I suppose I can't really say how or when it happened. It isn't as if you look over at a complete stranger- or even someone you've just barely talked to over the years- and decide 'hey yeah, I want you as a best friend'. No, I guess that nothing really works quite like that when it comes to people. And I suppose that goes for those you love or even fall in love with, either. It just sorta happens. Like one day you're walking down the hallway, and you just stop, thinking to yourself 'when did that happen?', and then you're left there in the middle of the hallway with people all around you looking at you with your strange expression and look in your eyes, not even aware that you just realized you've somehow managed to get yourself a new best friend. It isn't like when you were little and all of your classmates became your best friends just because you shared your crayons. No, when you're older, you find that getting new best friends isn't an everyday occurrence. And when it comes to high school, you could have known most of the other people around you for going on four years; you definitely aren't expecting to be making any new best friends then, right as you're about to leave for the "real world" where chances are you won't even be speaking to most of your classmates soon enough.

So, no, I can't really say when it happened. It just sorta did. And when the realization hit me, I wasn't even sure how to feel about it anymore. She always just sorta used to bug me. She always just there, everywhere, in everything. She stuck her nose where it never belonged, and her only friends were those in the glee club where she only somehow managed to be even more annoying than she already was. There were so many times in our lives that I just wished she would disappear, just never come back to the high school that I went to just so I never had to see that stupid smile or hear that name that induced ear bleeding. God forbid, that screeching she called singing.

But I think that maybe it was because she was always there that this all really happened.

I remember the evening that she and I had really our first and only fight in all the years we'd known one another. We'd bickered before, sure- usually over her bossy way of forcing ideas down my throat or nonexistent relationships with boys, but it was never something like this. It was a scary thing at first. There was no yelling or anything, only a heavy silence that seemed to deafen the room. She sat on my windowsill, and I was still perched on the end of my bed where she'd left me once the palm of her hand had left a sting in its place on my cheek. And then there was this. Silence. No arguing, no words exchanged to further the talk we'd been having for what felt like endless hours now. Nothing. She simply sat there, smoked on one of my all black cigarettes that my brother-in-law had brought back for me and that she'd stolen from my case earlier, and ran a hand through her tousled hair. Nothing else. And it was that which frightened me the most.

Finally, after the useless remains of her nicotine-depleted stick had been carelessly flicked two stories below, she stood and let out an almost silent, long sigh under her breath. What had we even been fighting about to begin with? My mind raced and swam a little bit at the same time somehow as I failed to recall every word that'd been exchanged. The shock of the slap still had me in its grasp, and I flinched involuntarily as she moved. But she just grabbed the jacket thrown to the bed space beside me and simply headed for my closed door.

Her hand on the knob, she didn't turn back when she spoke slowly. "Don't paint black that which was once golden." And then she was gone. It was all the advice I clung to after that. Thoughts slowly floated back as images raced behind my eyelids of her coming over earlier that day because I'd called her little too late the night before, drunk and lonely after a long day of screaming contests with my mother about something trivial that led to talks of my future plans and colleges I didn't wish to attend.

And of course, she was there. Always there. Trying to help someone that had long since given up trying to help them self, so far past the point of caring that they might as well not have even been there anymore, someone who was just bad dye jobs, poor attitude, and binge drinking. And yet she was there- there with her hand on a shoulder that didn't even realize how badly it longed for touch until someone thought to be hated fought her way through cruel words to be there to simply lay a hand. And perhaps it hadn't been a fight at all. Perhaps it'd been seen that way, but now I can almost admit without thinking that it hadn't been a fight at all but simply an act of pure desperation trying to get through clouded judgement and harsh words that she never deserved.

So maybe that's when it happened. Or maybe not. It isn't like that was the first or second, hell, even tenth or twentieth time she'd been there and with no thanks or gratitude of any sort in return. Maybe it happened a really long time ago, and it was just simply that now I was choosing to finally open my eyes and see things for how she was trying so hard for them to be like for so long. I'm not sure what she saw that kept her fighting. In all honesty, if someone were to push me away so hard for so long, I probably would have just given up.

It'd been months now since the downfall. I hadn't spoken to almost anyone else at that school for months now, apart from the other girls dressed in black underneath the outside bleachers only to ask for cigarettes or a light. I call it a downfall because I suppose it was a downfall for the past me. But I don't think I'd ever been as happy with myself as I was now. For the most part anyway. At night, I admit, thoughts that never reached me before were now clinging to me and finding me when I was alone with no power to stop them. Drinking was fine, but it was becoming my escape. Among other things.

And I didn't want to bring her down with me, but I did see a change in her occurring as well. She began asking for cigarettes and would join me when she had breaks even just to smoke together in a comfortable silence. And we got looks at first, looks she ignored and that I returned. She would only ask for one every now and again or just take the one from my hand to take a few drags of before giving it back. She had to protect that voice of hers. And then she began changing the way that she dressed. She said she liked the clothes I wore better. Which I was happy about. It was time she stopped dressing like a toddler. And then we would get alcohol from random places- her dad's cellar, my brother-in-law would get it for us, sometimes we paid random strangers who were simply nearby and older than us. That was until we got our fake I.D.s. I felt mixed emotions about her slow changes. It wasn't really... her.

But then her quick remarks or sudden disappearances for practices or invitations to performances or random songs being sung throughout the day reminded me she was still her. She was just a different her. Once I brought up my concerns, and she simply laughed. "We all change at least some in our lives. It's a part of growing up. And maybe this won't always be me. But I think I'd be just as happy if it were." We never spoke of it again.

And then once upon a time, it was almost three in the morning, and my head was swimming with, not the glass but, the bottle of wine I'd finished on my own. I wanted one night to not think about anything, and yet I had galaxies of wonderings flood into me in a way that I couldn't manage to catch each one to string together constellations. She'd somehow dragged me along to a party thrown by people I used to call friends, and I wasn't sure what either of us were doing there.

She tasted like the salt of tears, cigarettes, and alcoholic vomit. She was sloppy and pinched my skin in her bracelets. Her necklace caught my hair in them at least five times, and honestly I just wished she would leave me alone.

It was the most disgusting and vile thing that could have happened in my life- ….and yet I wouldn't have traded that first kiss with her for any other.

I couldn't even tell you why really.

And so I still can't decide when it happened or even how. Thinking back, maybe it was something stupid and cliche like from a movie when a couple of girls who happen to have become best friends get drunk one random night. And since no one saw it and we hadn't spoken of it sine, hey, maybe it was all actually just a dream. But like I said before, like a million people have said before me, you don't just look over at someone one day and decide to love them.

You only hope that they love you back.