The Real Bully

Flashback 5

                  

"Xander did you see that new videogame! We HAVE to play it! And I'm gonna beat youuuu!"

Brandon flew across the kitchen on his rollerblades, crashing into walls and falling on his behind laughing. He pushed himself up and skated to me as I hunched over my lit computer screen. "Get up!" He playfully shoved me, forcing me to leave my computer and race him to the PlayStation.

Then we played football, tackling each other in the grass.

Fast forward to winter when we built snowmen.

"Mine's name is Crystal. She's a cheerleader," Brandon bragged. He found a neighbor's pompom and stuck it in Crystal's snow body. He plopped yellow leaves on her head to make her blond and blue marbles for her eyes. Finally, he curled red licorice for her mouth as the finishing touch.

At school, we swapped sandwiches. Brandon munched on my tuna and I devoured Brandon's Nutella and peanut butter.

We built pillow forts and had pillow wars. Brandon's Anime stuffed animals were his body guards, blocking my pillows from destroying the fort. I often stole the stuffed animals, running outside and burying them in the snow. I gave Brandon hints on where to find them—hot, cold, freezing! —until Brandon found them and wrapped them in a big warm hug.

Brandon's new Little League friends—Sam, Daniel, and Jake—didn't like me. They thought I was weird. "He can't play with us!" Sam wined.

"Be nice!" Brandon retorted. "He's my friend!"

Yet Brandon's friends refused to acknowledge me despite Brandon's pleas, refused to give me a chance. So Brandon decided to keep our friendships separate. He played Monopoly with me and football with Sam, Daniel, and Jake. As the weeks stretched on, he started to spend more time with them and less time with me. At lunch he even forgot to sit with me sometimes, abandoning me with my smelly tuna sandwich while he joked at the popular kid table with Sam, Daniel, and Jake. He transitioned from hanging out with me every day to visiting me once a week. Between football, his new friends, and his booming social life, he slowly crept away from our friendship to his friendship with everyone else.

I knew I was weird, socially awkward, nerdy. But when I was with Brandon, none of that mattered. He didn't care about my strange behaviors and I accepted his secret Anime obsession and his unusual games. We were neighbors, best friends, and we always would be I assumed.

His new friends constantly tried to bully me. They picked at me for the holes in my jeans, my Bob the Builder lunch box, my asthma, and my timid behavior. Brandon always silenced them, protected me, reminded me that there was nothing wrong with me and that they were just being dumb.

"Nobody messes with Xander!" he declared. "Fight him and you fight me!" Everyone backed down instantly.

                  

"I know it seems like I pick my other friends over you sometimes," Brandon said once. "But I just want you to know that you are my best friend, not them. You are my favorite." And he nudged me playfully and we pulled out the PlayStation like old times.

But as the months wore on, I became dissatisfied. I wanted Brandon every day, needed to interact with somebody besides my parents more than once a week. It wasn't fair how people just stole him from me. On Saturdays, Brandon would come over, joke with me, then disappear to one of their parties. He came over infrequently to do homework and his phone would buzz the entire time from a group message with Jake, Sam, and Daniel. He picked up his phone, chuckled, and silenced it, seeing how irritated it made me. Brandon tossed a football with me, but it wasn't the same. He was playing easy on me this time. I could see it in his arms—they were stronger, more defined. He could beat me in any game. Our interests drifted apart: he wanted girls and sports and I still wanted videogames. He was no longer Brandon—clumsy, Anime-obsessed, videogame champion—but someone else. His new friends had changed him.

  He protected me and played with me and his parents took me out to dinner, but it wasn't enough. I needed all of him. All of his time. He needed to drop the football team, drop his new friends, drop his silly conformist façade, and just be mine. I missed being the first choice, missed having someone always there for me. Either I was his first choice, or else...or else there was no Brandon.

I told him to meet me at the playground one day in a secluded spot under the trees.

"Hey Xander, how's it—" He froze when he noticed my gun.

"How could you leave me!" I demanded. "We were best friends! And now you don't want to hang out with me anymore. You never have time for me. It's not fair. You're mine!"

"Hey, now..." Brandon said nervously. "I don't belong to anyone. You're all my friends. Now let's drop this..."

"Either you belong to me or you belong to no one!" I yelled, pulling the trigger.

Suddenly, everything turned black.

I awoke 20 minutes later. Brandon and the gun had both disappeared and a massive bruise covered my forehead. He had knocked me out and escaped.

That was the only time Brandon ever punched me.

From that day on, I was constantly bullied, mocked, treated like dirt. And Brandon continued to watch over my bullying, never stopping it out of fear yet never joining in because deep down he secretly missed our friendship.