BULLIED 2

Submission 1174

When I was in seventh grade, I was really close to these three other girls. However, one of them, Girl 1, could be a little arrogant and rude sometimes. You could tell she thought the world revolved around her. The other two girls, Girl 2, my friend who was heavily bullied, and Girl 3, the friend who would end up being my best friend, had warned me before that I shouldn't get close to her. However, I ignored their warnings and became very, very close to Girl 1.

When she wasn't being mean, Girl 1 was funny, extremely nice, and a girl who had common interests with me. However, there were some days she would lash out at anything you said. I began wearing makeup in seventh grade and I remember her telling me that 'only people with no self-esteem wear makeup.' That hurt a lot.

As most seventh grade girls do, i *liked* somebody, and all three of my friends were very well-informed on that topic. Girl 1, however, had made it very clear that she did not like boys in that way. Isn't ironic that a month after it all happened, she suddenly had a crush?

One day, when our lunch seats had been flipped, our lunch table was directly behind the person I liked. He could not know that I liked him, because that would be the end of the world for me.

That's when my friend decided to loudly talk about him.

Knowing that he sat right behind me, she began to make fun of him. Not only was this bullying him, but she was also sharing my secret with everybody at the table. I saw the *popular* girls heads swivel to see me, my face bright red. Somehow, he didn't hear, but that's probably because I told Girl one to 'shut up.'

This was not the first time she had done that, so I confronted her back in the classroom. Since I sat next to her (assigned seats; it got really awkward when we were fighting) and my crush was in a different grade, it wasn't hard.

She told me she could say whatever she wanted, and then she proceeded to tell my two table mates about who I liked.

I knew she had done these sort of things before. She had talked about me behind my back to whoever would listen. She had called me names and even punched or shoved me really hard (in a playful manner) one too many times. And yet, I has still chosen to be her friend.

It wasn't just me. Friend 3, the one who's so close to me now, was pretty much the nicest person I've ever met. I've never heard her say something bad about a person. Even though she wanted to, she never stood up to Friend 1. However, Friend 1 still found a way to make fun of her. If she answered a single question in class, she was a know-it-all. If she stood next to one of her other friends during a conversation, she was a follower. Friend 3 wasn't popular, but nobody hated her (excluding Friend 1). She was pretty, too, and I sensed that Friend 1 was really just jealous.

As I remembered everything Friend 1 had said or done over the past year. She had said, and I quote, 'I can say whatever I want.' That's actually what she said.

I told her, politely, that I didn't have to be her friend. I could just be friends with Friend 2 and 3, and that she didn't have to be in the picture. I also told her that if she couldn't respect our secrets, then that's a perfectly logical reason not to be friends with her.

That's when she went off on me. She accused me of being bossy, arrogant, rude, obsessed with my phone (how that fit into our argument, I'll never know), and every other mean word you could think of. By this point, the class had grown very silent, and I felt quite exposed. I repeated my statement then turned away, almost in tears.

Friend 3, who rode the same bus as Friend 1, sent me a video that afternoon. It was of Friend 1 on the bus talking about what had happened. When she recounted the story, the boy who she had screamed to the cafeteria about was seven tables away when he was probably about two feet behind her.

She also told her friend that I make her so mad, and that I screamed at her 'I don't want to be your friend!' I felt hurt, because I had thought I was being calm and polite until this turned out not to be the case.

Who was the friend she was talking to, though? Well, for one, it wasn't even a friend. It was an eighth grader who seemed to be more interested in the window than her issues.

She had told him all of my secrets, too.

I wasn't sure what to do at this point, since she didn't have a phone and I couldn't text her. Instead, I confided in Friends 2 and 3, along with my other friend, Friend 4. They all told me that they planned to ignore her.

This all happened on a Thursday, and since we didn't have school Friday, I wasn't sure what to expect that Monday. I didn't have to know, however, because I got sick and missed that day. I can't remember if it was an actual sickness or if I were faking it out of fear.

I kept in touch with my three friends. Friend 4, who didn't sit with us at lunch (she was arguably my most popular friend), told me that Friend 1 had called me boy-crazy to her entire church group, which consisted of other seventh graders. She also called me a lesbian. How those two things fit together I'm not sure. I was upset.

Come Tuesday, and she's decided that we're all best friends again. Us three, however, have a different idea in mind. We isolated her the entire lunch, so she spent it talking to herself. When needed, we'd give her terse responses.

In last period, she came up and hugged me (I do not like hugs) and apologized for what she did. It sounded the opposite of genuine, though, but it was one of the rare moments where she was being nice, so I accepted.

While nothing drastic has happened with Friend 1 yet, she did stop sitting with us because we didn't pay enough attention to her. She also ignored us for two weeks before coming back.

I'll be friends with her until she does something rude. When that happens, I'm not coming back. However, she seems to have hit a streak in niceness (besides talking horribly about Friend 4 behind her back), so I guess I'll be nice even if she doesn't deserve it, too.

It's going to happen again, of course.