Heres the tea, sis

Aria & Tayla

I feel like these two stories need to be told together. Although it is two different people and two different events they were so close together and interconnected that I felt like they had to be put into one.

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As you already know, Aria and I were best friends. We did everything together, told each other everything, we were inseparable. At one point a new girl came to our school, Tayla. Tayla was a firecracker. She was unexplainably loud with everything she did. Her voice would carry over everyone else's, her style was bold and dark, her overall presence was over the top. It was almost impossible not to be drawn to her. She had this insane energy as well. She would break all the rules with no apologies and do anything to protect herself and those that she loved. Tayla was always a few steps ahead of everyone. Whether it was drinking before everyone else started, having sex before everyone else or trying drugs before we even knew what they were. Her rebellious side attracted people towards her. Her no fuxks energy was refreshing from all the uptight private school girls I was used to an we became good friends.

Most mornings in year 8 we spent talking about the recent boy she had been with and what the weekend had been like. I pretty much lived through her. Enjoying that I could feel like I was involved even if I wasn't. 

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Year 9

Tayla eventually became the self-appointed leader of our group. She dictated pretty much everything. It got to the point that she would tell people they had to leave our group because they were annoying her. It was brutal. I'm not at all saying it was her doing this alone, we all helped, but I think our participation was more out of fear that if we didn't conform to what she wanted, the same would happen to us.

Tayla and I had our fair share of clashes but we always spoke them out and agreed to disagree on many things. One key time was when she was caught shop lifting makeup and clothes from out local shopping center. Aria and I felt very uncomfortable after this. Underage drinking is one thing but when someone steals something that is a completely different story. We fought for days over it, trying to get her to understand why it made us feel uncomfortable and her trying to explain that stealing had no reflection on our friendship. In the end we just ignored it. We all moved along, but it was still stuck in the back of our heads.

Many of us started to get over her crazy behaviors. Her head got too big and she started to brag about rules she had broken and tests she had failed. No one could understand why she would be genuinely proud of getting in trouble, but we were all too scared of her to comment on the issue.

I am very close family friends with one of her ex-boyfriends. After they had broken up, obviously I was still going to have dinners with his family, meaning he would be there. There was one night that we were hanging out until late, just playing cards while we waited for our parents to finish up with their dinner. She didn't speak to me for 3 days because she was convinced that I had broken the 'girl code' by being with him. I tried time and time again to explain that there was no way of me getting out of these dinners. She got over it after some time but of course it happened again. I was away camping for the holidays with my family, near where her ex's family owned a house, so of course we spent the day together. We did absolutely nothing. He even had another girlfriend at this point. I had almost a month of radio silence because of a completely innocent family catch up. It was crazy. I stayed friends with her because I was scared that if we fought I would lose all of my friends as well, because they all followed her.