[we'll stand forever this way]

[2005-04-09] - [12:49 p.m.]

[is this my life i'm wondering...]

[I stood alone in the playground that day, my first day at school. I was half excited I suppose, half wondering what it would be like. There were lots of children; they all looked the same to me. I walked inside, gazing around at the brightly colored walls in amazement. I smiled at a few of the other children, and continued what seemed like a very long walk to my first ever classroom. The teacher, a young woman, smiled encouragingly at me and told me to sit down next to another girl. The other girl grinned cheerfully at me, and gave me a few words of welcome.
‘Hi,’ she said. ‘I’m Rosa.’
‘Hi,’ I said back, grinning like she did and hoping I looked okay. ‘I’m Amelia.’
And that was how it began, my first solid friendship with someone who didn’t live in the crummy estate where I did. We were just kids, only five years old, yet both of us knew we had to fit in. Rosa had no trouble fitting in; she got on with everyone in the year! I had more trouble, choosing my friends selectively but still, we both managed okay. It’s not so hard in reception to fit in okay; you don’t need fashionable clothes or expensive make up to be with the in crowd. You don’t need a boy surgically attached to your mouth to be a popular girl; it’s simpler.
We, Rosa and I, stayed firm friend throughout infant school, and then continued our strong friendship into juniors. Yet as we got older, so things began to change and slowly the group of kids that would become the high school popular ones became clear. And I wasn’t included. Rosa was, she was the perfect addition to their group. Of course, she insisted I came with her. If I wasn’t allowed then she couldn’t be part of their group. So they let me in for a short while, I sat at their table at lunch and talked to them a bit because they didn’t want to be without Rosa in their group. She was the funny, clever comedian of their group. She was a ‘boff’ yet she still managed to laugh and joke like the rest of them. I wouldn’t say I was ever jealous of my Rosa, but she always seemed so perfect to me. It seemed unfair that I was doomed to be part of the outcast children, but she was to be one of that lot, the ones who would be in top set yet never appear to do any work. I knew she worked hard, but she was good at pretending not to do anything.
‘Melia, can I talk to you?’ she asked of me one day, when we sat on the grass near the playground.
For once we were alone, on the fringes of her normal hanging out with group. By this stage both of us were in year six, and it was an important year for deciding who was cool and who wasn’t. I was so desperately hoping I’d be cool because of the tie with Rosa.
‘Sure,’ I replied casually.
‘We haven’t seen so much of each other recently,’ she began, and I detected a hint of her confidence slipping but my heart still rose, hoping she would say we needed to catch up. I was sorely mistaken. ‘I think we’re drifting apart Amelia, I think we should just call it a day before we both get hurt.’
I wasn’t a violent person, but at that moment I could have thumped the girl I thought was my best friend into the middle of next year! I had already got hurt, I’d become the unwanted accessory of the crowd, and now they were ditching me like last months earrings. I knew it was over, high school was never easy anyway and now I would be the victim of their taunts and chants. I opened my mouth to protest, but my Rosa had gone, back to the crowd that wanted her.
And so that was it. One best friend got to go with the popular girls; the other was left on the edges, alone and friendless. And here I am now, in the middle of a group of girls all chanting and screaming at me. Through the crowd I see the face of my Rosa, the girl I used to call my best friend. Her eyes bear a hint of regret, and for a split second I think she’s going to get me, take me away from all this but she looks away again and I can’t meet her eyes again. I look around; how did my life turn out like this? Is this my life, the life already chosen for me? Why was it me in the center, why not her? I’m wondering…
]

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