Indescribable Love

Madeline Briker, 16
New York

Artwork by April Whitlow, 19, Missouri

We lay down on the bed, gazing into each other’s eyes. Now I know what you’re thinking: this is one of those gushy relationship stories. But it’s not. It’s about love, but a different kind of love. You know the kind that best friends share, when they are as close to being brother and sister as possible. We would talk on the phone every night. He would tell me about his friends living halfway across the world; I would tell him about how I was crushing on one of his best friends. Even when he had his math final the next day, we were still on the phone until one o’clock. He became the type of friend that I could tell anything, and we would always be close. I could always get mad at him for doing something stupid, but he would never get mad at me. We sometimes fought. I told him he was being a jerk and he would say I was being delusional. But we got over that stupid fighting quickly.

Things started to change though, after about three months. He had a girlfriend, and I was being left in the dark. Well, not completely left out. The battle really started at high school graduation. He had friends who were graduating, and I had a friend whose sister was also graduating. So, we decided to go together; after all, we wouldn’t see each other for the entire summer. But then he sees his new girlfriend, and she decides to come and sit with him. Little did I know that I would be ignored for the next hour. Later that night, I confronted him about it and he told me that he was trying to “juggle two conversations.” I tried to believe that he was telling me the truth, but I just couldn’t. I was pissed off, and I was jealous; I was not getting the attention that I had always received.

Then it had hit me: I was falling for him. This was wrong, it couldn’t happen! No one could know. But, having the big mouth that I do… I was at my friend’s house, “studying” for our biology final, when I just blurted it out. She was in total shock, and we decided to call him and say hi. One conversation led to another, and I just blurted it out, once again. Except now, he knew. I dropped the phone, and started crying hysterically. How could I like my best friend?
Later that night, my phone began to ring. It was him. I picked it up, still in shock. At first, I really didn’t know what to say; after all, I had just confessed that I truly liked one of my best friends. As I started to cry again, we both just went silent. It was one of those moments in which we both knew what each other was thinking, so we didn’t have to talk. After one of the longest silences I have ever endured, we started to talk. I listened and I cried. He stayed on the phone with me until I cried myself to sleep.

A few days later, he was leaving for the summer, and we would be more than 8,000 miles away from each other. I went over to his house along with three of his best friends who I already knew. At first it was a little awkward, but that passed quickly. For about two hours we played baseball and just did really random things, like play X-Box. And then, just like that, he left. For the next two months, we would be apart.

At the beginning of the school year, it was like nothing had ever changed, except for the fact that I was now a sophomore and he was a senior. To this day, no one understands our relationship. People have asked our friends, “Are they going out?” and everyone has to be told the simple answer of “no.” They just don’t understand it. I can’t say I really understood it either, until one day when he said, “I don’t care if you are mad at me to the point of punching me, or just happy with me, I will always be behind you. I care about you more than anyone else in this world.” Luckily, I realized I can say the same.