Loving the Girl Next Door
We moved on from childish games.
Haylee wasn’t supposed to be the One — the one who would make or break me, the one who could make it past all my walls and live to tell the tale.
Haylee was just supposed to be that mean girl who stuck gum in my hair the first week of elementary school.
That was all she should have been — until her family moved right next door, our mothers bonding over the inclusive quality of modern suburbia. While Haylee and I stared each other down through the fence separating our backyards, our mothers exchanged giddy delight over the idea of bake sales and other PTA bliss to come.
“You girls be good to each other, okay?” my mom told me while she stood over the sink and washed dishes. “You never know when you might need a friend.”
As my mom handed me plate after plate to dry, I tried not to sulk. I hadn’t even told her the real reason behind the gum in my hair. Thankfully, I hadn’t needed a tomboy haircut to fix my hair.
Why did I keep quiet? Because I knew one thing early on: Haylee was a golden girl from her blonde curls to her pretty blue eyes, and no one would believe me over her.
That fact was actually a self-fulfilling prophecy I’d recognize in the years to come.
