Best friends - or Maybe Not

CHAPTER 2: THE FIRST MEETING

We had first met each other in our fourth year of school.

She was playing by herself on the swings of the school playground in the early hours before the start of the first day of school. A senior bully pulled up his sleeves and gave her a mighty push. She fell from the swing, with her face close to the semi-soft path. A little harder and she would have had a broken nose. He and his gang started mocking and teasing her.

I couldn't control watching all this happen from afar. Anger was seeping through each and every vein of my body. I started walking towards the group, with the fierceness of a lion burning inside of me.

She stood up boldly and looked straight into the bully's eyes. It seemed that she was about to pounce on him, but she couldn't because of his big billy gang. Seeing this wasn't going to help me for the next few moments, because it would mean that I would become a zombie from guilt.

So I took off in a run and body-slammed him. That mighty push had him lying on his back, groaning in pain.

I pretended to have knocked him down by mistake.

"Sorry," I said. "But hey, by the way, you should really watch where you are standing."

"You should watch where you are going, kid,'' he snarled. "And how dare you talk like that. Do you know who I am?"

She saw her chance. Before I could retort back, the girl was on him. She gave him three jaw-cracking punches and two resounding slaps that should have broken his cheekbones. That had done it. Those horrific slaps and monstrous punches had the whole gang on their feet.

Fortunately for him, the bell rang. Everyone scurried to their old classrooms, as though she was going to come after them to teach them a lesson. She reluctantly spared him, and he gladly took to his feet, never to be seen again.

After the morning lecture by my old class teacher, I went to my newly allocated class. I was surprised to find that same girl, who I meet on the early hours of that day, sitting in the seat I liked - in the middle row, the middle bench. She waved towards me. I waved back and sat down beside her. And from then, there was no turning back.

We introduced ourselves to each other. And slowly, we started getting to know each other. We sat with each other during recess and would go for a walk around the school after we had our lunch. We started playing with each other in our neighbourhood since we were neighbours.

Even our mothers became good friends. We would all go to watch the same movie too!

We would do everything together as we were classmates and close neighbours. We were similar in so many ways. We played the same games we liked, we wore the same shoes and clothes during class parties, and we even liked the same dishes. We were the same different best friends.

We were like two peas in a pod. We couldn't imagine living apart from each other and it felt like we were somehow linked. Although it was distant since we were different people, it felt like we shared one soul (or maybe just one tiny bit).

But some things don't tend to last for long. And things took a turn around the dark corner.