I'll do anything for you?

"Eppie," Mario waved his hand in front of me with a silly grin on his face, "Are you alive?"

I giggled, "I think so."

His laughter joined mine in a song, "That's a relief. You're staring me down, you know."

"Oh."

Aren't I always?

I tried to divert his attention by saying, "Whatcha writing?"

"Oh, nothing," he doodled a random line around his paper.

"It's never nothing," I smiled at him knowingly.

He reached over and squeezed my hand. My heart flew for a second.

Mario is, by far, my best friend. I never really had a better one, actually. I mean, I've had my share of good friends, but as soon as I met Mario, he became my world.

It was the seventh grade when I first met him. I was new in town; I'd just moved from New York City to the small Canadian suburb of Georgetown. My father had lost a lot of money and we had to move out of the city. My first day was a disaster. I tried to be confident and I tried to make friends, but most of the girls were so snobby. The only person I met was Sophie Stein, an "activist", as she referred to herself, who invited me to eat lunch with her. I was glad for that, considering no one else would talk to me. By lunch, Sophie had explained all of the snobby girls- Abigail, Manny and Lynsie- to me and told me about some of the more accepting groups at our school. I was listening intently until I saw him. I cannot, in English words, adequately describe how hard my heart was pounding in the moment Mario came and sat with us. Of course, Sophie knew this god and quickly introduced me, but I couldn't talk to him for three days without stuttering.

Sophie called it a schoolgirl crush and told me not to demean myself, so I said nothing of my feelings after that first day. Yet with each passing day, they grew. He became my only reason for going to school. I talked to him all the time and eventually, we became friends. After a while, nothing else seemed important. I never saw Sophie anymore. She was trivial.

Mario was an incredible writer. He could turn anything into tragic prose. But he was naïve in a way, too. He thought he knew so much about the world, but he never saw what was right in front of his face.

Today, we sat in history class. He doodled something on a bit of paper and I watched him with that dreamy stare he would never notice. To the right of me sat Abigail Ashenbahler, the most popular girl in school. She was hanging sluttishly on the arm of her dimwit boyfriend, Jeremy, not to mention hanging on to every word that came out of his slow drawl. Behind me sat Javen Cartesian, who Mario liked to call, "the tortured soul". Javen was scribbling something to- probably some sort of plot for revenge against the cruel world. Suddenly, the bell rang. As we filed slowly out of the classroom, Jeremy shoved Javen into a locker. Abigail cackled as they walked away. Only Sophie rushed to help him up.

"Insane," Mario shook his head at Javen. As we left he said, "Why does everyone hate him?"

I shrugged. It reminded me of a girl I knew in New York when I was in kindergarten. Cassandra Cole. I remembered her only too well. Cassandra was so pretty, and I was incurably jealous of her. Since I was the most popular girl in my class (I still treasure this, even though it was in kindergarten) I beat up on her for it. I led the entire class in teasing her. I still feel slightly guilty about it sometimes, especially since I realize now that Cassandra had been abused. It was all too obvious. She came in one day with a huge blue bruise on her shin that she said had come from falling down the stairs, and two days later she was gone. Various classmates mentioned her in later years. Some swore her parents had murdered her. Others said Social Services whisked her away. As children, we weren't allowed the information.

"So," Mario said, "Tomorrow's Friday, thank goodness."

I smiled as we got on the bus to go home.

"Yes, thank goodness. Did you want to do something tomorrow? You know- see a movie or something?"

Mario nodded, "That would be nice."

We sat down and agreed to see The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Mario loved the novel and had wanted to see the new film for quite some time. I watched the glee appear in his face, and- it was irresistible- I reached out and touched his curly brown hair. It seemed to sync with his deep blue eyes, which were like oceans just waiting for you to drowning in their unpredictable depth. He hypnotized me.

"I like the way you wear your hair," I grinned, cocking my head to one side.

He laughed, his face getting a little red, "Oh, Eppie. Stop teasing me."

"I do!" I faced him and looked straight into his eyes, "It's perfect. You should never change it."

He rolled his eyes, smiling. It thrilled me that I'd made him blush, even a little.

Mario looked out the window, "It's raining."

"Wow, it is," I agreed, as if I'd just noticed this, too.

"I like the rain, but it makes me kind of depressed once in a while," he remarked, "Watching the rain slide down the window is like watching tears sliding down someone's face."

I reached my hand out to touch his face, thinking, I would never let tears slide down your face.

"But when you're with someone, rain is beautiful. I mean, can you imagine it, Eppie?" he turned to me as I pulled my hand back, "Walking through the rain, holding the hand of somebody you really, really love…" he gazed back into the rain dreamily, "It would just… glorify everything."

I turned the other way, a tear falling down my face like rain sliding down a window.