girls ever did forgive me, I’d drop them just as fast as I’d been dropped.
That day, I got over my old friends—but they didn’t get over me. They continued to spread rumors about me. They continued to harass me in the halls. As much as they claimed to not like me, it seemed that I consumed a lot of their thoughts and time. After Nicole asked Robert back out, I discarded them completely. They, however it seemed, continued to care about me. They topped it all off my making me a note and putting it in my locker, which of course they knew the combination to.
The note was written on yellow legal paper. One side consisted of a collection of magazine cut-outs of big boobs. The other side consisted of a collection of magazine cut-outs of big butts. In large letters, it read “Michelle has a BIG BUBBLE BUTT.”
Yes, it’s true: I have a bubble butt. I always have. I still do. It was no surprise to me to be told that I had a large ass and huge tits. And just as I still do now, I liked it. But these girls thought that I was either unaware or ashamed of my curves. I showed the note to my new friends, who laughed with me at both the creativity of the note, its truth, and the fact that these girls had nothing better to do with their time than make fun of me.
By March they began talking to me again. There was no formal apology or forgiveness, just a gradual decrease in harassing, followed by a gradual acknowledgement of my existence as a person. I feigned interest, but had not real desire to rekindle a true friendship. Eventually the four split up. Nicole was pregnant by our junior year. Abbey and Emily both graduated early so as to be able to move in with their much older boyfriends, and rumor has it, divorce a few years later. Ginger got out while the getting was good, eventually joining me and my new group of friends. And this new group, Ginger included, has been friends ever since—even seventeen years later.
LESSON LEARNED: 1) Do not lie. It will eventually come back to haunt you. 2) Your true friends will always be your friends—no matter how bad you mess up, and no matter who else may or may not be your friend.
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