When We Were Us

Friends

I'm a self-proclaimed nerd. I'm good in school, I write fanfiction of my favorite fantasy books as a hobby, I'd rather spend my nights re-reading Harry Potter for the umpteenth time than hanging out with friends. My best friends used to be like me but they've changed since college. For example, whenever I'm in town they drag me to bars and clubs  instead of our traditional movie marathon nights. Dora, who used to swap fantasy books with me, barely reads anymore. Amy, who used to get the best grades out of all of us, is now more interested in boys than studying. And we barely get to see Savannah, the only one of us who decided not to go to college, because she's busy working two jobs and looking after her siblings. How things change.

Admittedly I've changed too. I'm not the homebody that I used to be. College has forced me to socialize and I have new friends now. Angela, my roommate, has been a huge factor in the way I've changed. We didn't get along at first. She was a total party girl. She had boys in and out of our room (it was against the rules! I used to get panic attacks every time she did that). I could have sworn she had at least three boyfriends at once. She never studied and would come home drunk and late every day. By our second semester, she was on the brink of getting suspended. Honestly speaking, I used to be too scared to say anything to her. I even kept quiet the time I came back from the library to find her making-out with a boy on my bed. My strategy with dealing with her was to just pretend she didn't exist. The changing point was the time she came up in a conversation with my study buddies. I was shocked to discover that she didn't have any friends, at least not any female friends. She was a pariah among the girls. I had always thought that she was popular. Apparently the girls didn't approve of her behavior when it came to boys. At first I remained silent. But then they started saying the nastiest things about her while swapping gossip of who she did when and where. Slut, ho, bitch. They were only the beginning. One girl called her the World Cup but "instead of four years, she goes from boy to boy every four days!" That was the last straw. I stood up and shouted at them. I told them how it was double standards.

"You guys gush over Jake and Josh and whoever and you don't even blink or call them names when they go from girl to girl as if they were told girls are running out. It's her body, she can do whatever she wants!" I yelled and stormed off. After that I started to look at Angela in a different eye. The first chance I got, I offered to help her study for her make-up exams. She looked flustered. Surprisingly, she accepted. We started studying together and getting to know each other. She told me how her family lived abroad and how she's been on her own since she was sixteen years old. I was surprised to find out that she was an excellent cook. I discovered that although she was majoring in English, her secret dream was to be an artist.

Thankfully Angela made it through that year and she's been managing to get by with my help ever since. However, Just as I changed her, she's changed me. She was the one who took me to my first party. She gave me my first beer, my first cigarette (hated it, still do) and made me try things I never thought I'd try. She also tried to get me to try pot but I had to draw a line somewhere.

Basically, Angela has gotten me to try a lot of things. Inevitably, she was also the one who finally got Finn and me together.