Life

* Some names have been changed.

Growing up, every Sunday night my family gathered at my Granny and Poppy's house across town for spaghetti dinner. If I slept over the night before, I watched Granny roll the meatballs and brown the sausage that Sunday morning before dropping each in the sauce to simmer. I thought every family spent their Sunday nights like that, and I loved our family ritual. After dinner was over, we all retreated into the living room and watched TV. Then we hugged and kissed good-bye and went to our homes to prepare for the school and work week.

Although my time with my family was special and something I looked forward to, school wasn't. Due to being painfully shy, I had trouble fitting in. I was bullied for being overweight and had teachers who didn't care enough to help me in the subjects I struggled in. In between being ridiculed for my size and feeling as if I were dumb, I had very few close friends and was often alone.

I had two great best friends while growing up, and they were my only saving grace. I met Sierra and Rachel in kindergarten, and we were in the same Girl Scouts troop together. We each had younger siblings who were near in age and mothers who were involved in school functions. The two of them lived six houses apart in a suburban neighborhood about five minutes away from the busy street where I lived. Sleepovers, Halloween, and numerous birthday parties with both of them made life better. Sierra and Rachel were like night and day, however, and I fell in the middle, being a little bit of both of them.

I didn't become good friends with Sierra until third grade, when we were placed in the same class. Even back then, she had a wild streak to her. Sierra would tell a joke and get a group to burst into laughter; she was the girl the boys had crushes on, the girl who always had a ton of girls attend her annual birthday sleepover. I was content living life on the sidelines and taking in all the excitement that followed her. While I was socially awkward and not exactly considered a hot tamale, Sierra was. Boys adored her.

One particular incident occurred when we were about eight years old. Sierra liked a boy in our class and wanted me to pass him a note from her. The note said, "I like you. Do you like me?" As her loyal sidekick, I, of course, said yes. I put the note on his desk and slipped away. He came over to me and asked who had given him the note. While all eyes and ears were on me, I began to stutter. He asked again, and before I knew it, I said, "Sierra."

She wanted to kill me, as you can imagine. But I didn't fully grasp the whole concept of "Shhh! It's a secret note to my crush. Don't tell him it's from me." I was a buffoon. At least now we laugh about it. That's just how life with Sierra was while growing up. Wherever she went, I followed. Whatever she told me to do, I did (to an extent).

Rachel was the opposite of Sierra. She was quiet, and if someone made her upset, she cried. She and I preferred to stay in and rent teen movies starring Freddie Prinze Jr. while munching on popcorn or my mom's homemade pizza. I became best friends with her in the fourth grade, when she was seated next to me in class. Sierra became placed in another classroom that year, so we saw her on the playground at recess and during Girl Scouts.

Rachel and I started having sleepovers every Friday night, alternating between her house and mine. We didn't have to ask each other; it was simply understood where to be at what time. The Friday nights when she came to my house were fun; she arrived after dinner, and we painted our nails or made ice cream sundaes with my mom and my younger sister, Lin, in the kitchen. Immediately after that, we retreated to my room, closed the door, and put on the latest Backstreet Boys CD and choreographed our own dance moves to it. My favorite member was Nick Carter, and I really and truly believed I would marry him one day. We both liked pizza, the color green, and telling jokes — it was meant to be. So there we were, week after week, dancing and laughing in our sleeping bags until the sun came up.

Since Rachel and I spent so much time together, our teachers quickly caught on. We still hung out with Sierra, but she had made friends with some of the more popular girls in our grade and was doing her own thing. We even went as far as to get a blue heart necklace that was cracked in half; one half said "Best," and the other half said "Friend." We were attached at the hip.

Well, the day came when we were due to find out what class we were going to be in for fifth grade, and one at a time, we walked up to the front of the classroom for our assignment. I came back and asked everyone around me what class he or she was in. I asked one boy who sat near me what teacher he had, and it turned out he was in a different class. I continued to ask all the other boys and girls while I waited for Rachel's turn. I forgot that I had asked that boy, so I asked him again.

He said, "I just told you who I have for fifth grade. Stop asking!" (I made a mental note not to have him sign my yearbook.) And then Rachel came back and broke the news; she had been placed in a different classroom. So the recess bell rang, and I cried on the swing set. Sierra tried to comfort me by announcing she was in the same class as me. "But ... it's not the same," I managed to get out while my sobs grew louder. For a person without many friends, that day was heartbreaking. But that was just my first taste of life's unfairness.

Fifth grade arrived, and there I was, talking to my best friend in the bus lineup and then walking into a different class once we entered the building. That September, Sierra and I got invited to a pool party for a girl who went to church and school with us. Sierra kept encouraging me to dive into the pool, and despite my best efforts not to try, she won. While I was a natural fish who spent hours in my own pool, I couldn't dive to save my life. There I was, holding my nose with one hand and plunging into the pool in my navy-blue Winnie the Pooh bathing suit from Kmart.

That was when I noticed it. Two of the popular girls and the birthday girl were snickering and looking my way. I jumped in, with the splashes getting louder each time. I knew I was the biggest girl at that party, so my tasteful one-piece suit stood out. Everyone else wore trendy bikinis, displaying bony, undeveloped bodies. I told Sierra I had no desire to dive again, and when she asked why, I shrugged. She wasn't buying it, so we continued to swim. She asked again what was wrong, and I blurted out, "The girls over there are making fun of you and me." While there was clearly nothing wrong with her, I was too ashamed to say it was me they were targeting.

And just like that, Sierra swam over to the others and blurted out, "Hey! What is your problem?"

The birthday girl gave her an odd look and said, "Nothing. What are you talking about?" Sierra had no intention of stepping down; she was moving full speed ahead as I watched this whole encounter in silence.

She continued, "I saw you looking our way and laughing, so something is funny. What's your problem?" The birthday girl and her two other cronies smirked and insisted they weren't talking about us. I finally told Sierra to forget it. We changed out of our wet bathing suits and got ready for pizza and cake with everyone else. And that was the...