3TS: The Chances of Starting Again

Broken Friendship

Hey. Hello? I'm talking to you! What happened to you? You're not responding to my texts. My calls. Wait...are you ignoring me right now? ...What happened between us?

"Arlene?" I called, and my voice echoed down the large room.

Most girls were still eating, or texting with their friends at the lunch table, or even chatting their best friends. But my best friend was nowhere to be seen. So I had to find her. She wasn't in the classroom. She wasn't in the cafeteria. She wasn't in the library.

If she wasn't in any of those places, I only knew one more place. The place that she went to if she wasn't feeling good.

"Arlene?" I said as I knocked on a locked stall. A girl came out of the stall (looking at me like I was crazy) down the aisle, with the flushing of a toilet heard through the girl's bathroom.

I heard a soft sniff near the last stall.

I opened it up gently to see Arlene. She was sitting on the floor in the stall, looking at school notes behind a curtain of messy hair.

"Arlene..." I whispered.

She looked up at me, wiping away something at her eye. Was it tears?

"Are you...okay?" I asked softly. Something was odd. And it wasn't like she was sick this time. It was like...Like looking into the unknown and just feeling like something bad was going to happen if you stepped into it without a cautious plan.

"Yeah, I'm fine." She said over a small smile. "Tired. I'm just...tired." She said as she closed her eyes for a moment before picking herself up from the floor.

She slung her backpack over her shoulder, and with a single wave, exited the bathroom.

I could tell there was something going on, Journal. Something far deeper than her "tiredness".

**

It was only three weeks later (after she went absent from school for one week without telling me why) that I wanted to really REALLY know what was going on with my friend.

We were sitting on the bench outside the school entrance again. I insisted, to try and let her spirits rise again. "Woah, look at this guy, I think he's got the confidence." I laughed as I glanced at a boy who passed, the game me and Arlene played together when we sat there. But she didn't even look up from her phone.

"He's not worth it." She said softly, as if I couldn't hear her.

"Okay, what's the deal?" I said loudly. I just had enough, Journal. She wasn't responding to text, to my calls, even when I was staring at her in person.

"What?" She glanced up at me, surprised by my fierceness.

"You aren't responding to my texts." I said looking her in the eye.

She turns back quickly back to her phone, "I've been busy with school. You know how hard exams are."

"Exams are not until next month. And you haven't responded to me when I call you. When I chat you. Even when I'm talking to you! You used to talk to me ALL the time. You used to keep chatting on and on. So, let me ask you again, what's the deal?" I ask, pushing away her phone from her face.

She looks up at me with the blankest face I have ever seen. It was as if the life was sucked out of her. And I was scared.

"I'm tired, Krissa. Just tired." She says with a sigh.

"Tired?" It was like water was coming to a boil inside of me. "Tired of what?!" I shouted a loud. A few students, passing by us, glanced my way.

"I'm tired of hearing everyone talk about you...and him." She whispers loudly, her face twisted in anger. Her words slicing at me as fast as a sword. "I'm tired of hearing people around me talking about Trent and my friend out on the dance floor. They are having more than just a regular dance."

It was as if my boiling water had just been dunked with ice cold water. I could reflect now that Arlene was sitting at the sidelines, most of the time during the New Year's dance. And at that time, I didn't even notice her.

She continued in her heated manner, raising her voice slightly, "I'm tired of seeing you fall for him, without even telling me. I'm tired of thinking that..." Here, she paused and then whispered, "that...he might like you back. And now, I'm just tired of getting chats of the latest gossip online that he wants to pick you for his date to the Valentines Ball!" She shouted her last few words, and a few students turned to look at us.

We were silent as the students moved away. And after they were gone, we were just silent.

But then she broke the bubble, whispering again, "So now you know what I mean when I say I'm tired." She stood up, slinging her backpack over her shoulder, "So now you know...what I'm feeling right now."

Without another word, she turned and left.

And I was left to feel the aftershock of four blinding statements:

She knew that I liked him.

She thought he liked me.

She was jealous of me.

She was mad at me.

And then, I almost broke down at my last thought:

Did I just break our friendship?