Fake Friends Forever

Two plus one equals three

My name is Harry. I will be telling the story of the friend group we have. We were all happy friends. The friend group had four boys and one girl. Kendall was the only girl in our group. My friends used to ship us together. I never felt comfortable about it. I always found her to be a good friend. Then came Mark, who was the smartest in our group. I met him when I first came to the town; perhaps he was the first person I met when I came to Beverly Hills. Then there was Tom, who came later to the town. Around the third grade. We instantly bonded somehow. It's like Tom and I understood each other. Then there was Tommy. Tommy has to be my oldest friend; since he was my oldest friend, we have been compared since childhood: "Tommy got better grades", "Harry is a good boy", "Tommy is a bad boy", "Harry is dumb", "Tommy is smart and cunning". People liked to compare us for reasons I don't even know. We were both yin and yang to each other. He was the rebellious one, and I was the good boy. He used to bully kids. I was always kind; he used cuss words as a kid, which I did later as a teen. He never listened to his parents. But I did. He and I came to this town together. Something changed with him. We were best friends, and we understood each other a lot. But something changed. I used to know everything about him, down to the details of what he liked and what he hated. Now all I know is that he likes everyone and hates me. He used to like Barbie dolls and Disney princesses with me. Now he denies all that. He can't stand me. He looks at me like I am an embarrassing thing that he has to constantly take along with him. As a kid, I never thought about it like that because he was nice sometimes. Like really nice. There were times he stood up for me when someone was bullying me. So I stayed with him. We moved to Beverly Hills, and navigating life there was hard. Then I met Mark; he was very smart and clingy. Did I mention he was smart? He used to get an 'A' in every subject and every test. Everybody hoped he was going to some Ivy League college. He was excited and energetic. mostly unapologetic. I always liked his smarts. But just like every nerd I met in my life, he was annoying. Tommy used to point out how he moved his tongue or raised his voice. Tommy pointed stiffly at him, which I never noticed. "Mark's belt was so high he looks like a cartoon character," he said, or "Mark's glasses were too thick for the normal child". This thing made us respect him even more. He pointed stuff at me too. My hair was long like girls; how I used to laugh; how funny it was for my lack of knowledge; how weird that I am always happy; how I used to cry like girls. I did indeed cry a lot. I used to cry so much that there were black lines on my cheeks. I noticed as a kid that if I cried, people would give me whatever I wanted. So I cried a lot, and sometimes I used to pretend just to get sympathy or attention. I loved that attention. When I was a toddler, I was called the cutest boy ever. They used to squeeze my cheeks, and I loved it. There was the point I kind of expected from anyone. I used to eat more so that I could get fatter and cuter. Tommy never got that. He was never jealous of me, at least that's what he says to me. He was the one with endless friends; he was the one who had a wonderful dad; and he was the one with all the money in the world. Was I jealous? Well, it's hard not to be. But he makes sure that we know he is rich. He used to point out how poor I was compared to him. I wasted money, but compared to his flashy wealth, I did look poor. My parents always assured me that I was kind, cute, and obedient. He wasn't jealous of me. Or was he?