i want to ruin our friendship
we should be lovers instead
but i don't know how to say it
cause you're really my dearest friend

-Studio Killers, "Jenny"

You'd think it would be the other way around. That she'd be the one borrowing my lipstick, using my shirt as a pillowcase, stealing my comb because it has my hair in it.

She's always looked up to me. When we were twelve I was the best thing since sliced bread because I was from New York. I wore the coolest clothes, shaved my legs, used makeup, had boyfriends...I still remember the way her jaw dropped when I showed off my skimpy yellow bikini in Sea City. I was the coolest girl ever and she'd forever be trying to catch up to me.

And then she was the first of us to have a steady boyfriend. She cut her hair, met a long-lost grandma, started coming out of her shell and making new friends, even standing up to Kristy. When we graduated, she didn't even cry or shrink back when it was time to get her diploma.

Now here we are. Junior year of high school. And suddenly the tables are turned. Well, sort of, I'm still as cool as ever but that's nothing compared to her. Not the way she's changed. She's let her hair grow out a little, her clothes are classier than ever, she got her ears pierced...she's still a little shy and quiet, but in a more ladylike, silk-hiding-steel sort of way.

Mary Anne Spier is the most beautiful girl I've ever seen, and I want her.

I don't even know when it started, just that one day we're talking after class, she laughs at something funny I said and my heart starts pounding. Like, I've heard her laugh a million times before but it was like I was hearing it for the first time. And it was beautiful.

After that it just snowballed. I'd sit in class listening to her speak and losing myself in her voice, look for excuses to be with her as much as I could, get mad whenever some guy started chatting her up and sit at home fuming when she had a date. Watching her sweaters ride up along her chest as she raises her hand. Let my hand wander a little too close to her hip whenever I had an arm around her. I marked the day she broke up with Logan on my calendar as an important memory. I never even tried to convince myself I just wanted to date him or any of the other guys she went out with.

Most people in my situation keep quiet out of fear of "ruining the friendship", but I want to ruin our friendship. We should be lovers! Were there any two people as perfect together as us? Well, okay, maybe that's going a little too far, but still. I want her, I need her, I'm completely head over heels in love with her.

And yet I still can't figure out how to tell her. Typical. Maybe I am afraid of messing things up. Maybe I know it might not last too long, or even end badly.

But I still want her. God, how I still want her. I don't care how it ends, I'd follow her anywhere, I'd crash and burn and deal with the fallout for even one night of wild monkey sex with Mary Anne Spier.

Someday...