They were childhood friends. Best friends. That was an irrefutable truth that I was aware of in all our years at this school.

Everyone disapproved of them. They all tried to split up these two best friends for years. They loved her and they hated him. Here’s why:

They were polar opposites, in completely different classes. He was broody, she was sunshine. He was grumpy and mean, she was sweet and kind. He wore rags and she wore skirts. He was ugly and greasy, she was beautiful and clean. She was popular and he was not. She was the princess in her group and he was the lowly peasant in his own.

He was in love with her…

…but she was not in love with him.

You’re probably wondering how I came to know this, since she had been my friend long before I ever considered becoming friends with him.

Like all the other girls, both the bashful and the bold, I had liked her a lot, and had also thought she was too good for this world for being both beautiful AND friendly. It had never once occurred to me to hate her like I kind of hated her childhood friend in the first couple of years, just like everyone else, for being everything she wasn’t.

Pretty shallow, right?

Well, I feel really bad about it now, especially since it took me years to see the tragic truth behind the rose-tinted picturesque of this duo, but in my defense, I did not know either one of them well enough when it all started. I even secretly envied the friendship they had, where not even outside bias could beat the history they shared.

These two represented both the highest and lowest form of the popularity chain, walking side by side, inseparable whenever it was just them.

There were, of course, a few things they had in common that made them both compatible, though most bystanders don’t put too much weight on this argument. They were both the smartest people in our grade and shared the same interests in their subjects. They both had tempers and they both came from the same neighborhood growing up, which was an obvious explanation of how these two polar opposites knew each other to begin with.

If I hadn’t also been fed by gossip the shaded version of his personality, of what his lifestyle and choices were like, I would have hoped that these two would eventually start dating.

He was no innocent, not like her. He made bad choices that bordered on illegal (some of them actually had been, I later found out, with the company he was forced to keep), but whenever we brought it up, she would dismiss it (though I could tell she looked uncertain), but would say she’d go confront him about it, to put him straight and then demand that he should stop hanging around criminals since it’s turning him into someone she doesn’t know. Someone bad.

Sounds like a good person with a sane and healthy mindset, as well as a good friend, right? That with her black and white view on things, she was a good influence to him, right about everything, passionate in her beliefs, and therefore always too good for him to have her attention, like everyone kept telling her? That he never deserved her and still doesn’t?

Wait for it.

He did listen to her, despite his obvious reluctance, but they hung out separately again, away from all her other friends (including me) where it was just the two of them…up until he was caught with Them again, surrounded and hunched over like a cowering turtle as they physically and verbally bullied those within their vicinity.

She would see this while our girlfriends would sneer and call him a pushover coward, so certain he was secretly supporting the gang but would dare not show it in front of her.

She would say nothing, but look severely disappointed and then not speak to him for a while.

I had said nothing either, but strangely, it was because of a different thought. Why?

Because in that moment, something didn’t feel right.

Because he looked…more than afraid, but…resigned? Stressed? Resentful? Pleading, when he looked at her?

I shouldn’t care. I didn’t know him, and he didn’t bother to know me and my friends either. He was always very broody, silent, and waspish when he spoke back. He clearly hated us (understandably, turns out).

But WHY was he like that? I asked Lillian once, but she shrugged and said that he’s always been like that. That it might have been the way he was raised by his parents. She confessed to not knowing much more about them other than they “argued a lot.”

Toby never talked about his life at home, and Lillian never asked again. She figured he was just embarrassed about his parents not being able to afford much, which was why he looked skinny and always wore hand-me-down clothes every day.

“How long have you known each other?” I asked her.

She gives me a glance and shrugs. “Five or six years, maybe?”

That seemed impressively long to me. With my family moving around, I barely made one friend before I was forced to move again. Hence the envy.

“And he’s always been like that?”

She smiled, though a bit tightly. “Yeah, pretty much…I know he can be very prickly and mean, but not around me.” She says, but I can tell she is proud to be one of the few people he can be nice to.

__

_He _must_ a crush on her,_ I thought, remembering how his face softens into a gentle smile around her (the one the girls always complain about it being creepy) and then I wonder, _but does she know it?_

When things were simpler and as children just hitting puberty, they were still defending one another and trying hard to set each other straight if they thought the other was getting into trouble. In some ways, he protected her, kept her innocent and oblivious to the trouble HE often gets into…especially for her. Learning this, I secretly thought it was very sweet, and that she HAD to know how he much he loved her.

But in this, regarding each other’s social life by the time they turned fifteen, it started to very slowly come apart.

It came in the form of this cocky boy in our class, Jimmy, along with his pals.

Jimmy was everything every girl wanted and every boy envied as well as wanted to befriend: handsome, rich, popular, funny…well, he THOUGHT himself funny. Most other people thought he was funny too.

I didn’t. Not for a long time.

Let me just start by pointing out that this strong, athletic, handsome, popular boy is not who he says he is: heroic. And eventually, by the time we’re all fifteen, she is not who she says she is either. And that is?

Loyal to her best friend.

Here’s what happened.

When he and his friends corner a certain boy when he is alone, whether to beat him up, hold him down when they strip his clothing, or force him to drink a bottle of soaped water while a crowd of people watch them as they point and laugh.

Why did they do it? Because they could. Because they hated the sight of him and just decided to take it out on him. Because they judged him for his appearance, for being surrounded by other shady bullies, that were merely just their rivals in the predatory food chain.

But most of all, it’s because they knew Toby liked Lillian, but Jimmy liked her too, so out of jealousy, he tried to win her attention by eliminating the competetion.

Again, I didn’t. Toby most certainly didn’t, and Lillian didn’t think so either when she tried to make them stop…

…up until I saw her trying not to smile AFTER Jimmy forced-fed soaped water to choke on until his face turned red, which everyone seemed to find comical.

My stomach dropped then, like I caught a glimpse of something I shouldn’t have seen but can’t unsee.

She LIKED Jimmy. Her best friend’s tormentor.

Toby must have spotted it too, because he shouted an insult at her and told her to leave him alone.

Lillian stared at him icily as I watched. Then…she angrily claimed that she wouldn’t bother with him anymore, called him a nasty name back, and then stomped away, turning her back on the awful scene without a second glance over.

She just gave him up to the sharks.

I knew then I should’ve stepped in when I had the chance, but the crowd had gotten larger as if the drama unfolding had summoned new viewers, and the exchange between these two dismayed me to the point of feeling sick while my “girlfriends” and everyone else continued to either laugh at the scene or yell insults at the victim before encouraging Jimmy and his pals to “teach the greaseball a lesson!”

Lord, help me, but the girls I had known for the past few years were supporting this assault. This poor boy was abandoned by his best friend almost instantly for being snapped at once from humiliation, caused by the most popular guy in school (who had been simultaneously flirting with said-boy’s childhood friend like the sicko he was) and she had left him to be brutally finished off by these a-holes just because he hurt her feelings?!

The bullies smirked in triumph, and finished their work by stealing Toby’s clothes and running away before I could fully push through the crowd. I felt hands grab my arms, girls’ voices demanding what I was doing, but I violently shake them off so that I can reach Toby, who was curled up on the ground, his dignity gone as he struggled not to cry in both rage and humiliation, his still-red bruises and scars all bared for the world to see.

Bruises. Scars. Some old, some recent, just beginning to heal, only to be reopened by the beating he was just given. Battle wounds piled by years of abuse.

I was horrified.

He snarled at me and didn’t allow me to approach him any closer than three feet, but I stayed.

I didn’t have anything to cover him with, so I just spread out my arms as if to shield him from sight, however little good that did.

The teachers finally came to break up the crowd, and instantly everyone, including my own “friends” retreated as if to escape scrutiny and a much-deserved punishment.

Long story short: they’re not my friends anymore.

I stayed as they finally covered him with a blanket and led him away. He didn’t say a word. They gave him spare clothes in the nurse’s office and attempted to call his parents.

They never answered.

I was eventually asked to leave.

I felt him watch me go, and I felt shame for not being what he needed.

When I eventually found her, her lovely eyes were red and puffy in despair. She was surrounded by girlfriends—rather, my former girlfriends—who were comforting her, giving her sweet words, tissues, combing her hair, telling her she was “better off without that greasy, pathetic excuse of a—“

Lillian looked up and spotted me standing there. She looked like she was about to smile, and it reminded me too much of the way she almost laughed at her best friend’s torment, so I said coldly, “Did you enjoy what you saw?”

Her face paled.

“Did you think he deserved it? Is that why you ran away when he needed you the most?”

“But he—“ Her lip trembled.

Disgusted with her, disgusted with _them_, I just turned and left before she could open her mouth to defend herself.

I didn’t bother telling her about the scars.