What went wrong?

Do you remember how we were such good friends--best friends--since third grade? Surely you must. And remember how you would come to sleep over at my house every Saturday when we were younger, and we would play games with our stuffed animals on the bed you slept in when we woke up in the morning? Don't forget about the waterfall made by my little mermaid blanket, the waterfall which every stuffed animal feared.

Do you remember how whenever one of us had a birthday, I would always be on your list and you would always be on my list? The birthday parties were such fun, and it was exciting meeting your other friends which you had made in your class.

What about every time we received a letter telling what class we were in? I would always phone you, or you would always phone me, and we would chatter excitedly about if we were in the same class or not. We had been in the same class for second grade, third grade, sixth grade, and eighth grade!

What went wrong?

Was it because we were separated in fourth grade, put in totally different clusters so that we would not be able to see each other at any time except lunch and afterschool? Was it because you met new friends in fourth grade…Claire, Rui Qi, Ning, and the others who eat lunch with you now? Or was it both?

In fifth grade we were also separated, and I saw less and less at you. By the time I met you again in sixth grade, everything about you that I had known had changed. Sure, you still had a nice smile, a friendly laugh, and outgoing style, but besides that, you were a stranger to me.

Did you even think about me on the first day of sixth grade, where you and your big group of friends you had met in fourth and fifth grade crowded into the cafeteria? When you sat down at a large round table, and when I walked by and said hi to you, you practically ignored me? I managed to find a place to sit with at a smaller table surrounded by two other kids who I knew, but weren't really friends with. I eventually made friends with them, and still sit with them now.

What went wrong?

In sixth grade chapel, we (your big group of friends and I) forgot to save you a seat at chapel. You were mad at me all day, and it was just so unlucky that we had to go onto the field after that and watch a soccer game. I sat behind you and tried to talk to you, but you just brushed me off like a fly and ignored me. I got so angry, and I'm sorry for I did, when I put the grass in your shorts. You turned around and told me to stop it, and I stopped. That was probably the last time you talked to me for a long time.

I tried to make it up to you in the library, but all I received was you ignoring me like I was ghost. Sometimes I wonder if you can still see me. In seventh grade you were in a different class…and all of your big group of friends were in the same one with you. We were drifting apart, and then came my birthday. I invited everyone but you, but in the end I tried to preserve the little friendship we had left and I invited you the day before the party.

In eighth grade, I was in your outward bound group, and so was one of your "big group friends"…I don't think she liked me very much. You basically treated me like a dog. We had learned sign language together and it was our secret language, but you taught that "big group friend" of yours it too, and you tested both of us, to see who could read it faster. When you found out I was by far the faster reader, you spent every hour of the day teaching that friend to be faster than me. One day I caught you two signing under the table something horrible…about me. "I'm not blind!" I yelled at you, and I ran down the stars and away.

What went wrong?

We had almost mended our friendship in eighth grade, and now in class, where I always sat next to you in my table, the seat is empty. Instead, you are with your "big group friends", and when they are not around, you just find someone else to sit next to.

For one year after knowing you for so long, I had not been invited to your birthday.

I'm alone, and even though I have a whole set of friends now, they will never equal up to the friendship we had together for five years. Not if I were friends with them for a hundred years. That's how important our friendship was to me, and I deceive myself by thinking that we can patch it up again, somehow.

I only have one question for you Marie,

What went wrong?

From a friend who still cares,