Ending of the Innocence

          She's my best friend; best friend since sixth grade. Since before then; since forever. Granted we didn't meet until sixth grade but we were always best friends it seems. Always. It's like our whole lives before sixth grade were leading up to this friendship. But that isn't the right word; it's more than just a friendship; it's a partnership - two imperfect souls meeting together and forming one entire, perfect soul.


         Rewind. I was a loser. Let's not even beat around the bush about this one because the truth of the matter is simply that I was a loser. My mother dressed me up until the sixth grade, I didn't know anything about anything that happened outside of the four walls of my home and I was totally, horribly niave.


         Sure I had friends but it was more like I was this cute little puppy the neighborhood kids let tag along with them. I look back and shake my head at those days, even when I was just a little kid, even in pre-school, I was a loser. I still am I suppose but I keep that little fact well hidden.


         I don't really know what Rachel was like before we met, but I know she was nothing like me. She calls herself the chunky kid with bushy eyebrows and glasses when she looks back, but she was still cool. I know she was, that is just who she is. She is just one of those girls that everyone adores: jocks, preps, goths and nerds alike.


         Anyways sixth grade came along and I was starting out at a brand new school where every single kid there had spent K-5 at the same elementry school. I knew no one. I was scared shitless, even if at the time I couldn't utter such a word, that is what I was. But there she was.


         Yes, a little bit chunky, and yes a set of bushy eyebrows behind a pair of purple wire rimmed glasses but she had a chest that would make Pam An proud (and me completely jealouse because I would not develop a chest like that until half way through freshman year). I was completly taken back by this girl. This girl with her face plastered with blue and pink glitter that were "so in" that year; this girl who squeeled in a baby doll voice and kicked her legs out from underneith her chair like a highschool cheer leader.


         I thought she was crazy. If I knew what drugs were at that time I would have thought she was on them. I would soon learn however that she was definatly an It girl. Of course she wasn't smack dab in the middle of the popular group but she definatly had her place among them and yet she chose me. She chose me. I would have never guessed in a million years that we would be best friends but she chose me and as we grew together. Best friends forever with a capital B F F.


         She never changed from that day, not really anyways. Sure she advanced from sparkles and glitter to black eyeliner and tweezers. She lost a lot of baby fat and her chest just kept on growing but that squeely, giggling, innocent girl never wavered.


         We learned about sex, all the stuff they dont tell you in that wretched "Miracle of Life" video they show in health and stayed up too the wee hours of the morning giggling over the new naughty words that we didnt really know the meaning too. But even with our dirty little minds racing, Rachel still had this innocence to her that can't be explained. She knew all the grown up curse words and bought me my first thong but still there was this little ten year old in her, a ten year old that came out to play a lot.


         That's what I love about her the most. She forces me to chill out and to grow younger; to take the edge off of life. I'm to serious sometimes, a little bit motherly of her and so she brings out that little ten year old, grabs the toy tractor and wheels off down the grocery aisle; daring me to follow after her. And I almost always do.


         What happens though, when highschool happens? And sex becomes more than funny words and dirty jokes; when it becomes real, like people doing it in the band practice room during lunch real? And what about drugs? You never expect to actually be faced with someone offering you some hash right in the middle of the hallway, but it happens. What then?


         I won't lie. What happens is that sometime throughout your highschool life you at least tip toe around those things. I got myself into trouble with both those things, but I got out before anything serious happenend. I never took any sort of drug and my pants stayed safely on all freshman year, but I got dangerously close to an edge I never want to see again.


         Rachel fell over that edge, flat on her face I hate to say. My sweet, innocent Rachel was no longer so innocent and what could I do? At the time it felt like utter betrayal. I was still so niave and at the time there was nothing worse then smoking a little weed and losing your virginity to your boyfriend of one month. It was heart wrenching to see the girl I had strived, and still strive to be like, tearfully explain her first time; to hear all her regrets and pain. I never told her how disappointed I was that day, how could I when she was so scared to even tell me, fearing the loss of our friendship. Of course we are still the best of friends, we hold hands in the school hallways and dont even care that eyebrows are raised, and of course I grew up a lot and realize that there are definatly worse things in life then pot and sex but I still wonder, would I have survived that first year of highschool if I had been in Rachel's place?