My heart left before you did

“Zuri can I trust you,” Amara asked,

“Of course, I’m your best friend you can tell me anything,” Amara replied, she felt nervous, Zuri never had to ask her for anything. Amara had a bad feeling about what she was going to hear.

Zuri shifted in her place, “Don't be mad…” 

“What is it you gotta tell me?” 

“Alright,” Zuri dug her fingers into the sand of the beach that they were sitting on, Amara and Zuri were neighbors and had been friends since kindergarten, they lived one block away from the beach, which had become their favorite meeting place. “I...I’m moving, ok, my parents had been talking about..about leaving and moving to Wisconsin to live close to my grandma. Amara that’s so far away from here, we might never see each other ever again.”

“Moving?” Amara replied, “how long have you known?” 

“A month, please don't be mad at me, I wanted to keep it a secret.”

“A month! You’ve known for an entire month and you never told me!”

“You said you weren’t going to be mad at me.” 

“I’m your best friend!” That however was a lie, sure Amara had been best friends with Zuri for a long time, but over the last few months, Zuri had become annoying and clingy.

“I don’t want to leave,” Zuri said, “by the way you're talking to me it seems like you think it was MY idea, well it’s not ok.” And with that Zuri stormed off, up the wooden steps and onto the road heading towards her house. 

Amara sat for a moment, and thought, she weighed the pros and cons of Zuri leaving the state. Under her mental pros category, she thought that she would be free, free to make her own decisions, free to hang out with whoever she wanted to hang out with instead of Zuri nagging her to do what she wanted to do. But there was also a conns category, the fact that she would be lonely until another person decided to take her under their wing and become friends with her.

It was about 7 minutes later when the weather started getting too cold for her to continue sitting on the beach, when Amara decided it was time to go home, she walked up the steps to the road and walked down the sidewalk until she got to her house, the roads were quiet for a Friday afternoon, Amara got home and the first thing she did was pick up her phone from the table and run up to her bedroom, ignoring her parents.

She plopped down on the bed and opened her messaging app, she sent a text to Zuri,

“Hey,” she wrote, “I’m sorry about before when are you leaving????”

She was surprised when Zuri finally texted back, “we started packing today, the truck is coming in two days to collect our stuff, then we’re heading to the airport.”

“K” Amara messaged, “U wanna meet up tomorrow, my house?”

There was a pause, Amara could see Zuri holding the phone in her mind, thinking about what to say.

“Fine, I’ll come over at 200 tomorrow,”

Amara smiled, “TTYL”

“TTYL”

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The next morning Amara laid in bed until noon, still weighing the pros and cons of the Zuri situation, in the end, she decided that the pros outweigh the cons and that she would be happy to see Zuri go, not that she wouldn't be sad, but Zuri had stopped being a good friend a long time ago, some friendships just aren’t meant to last.

Zuri came over at 2:00 in the afternoon, just like she promised, Amara greeted her with a box of Oreos, Zuri smiled.

“Hey,” she said, “look, about yesterday on the beach, I didn’t really mean that I was just angry at my parents, and the fact that Wisconsin is supposed to be really cold, you know I’m a hot weather girl. 

Amara let out the most convincing fake laugh that she could, she knew Zuri loved the warm weather of California, but she thought that it might as well be good payback for all the annoying and sometimes terrible things that she had done to Amara.

“Let’s go upstairs, we can watch youtube on my computer.”

“Totally,” Zuri smiled and stuffed an oreo in her mouth, and they both went up the stairs to Amara’s bedroom, they opened the computer and signed into youtube.

“Who do you wanna watch?” Amara asked,

“Hmmm, let’s watch that one girl with the purple hair,”

“Alright,” Amara opened her subscribed box and opened a channel. They must have watched hundreds of videos before Zuri got a text from her mom,

She sighed, “I have to go, the moving truck is coming super early to pick up our stuff, I have to finish packing.”

“Alright, I’m sure that you’ll love Wisconsin, they get snow in the winter if that changes anything.”

“Snow is cold,” Zuri said with a laugh,

“When are you getting on the plane?”

“Our flight is scheduled for 9:00 in the morning, you probably won’t have time to come over, I know you never wake up until 10.”

“Your right, go get some sleep,” Amara smiled, this was it, finally, a new start with new friends. 

“Will you miss me, I’ll miss you?”

“Of course I’ll miss you Zuri, you’re my best friend.”

Zuri sighed, “Really,”

“Of course I will, pinky promise,” 

They twisted their pinkies together and smiled, Zuri left and Amara plopped down on the bed and sighed, the first thing that she had ever said to Zuri had been nothing but the truth, 

It was in kindergarten, they were both lonely and friendless, one day Zuri had passed her a note on a piece of a blue sticky note, it said: “Do you want to hand out?” Amara wrote back saying “Yea” they played and played together at recess, 

“Do you want to be friends?” Zuri had asked,

“Duh,” Amara had replied, which was true, they had been friends ever since,

  The first thing she said was true, but the last thing she had ever said to her was nothing but lies.