A Friend in Need is a Friend Indeed

Whether you dance, laugh, cry, talk, or dream with them, friends are people who are there for you through good and bad times. What happens, though, when your friend faces a problem that you can’t solve, a problem that can change both of your lives forever? Find out, in these poems and short story.

Her hair
was
           like
an
           ocean
with curls
and curls
           and
waves.

There were red streaks in her long brown hair.
Her eyes were emeralds, her
skin a golden bronze.
She is my best friend.

I would do anything to have her hair—
the way it fell
against her shoulder
like a golden maple frame around a beautiful picture.

“What’s chemo?” I asked
as Mom pulled me aside.
I hope she doesn’t die.
I hope she can still have her hair.

But she can’t and it fell out.
She had Hodgkin ’s disease
and she lost her hair.

Seeing her in the hospital
with clearly painful tubes tied to her chest,
with massive grey machines attached to her—
without her hair.

It was hard to look.
To see her hurting so badly
made me hurt too,

so I cut my hair.

The Beach
Lizzy Mun
Massachusetts

I sit on down
Looking at the empty shores,
I sit around and wonder what I’ve done.
A crash of the shore brings me back to the crime scene,
When she screamed out for help
And I watched as she suffered.
She waited for that moment while drowning in her sorrows,
That she could let it all go in just one breath.
Now she is gone, an accident so dreary,
I sit here on the beach
And think of my cruelty.

A Closer Friend
Jaimie Han, 18
Arizona

The rain gracefully slides down my spider-webbed window.
We’re lying on my crowded bedroom floor,
somewhere in between the cartoons and the mountain of need-to-be-washed clothes.
The faded green blanket that smells like old moth balls lies underneath us.
These are our traditional Saturday afternoons.
You’re trying to get some work done,
you have studying.
I have a theory.
Theory gets repetitive,
it becomes a jumble of random notes
like rocks on a beach.
The notes blur into unidentifiable splotches of ebony.
You tell me to focus, you sharpen the image.
My fogged up eyes open to see the world around me.
We’ve been close for several years now.
Will we be this close when our high school years come to an end?
I wish I’d found you a bit earlier,
spin the year hand on the clock around,
backwards,
2007,
2005,
2003,
2000.
There’s no need for me to tell you how I feel,
or what I want.
This emptiness is a hole getting deeper and deeper.
It’s endless.
I can’t manage to spin out the right words,
you organize them for me
so I can understand myself.

I wish I could know you as much as you know me.
I feel so far away, I’ve been running away from you,
yet you feel too close.
It’s like I’m lost in a forest—
all of the trees look the same.
Shadows obscure my vision as I run.
You stand silently above
and smile an emotional smile.

Lately I keep hurting you,
disappointing you,
like a tide that always comes in too late.
I fall short
like a monster only looking out for itself.
I destroy beauty in my anger.

Remember that day I asked you
if it was okay to hurt you?
If it was okay for me to watch you cry?
You held your head close to your pillow,
weeping silently, hiding your pain from me.
But there’s no need. I feel your pain as I bury it behind my hardened face.
“Hush now, hush, don’t let it hurt you.
Don’t let it get to you.”

Clear drops roll off your cheeks,
creating a puddle
with rings of waves that expand.
I knew I was wrong.
You thought I’d be better to you,
you hoped I’d be better.
For once you were wrong.
Why’d you hold onto me?

“A bucket of ice cream always makes everything better,
shove a scoop into your mouth and the pain will disappear.”
Remember we agreed on that a year ago?
Can I buy you a bucket of Jamoca ice cream?
Let your tears flood into the cylindrical container.

I won’t promise
that I’ll meet your expectations.
Then
you’ll be even more disappointed.
Get rid of your hopes,
throw them into the wind
and let them travel away from you
like an echo bouncing off mountains.
If you let me hold onto them,
they’ll be crushed like the ants I rubbed into sidewalks.

You’ll laugh when you read this
because it’s so painful that it’s funny,
but you’ve still held onto me.
Even though I spit out fake words,
“You deserve better, so just let go of me.”
So you held on stronger.
How did you know that that’s what I needed?

I didn’t know I meant so much to you,
I didn’t know you meant so much to me.
You came to school to vote for me
though you held your head in the toilet bowl
in the morning. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.

I throw away things so easily,
everyone comes in and out of my life.
Nothing is forever,
everything is temporary.
The more valuable, the more careless I am.
Can you see through that mask?
I try to cover your eyes with a blindfold,
I’ll even turn the lights off.
Will you please take a peek?
I’ll stop you,
say you’re cheating,
but will you take it off anyway?

It’s so hard to say what I want.
Do I want you? Is that what I want?
The words jumble around like the notes on my theory worksheets.
It always comes out the opposite way.

I promise that I won’t hurt you.
Will a pinky swear earn your trust?
Next time I’ll take that blindfold off myself,
speak words of honesty,
speak words from my heart.
And walk a little closer
to become a closer friend.

Allyson Never
Brittany Barnes, 18
Arizona

On my first day of second grade I was the last one in the line for lunch. Finally, my tray held a slice of pizza and a box of orange juice. My eyes surveyed the beige cafeteria slowly, looking for an empty seat. Towards the middle of a table, on the far left side of the cafeteria lay the last spot available. I confidently strode to that seat and was eager to meet whoever I was going to spend the next fifteen minutes with. As I approached my destination, a snow-white glob of mashed potatoes landed on the seat of the very chair I was about to sit in, and splattered all over me! Just as the first few tears slid down my cheek, the girl who was almost my new lunch buddy turned around, started to laugh, and then grabbed my hand. “Let’s go get cleaned up!” she said. “And no more tears!” From that moment, we were instantly best friends.

We spent the rest of lunch getting to know each other. Luckily, we both loved dancing so we spent our recess time choreographing dances to our favorite Radio Disney tunes. We confided our secrets in each other and swore everything with our pinkies. Without even a doubt, I always picked her to be on my team first when we did sports in P.E. class, even though she couldn’t even dribble a ball. Sometimes we spoke in Pig Latin because we assumed nobody could decipher the code. Then, puberty arrived and we upgraded to middle school. Eventually, we started making scrap books. Every once in a while, we would make a batch of instant mashed potatoes for two and reflect on our childhood days while we leafed through our scrapbooks. We were inseparable…until nineteen months ago.

Friday morning, 8:17 AM meant Allyson’s eleventh tardy for dance class. Lately she dashed in when we were in the locker room, as if she didn’t want us to see her change her clothes. Today was also the third time in the past two weeks Allyson wore her long-sleeved teal turtle-neck to school. Even wearing a tank top made me sweat buckets. After all, it was the month of May in the scorching heat of Arizona. Everybody convinced themselves that Allyson was just having a fashion crisis.

When Allyson leaped over the bench in the locker room to pick up a tap shoe that had escaped her grip, landing as far away from her as it could, I saw what she was hiding. Allyson pulled her shirt down quickly, but not quickly enough. A bruise the size and shape of a compact disc branded her right hip. The deep purple inside color clashed with the diluted emerald green color that outlined it. I secretly hoped that this bruise was new, because if it was older then it would have been worse, and I couldn’t even imagine anything more gruesome. We walked into the dance room, and nothing was mentioned about the bruise.

At lunch, Allyson and I sat together as usual. I noticed that today she had more foundation on the left side of her face, directly underneath her eye. When Michael gave her a good luck pat on the shoulder for our dance concert, she pulled back and cringed as if Michael had struck a pressure point. Allyson seemed distant during lunch, almost as if her body was in the lunchroom, but it seemed that her mind was somewhere else. Her eyes had that glazed-over look that drunk drivers get, and her face was expressionless underneath her faux-grin, which seemed forced, as if a puppeteer was pulling strings attached to the corners of her mouth. Every once in a while she would stab the chicken teriyaki with her fork, sliding it through the sauce on her plate, claiming she just didn’t feel like eating. Her fake smile that continued to be plastered to her face lasted the whole forty minutes we had to dine. Occasionally, a hollow, “Oh, I’m doing super, how about you?” would accompany this false expression, as she chatted with various members of her friend circle.

Just about everybody at school knew about Allyson, too. That is what made the situation worse. Not one person said anything, though, because gossiping was too “middle school cliché” for Skyline High School. Our teachers were way too involved in preparing us for school testing to take their eyes out of the practice workbooks for five minutes to take a glance at Allyson. They never once noticed the foundation. The counselors were far too preoccupied with stuffing post-high school career options down our throats to notice Allyson’s excessive tardies in dance. She was late once or twice, right? Allyson’s mother worked two jobs and was hardly ever home. When she was, it was between the convenient hours of 11:30 PM and 6:00 AM. Allyson’s father was overseas in Iraq. Needless to say, Allyson dined with my family most nights, just so she could get a hearty meal to eat.

Sometimes Allyson would sleep over, although I never got much sleep when she did. No, Allyson didn’t steal the covers or snore. Instead, all night long, I heard her argue, apologize, and sob into her cell phone when she talked to her boyfriend. In her dreams, she cried and shook uncontrollably. I never confided in her that I heard her; I didn’t want to make her feel uncomfortable. At least that was my reasoning at the time.

Billy and Allyson had been dating for nineteen months, surprisingly because they were opposites. Billy had the body of an Olympic athlete. He was a senior on the basketball team, even though he was sent to the benches every game for some sort of violent foul. Every time this happened, his father would shout from the stands, causing a scene. His mother would try to calm her husband down, but it never worked. She would resume sweating in the dim, sauna-like gym in her teal turtleneck and sunglasses. Then her husband would throw his foam finger and use profane language. As the old saying goes, “Like father, like son.” Most referred to Billy as the stereotypical jock who beat up the freshmen “newbies” for pure pleasure. He aimed for Ds in his classes, just so he would be eligible for the sports season.

On the other hand, Allyson strived for excellence in all aspects of her life. She volunteered at the hospital helping the children cancer patients four times a week. Her class schedule consisted of every advanced course from dance to math. She was the first in our class for graduation. Some called her “a well-rounded girl headed for the Ivy League.” Her deep blue eyes, brilliant as sapphires, were her best feature. Her long golden locks shone whether it was sunny out or not. She had pale skin which never tanned, but was adorned with freckles instead. Her height was just above five foot and her weight was a bit under average.
Yes, Allyson and Billy were physically and personality-wise different. However, they claimed to be in love despite that. Allyson once said that Billy was the only person who paid attention to her because he loved her more than anything else.

Nineteen months ago, Billy and Allyson began their relationship. During the first couple of weeks, they were lip-locked while violating every other public display of affection code at our school. Slowly but surely, Billy started to control Allyson. Her cell phone vibrated forty-seven times during our thirty-minute rehearsals on Saturdays, and every single number on her missed call list was Billy’s. Sometimes she was not permitted to stay late for dance practice because “Billy didn’t like it.” When I told her I missed spending time with her, she told me that she missed me as well, but Billy wanted to be with her all of the time because she made him happy. When things escalated even more in their relationship, the hitting started. At first he would just grab her roughly, only causing red marks. Soon, those red marks turned into bruises. On those days when Allyson had new bruises, she also received a single red rose with a “Sorry!” scribbled on a piece of paper in her locker. Apparently that made everything okay again.

Today is Monday and the halls at school contain mourning teenagers offering their condolences. “Allyson never told me about her situation, but I still think I knew in my heart.” “Allyson never told me she wanted out; she always seemed so happy.” “Allyson never blah, blah, blah,” said the students who passed me in the halls. Yes, let us blame this on Allyson.

Here is what “Allyson never”: Allyson never got the attention she deserved from the people who claimed to care about her. No, we secretly resented her for leaving us for him. Sure, we gave her good luck pats and told her our secrets, but we never told her anything important, such as a hotline number that abused women can call for help. That is the reason that Allyson’s bruised, helpless body now lies in a cherry wood coffin. Now it is the present, and nothing in the past can change. Allyson didn’t tell anybody because she knew that we all knew—and yet we did nothing. She thought she was in love when actually she was in an abusive relationship for nineteen months. We turned our cheeks to Billy’s outbursts, the outbursts of Billy’s father, and Billy’s mother, who just happed to have just as much foundation under her left eye as Allyson did. We were in denial about the clothes that screamed, “I’m hiding something!” By doing this, we let Billy beat Allyson to death Saturday night and “Allyson never” got to see Sunday morning. There is no amount of roses that Billy can put in Allyson’s locker to fix this. I was too afraid to confront her when I had the chance because I was afraid it would be true. They say that “ignorance is bliss.” No. Ignorance is death.

As I reflect on the past nineteen months, I realize that every single time I passed up an opportunity to confront Allyson about her abuse because I didn’t want to make her uncomfortable was a lie. I didn’t want to feel uncomfortable! This is the story of “Allyson never.” Allyson is a symbol of all the abused who suffer in the world. Maybe one time being uncomfortable because of a confrontation with somebody on an abuse issue is awkward, but it might be better than a lifetime of guilt and thoughts about “what if.” Now, when I pull out the scrapbooks of my childhood, alone, I’ll have to make instant mashed potatoes for one, and pray that I don’t make a mess, because if I get them all over me, I won’t have Allyson to come and rescue me again.