We'd been fighting. We only fought about one thing, the same thing, over and over. A person would think that after years of the same fight one of us would give in but I think we were both too stubborn. The fight was always the same. We'd yell and scream then one of us would storm off and an hour later we'd be on talking on the phone like nothing had happened. We never actually talked about the fight or our feelings. Maybe if we had things would be different but that's a pointless line of thought. This fight, though, had been different. It had been worse.
It started two weeks ago on an ordinary, bright and sunny Sunday afternoon. Sunday was our day. We did nothing more than hang out and just have fun because it was the only day we did anything like that. The rest of the week Mackie would hang out with the Barbies and ignore me. The weekends were ours though, well Saturday nights and Sunday afternoons anyway. Our parents didn't understand her behavior and often lectured her on being a good friend. Mackie and I had been friends forever. I can't remember a time when we weren't attached at the hip. We'd both suffered in middle school. Mackie for being a bit chubby and me for being me.
The summer before freshman year changed things, for both of us. Mackie made a transformation. By the time we started high school, she'd grown six inches and lost 50 pounds. Her braces had come off, she managed to talk her parents into contacts, her previously acne prone skin had cleared and her once thin, limp strands of blonde hair had gained life and body. In short, the ugly duckling became a swan. The only thing I had managed was to find my way to six foot tall. People, especially guys, noticed her. Day one of freshman year, the Barbies noticed her. By lunch, they'd made her part of their circle. By the end of the day, they'd made making my life miserable their special project.
The first time they attacked me, I was shocked. They were tiny little cheerleaders and while I was lanky rather than muscular, I was still a six foot tall guy. The clang of my head meeting my locker when I was suddenly shoved into it from behind echoed even over the cacophony of teenagers in the hall. I'd spun on my heel, ready to fight back, when my eyes landed on Mackie. She was standing just behind the barbies, shifting from foot to foot, fiddling with the hem of her shirt, her eyes fixed firmly on the crappy linoleum floor. My shock froze me long enough to allow a couple large guys from the football team to get a firm hold on my arms. There was no way to fight back after that. Over time, I quit trying to.
I'll admit that at first, I was hurt. Why would my best friend turn her back on me? Why wouldn't she acknowledge me? Why would she let her new friends hurl nasty words and harsh fists at me? Why didn't she stop them? At least she hadn't joined them. I took a small comfort in that, but not enough of one to not snarl at her when she tried to help me off the floor her new friends had knocked me to.
"Go away Mackynzie," My words were clipped and sharp. From the quick intake of breath, my intentional use of her full name had hit its mark. I had never called her anything but Mackie. I wouldn't look at her, so I had no idea what she might have been thinking or doing as she stood there. After a minute, I heard her footfalls echo away down the hall.
I'd trudged home with the events of the day going around and around, riding the Ferris wheel in my brain. By the time Mackie called, about an hour after I'd flopped across my multi neon bed, I'd forgiven her and understood her reasons.
"I'm sorry, Grey. I know I shouldn't have let them but I –"
"I get it," I interrupted her, "No big deal, Okay?" I didn't want to talk it out or relive what happened. I just wanted to forget it.
"Okay," The relief in her voice mirrored my own, "Just...I'm not going to abandon you. I just have to figure out to make everything work," She said. We'd left any talk of what happened there and spent the remainder of the call comparing classes and teachers and other first day stuff. Eventually she did figure it out. She told her friends that Saturday evenings and Sunday afternoons were family time and her parents were very strict about it. Stupid bimbos believed her.
That was how it went, the way things were. For the most part, I was alone at school. I guess everyone else was wrapped up in their own dramas or too busy to notice mine. Mackie's friends were relentless in their torment of me and she ignored it, and me. I began trying to make myself a part of the background, in the hopes of avoiding whatever fresh and inventive thing they'd come up with to use against me that day. The longer it went on, the more insults and jeers they threw at me, the more I drew into myself. I pushed away the few friends I had managed to make since the start of school. I didn't talk to anyone, didn't bother to participate in classes. School became a personal hell for me. Then Saturday would come, and Sunday and I'd feel like myself again. I would feel like just an ordinary teenage boy, hanging out with his best friend, playing video games and watching bad zombie movies until our eyes felt like they were bleeding. If we were particularly restless, we'd shoot some hoops or grab her football and tackle each other in the backyard. One Christmas, her parents had gotten us both these huge Nerf guns with glow in the dark darts. We'd spent every Saturday night for the next two months, hunting each other down in her backyard. It was far from perfect but we made it work.
Of course, eventually it would happen. I would make a snarky comment about her ditzy friends or she'd start asking questions about the change in me at school. We'd get defensive, which would eventually dissolve into us screaming at each other and my storming home. The call I'd get an hour later would practically be a copy of the first one. It didn't matter how many times we fought, pointlessly, Mackie never failed to call me.
W
