Gone

Most people find their true friends once they start high school, but me and Sage’s started years ago. Our parents set us up on a playdate a week after the first day of the first grade. Since then, she’s seen me through it all; cheating boyfriends, breakups, annoying friends, dumb classes and teachers, even the rage when it came to certain things that I couldn’t even control. That had to be one of the best ones yet, but there was one thing that she’s seen me get annoyed by for years.

The popular kids.

The annoying, suck-up popular kids. The kids who bring their skateboards and skate during lunch, the annoying boys who bring their drinks to class and smoke in the bathrooms. They’re the stupid kids who don’t try and class and fail every single time there’s a test or quiz and when it comes to presentations, oh forget it, they don’t even do it. 

None of them do. Above all, they think they’re better than everyone else, when in reality they’re just a bunch of kids who piss off teachers and students and administration left and right. According to them, me and Sage’s names rhymed, so we had to be siblings, because there totally aren’t rhyming names within the world that people can have. It’s not like the names Sophie and Sage are illegal for two best friends to have.

How stupid do they have to be?

Me and Sage had a plan when we were younger to be one of the most popular duos once we got to high school, and we succeeded.

But for the wrong reasons.

People knew Sage as the girl who dated a senior throughout sophomore year, which honestly isn’t that bad, until some dumbass spreaded a rumor about her cheating on him with almost every single guy in the junior grade, which is stupid considering that people can just go up to them and ask any junior guy if they become suspicious.

People knew me as the sunshine-character who finally snapped at a girl who was spreading rumors about Sage when in reality I wasn’t the sunshine-character and that I yelled at her for a completely different reason, but I took the win anyways. Me yelling at that girl was going to be officially a year ago tomorrow morning at 7:35 in our history class. I begged my parents to not let me go to school tomorrow, but instead they threatened to ground me from going to a party on Saturday with Sage.

Jokes on them I don’t even like to party. Well I do, it’s just annoying since those stupid kids always ruin them.

I showed up the next day at school without Sage, we haven’t talked since Sunday, not even in the classes we have with each other. I went to English, then geometry, then study hall since I didn’t have any classes that period. That’s when I saw it.

The worst thing to ever see.

The worst thing to ever see your best friend do.

Hanging out with the popular kids.

The annoying, stuck-up popular kids weren’t swarming around her like they would as usual. They were talking to her, as in having a full on conversation with her, and laughing? 

What the hell?

My nostrils flared as I stared at her laughing with them. She even changed her style to look like a skater girl, how the hell could she do that? 

The memory burned in my head when I started my homework that night. Why did she have to lie? Just say “Sophie, this won’t work out” or even “Sophie, we can’t be friends anymore.” Don’t lie to my damn face about anything. Who the hell lies like that? At dinner, I sat with my fists clenched and I barely ate, reading the angry paragraph I wanted to send to her that I wrote in my notes app on my phone. I felt like I was going to explode. 

My brother sitting across from me slumped in his chair and clenched his fists. He was with me when we saw what happened, and he wanted to yell at Sage, but his excuse was that he couldn’t yell at a girl when in reality he’s yelled at about half the student body of females about now. No one talked at the dinner table. Mom took her dinner to the office and worked while our dad was at the office across town until nine, and me, my brother, and sister just stared at each other as if we were telepathically communicating on what to do next. To be frank, I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to yell at her.

I wanted to yell at her like I yelled at that girl Lucia for spreading that rumor about her. Honestly, she shouldn’t have let me stop her.

Someone had to humble Sage.

So I decided to.

I decided to march into our chemistry class tomorrow and yell at her for what she did, and I did so successfully, even though I got detention for it, it was worth it.

It was so worth it. Now, I was popular for another reason. I was known as the girl who snapped at her ex best friend for being another kind of annoyance that can’t even be explained. This was probably one of the worst experiences of friendship that I’ve been through. I had more fear when being friends with Sage than I did without, which honestly didn’t make any logical sense since she was my best friend, my whole world.

My rock.

She was everything, until she had to ruin it. Of course she had to ruin it.

When someone has enemies, they aren’t scared of them. They want to show that enemy everything that they got, they want to prove to them that they’re better.

Sage was the reason why I never put too much trust in friends again. Instead, I learned how to use my enemies to get what needed to get done.

She’s the reason why I’ll never be able to trust someone like that again.