We are Friends

             I’ve had a lot of different friends through high school, changing from class to class and lunch period to lunch period, but there are two girls who have been constants, Heather and Rachel. Heather has been my friend since afternoon kindergarten when my mom volunteered me as a playmate during recess. We ended up sticking together through elementary school, mostly because Heather was good at telling me what to do, and I was good at doing what Heather said. Together we chased the boys around the soccer field at recess, dominating the play because of our early grow spurts and pointy elbows. We soloed to the song Silver Bells at our school’s winter concert with the Orff Ensemble, and spent the night at each other’s houses like best friends do. It wasn’t until middle school that I realized Heather was controlling. I’d never known any different. We had a hard time working it out, but by the time we entered high school we needed each other again, and so our friendship was reborn. We’ve come a long way since elementary school. I’ve learned to stand up for myself and make my own decisions, and Heather has learned that unlike playing Barbies, she can’t control every one in her life.

             While Heather and I were thrown together by circumstance, Rachel and I found each other. Rachel was always around. We grew up going to the same church, eating goldfish out of the same bowl for snack, and we were in the same class all the way through middle school and into high school. Rachel was invited to the same parties that I was. Her friends were friends with my friends, and my friends were friends with hers. Still for all our connections and similarities, we never really knew each other.

I can’t pinpoint a moment when my friendship with Rachel began. Somewhere between 9^th and 10^th grade we started saying hey to each other in the hallway and sitting beside each other in class. When I think back on it, I can’t remember any transition from being in the background of each other’s lives to being friends. It just happened, almost like it was meant to be. I had always admired Rachel for her confidence and quirkiness. She was never afraid of laughing too loud or wearing anomalous pieces of clothing. There was no one she couldn’t talk to. While most of my classmates, including myself, lived by the unspoken law that only certain friends from certain groups were allowed to converse with each other, Rachel made jokes with the Latinos, a group she most definitely did not belong to. She gave nicknames to the basketball jocks, who were above her on the social ladder, but rules never applied to Rachel.

It was my friendship with Heather, my friendship with Rachel, and Honors English III that brought all of us together. We met up for a class project on the American dream one weekend, and after that, we were a family, a sub-culture all our own within and without the walls of Conestoga Valley High School. Heather would honk at me in her purple van as I coaxed all of my belongs into the back of my Camery at the end of the school day, and I would join her in the second row of the parking lot as she blasted music from the Sienna’s speakers. Together we would dance and whistle to get Rachel’s attention.

After the dancing got old and the parking lot empty, we would laugh at how silly we were and then head back to my house for an after school snack. Our friendship came so easily. The dynamics of three flowed in a way I had only ever experience with my two sisters, and it was beautiful.