The Dog Days of Summer

5

I'm 16. 

Soccer season, the best part of the year. Around this time I wasn't as bored anymore and I stopped talking to boys. I was just busy with practices and games. Running across the field in all my sweat and glory was beyond better than having a boy tell me that I'm beautiful. 

By second quarter of sophomore year, Loverboy just disappeared. I didn't even notice until someone mentioned him. It was like he fell off the face of the earth, I've never seen him since. And I was too afraid to ask of his whereabouts, I didn't want to look like I missed him because I didn't. I felt nothing for him. I just thought it was crazy. He once was so important to me and now he's nonexistent. Dead.

Last I heard he got a girlfriend, a girl that used to hit on him when we were together. They deserve each other, really, they're both horny potheads. But I hope he's treating her good because I took one for the team.

 I liked my life. I made the varsity soccer team for the second time, I was getting good grades, I attended nursing classes and seminars. Everything was really great and it couldn't have gotten better.

But in my story, it's a sin to stay too happy. 

I had a soccer teammate who was friends with this boy, I really only talked to him because of her. We hung out with him whenever we saw him, I thought he was pretty cool. I thought he was a good friend.

But he spread a rumor about me, telling people that he had my  nudes on his  phone. 

I've never even taken nude photos before in my life. I don't even have anything to flaunt and no boy will ever convince me to do so.

I found out through another friend who heard about the rumor. I wasn't worried at first, maybe she misheard or maybe he was talking about another girl with the same name as me.

Yet I asked my close friend if she knew, to which she hesitantly replied with a "yes." I asked her why she kept it from me, considering the fact that I trusted her completely, and she simply said it was sworn secrecy.

What in the actual fuck. 

How could she keep my own rumor from me? I considered her to be my best friend, mainly because she was my only  friend. But I had lost respect for her. All the memories from the years that we were friends had been obliterated in a matter of seconds. 

I remember just awkwardly and quietly staring at her on the bus on our way home from a soccer game that we had just lost. She kept asking me if I was okay, telling me that she was going to confront him the next day. But it was too late. It didn't even matter anymore. She should've done something from the start if she really cared and if she was really my friend then she would've told me sooner, not wait two months for me to ask about it.

All I could think of was how in that very moment I realized how the most genuine people can utterly turn out to be the most deceitful. I was immensely devasted because I would've never kept something like that from her. But there was nothing I could have done to avoid this situation, it was solely God revealing my enemies to me. 

In the end, I got the last laugh because the same dude that spread the rumors about me did the same thing to her. The difference was she actually had nudes and I didn't.

Lesson 12  : Trust no one, you are your own hero.