Notes | after thinking about it for a long time, i finally decided to make a clique fanfic. my name is nicole by the way.

Disclaimer | i do not own the clique

That stage between childhood and adulthood seems to be a dark, downward spiral that you just can't seem to get out of.

In the midst of finding yourself, you start to lose the people who've been there for you since the very beginning. Instead, you turn to your friends who are just as lost and messed up as you are. But for some reason, you still decide to look to them as your guide and roadmap through the teenage years. Don't worry, adults say, it happens to everyone.

It happened to my sister, Claire Lyons; the girl whose disposition was as sunny as the state we lived in. Back in Florida, Claire was optimistic, generous, healthy and innocent—who could've asked for more in a kid? I remember when we were little; we used to go on all of these adventures in our backyard. From sun up to sun down we would spend hours pretending to travel back in time with our imaginary time machines, playing hide 'n' go seek and climbing into our tree house, looking down on our neighbors as if we were the rulers of Orlando. We were more than siblings, we were best friends.

:-:

One day, our dad got a job offer in Westchester, New York, which meant we had to move from the one place we called home to some strange city in the Mid-Atlantic. While packing up our belongings into the moving van, Claire turned to me and asked, "No matter what happens—no matter who I start hanging out with, you will always be my best friend, right?"

"Right," I promised and we shook pinkies.

Until we could afford a house of our own, we stayed in the guesthouse of our dad's old college buddy, William Block. He lived with his wife, Kendra, and only daughter, Massie, who was the same age as Claire.

"My friends and I are going to the mall, do you want to come?" Massie had invited my sister to hang out with her friends—the Pretty Committee, they called themselves. I've seen those girls, smoking cigarettes under the bleachers of Octavian Country Day. And with that invitation, Claire was sucked into that way of life as well. The girls had all went shopping for dresses to wear to some party (hosted by high school upperclassmen, no doubt). Bags from high end stores were dangling on their wrists; except for Claire and Kristen Gregory who were just holding their dresses, which still had price and security tags on them.

Now, if they went out of the store without paying for the items, wouldn't the alarms go off? Curious to find out more, I ran upstairs and listened in to the conversation going on in Claire's room. My eavesdropping problem had always been an annoyance to my sister, but I couldn't help it; I just cared about her so much.

"It isn't fair, Claire!" Kristen lamented. "How we live in the world of Armani and Versace, and we're forced to shop at the Gap." She took a screwdriver and jammed it in between the pin and security tag of one of the dresses. She offered to demonstrate the technique on Claire's dress as Claire yanked off the price tag and it landed near the crack of the door where I was watching her. BCBG, it read, seven hundred eighty dollars? I didn't understand why she could've bought a reasonably price dress somewhere else, like Marshall's or Target.

They had those stores in Westchester, didn't they?

:-:

Figuring it was all a fluke, I tried eavesdropping again the next morning. Claire was wide awake, looking in the mirror as she struggled to pull up the zipper of her dress.

It didn't fit.

Instead of going back to the store and exchanging it for a new one (she couldn't, I still can't believe she was shoplifting!), Dylan Marvil showed her an easy way to lose weight. "Whenever I'm feeling guilty about that bacon double cheeseburger I had for lunch, I just stick my two fingers down the back of my throat and I am that much closer to being a size zero."

Horrible retching sounds echoed through the closed bathroom door that evening. You're just hearing things, Todd, I thought. There was no way she could've possibly agreed to that. Don't they teach you in school that eating disorders are never the answer? That there was a healthier alternative to losing weight (not that she even needed it in the first place). Sadly, when I opened the bathroom door, I was welcomed to the stench of stomach acid and saw the residue of that night's lasagna splattered all over the edges of the toilet.

This became a regular routine for Claire.

:-:

The night of the party, the Blocks took our parents out to dinner at a local country club to get to know them better. How convenient for the girls, I thought.

"I'll take good care of Todd while you guys are gone." Claire said to our parents. Finally! I was about to get the bonding moment I've been waiting for since we arrived at Westchester. Maybe we weren't drifting after all. But at the back of my head, something was telling me this was far from what I had expected.

Massie had come over and told Claire to call Alicia Rivera to help her get ready before she left.

"There's going to be hot seniors at the party, Claire." Alicia applied excessive makeup on my sister's innocent looking face. "We want to look at least seventeen."

I watched disdainfully as Alicia turned my sister from a fourteen year old girl to a borderline clown. Claire rolled her eyes in response and suddenly I felt like I just took on the role of pesky little brother.

Honk. Honk. A car pulled up in front of the driveway, a beautiful girl with a vague resemblance to Alicia taking the wheel as she waved at the house. Before heading downstairs, Alicia hastily stuffed two socks down her bra, muttering something about always being second best.

"Claire, you told Mom and Dad you would watch me, remember?" I raced after the three girls, thinking my sister would snap out of it.

"You're twelve years old, Todd; you can look after yourself, can't you?" and with that she left. Just as I suspected; Claire was going to use the parents leaving as an excuse to go to that stupid party.

And she didn't even say goodbye to me.

:-:

Massie had invited Claire and me over to her house the next morning. Kendra and William weren't home, so she asked our parents if she could have some company.

"That was some party last night." Massie mused, helping herself to her parents' wine cabinet and offering Claire a drink. Claire didn't even hesitate to take the alcoholic beverage. After months of making bad choices, I assumed it just became second nature. The girls chatted on about the party's major events—who smoked what, who grinded on whom, but one bit of information really caught my attention.

"What happened to you and that guy you were hanging out with?" Massie asked. "One minute you two were making out and the next you guys disappeared."

"Mhm," Claire nearly choked on her wine, anxious to tell her some great news. "He took me upstairs," a sly smile grew across her face. "We did it in one of the bedrooms."

Massie's jaw dropped excitedly, as if she was proud that the naïve little blonde girl from Florida was morphing into one of her own.

I, however, was not pleased. On our way back to the guesthouse, an awkward silence encased our personal space—we both needed to say something to each other, but neither one of us wanted to speak up. But how do you talk to your sister after hearing she recently had sex?

"Claire!" I finally blurted.

"What?" she stopped dead in her tracks. A mixture of fear and anger was painted into her cerulean irises—an expression I wasn't used to seeing on her.

I hesitated. Many questions racked through my brain—Who was this guy? Did he force you? But I went with the one question that summarized by emotions to the highest degree.

"What happened to the Claire I knew back in Florida?"

She stared at me blankly, like she didn't know how to explain herself. In a perfect scenario, she would pour her heart out to me, apologizing for all the mistakes she made and breaking her promise—because that's what close siblings do.

Instead she just shrugged nonchalantly and said, "She grew up."

My heart sank when I heard those words, not just because they were harsh, but because they were true.

Back in Florida, Claire was optimistic, generous, healthy, and innocent.

Now she's cynical, a thief, bulimic, a liar, and not even a virgin anymore.

What is it adults say? Things will get better and eventually fall into place? And one day you'll realize you were foolish to be in such a hurry to grow up? Well, when is that going to happen? Sometimes I wish I can just go back and undo all this. All those times when Claire and I pretended to travel back in time, what if those time machines were real? Then all of this mess would be undone and we can go back to being the two carefree kids from Florida, having endless adventures in our backyard.

Then again, as much as it pains me to say it, this is all a part of life. Somewhere along the way, people tend to grow out of you. And even though there is only a two year difference between high school and middle school, Claire and I are worlds away.

I have to learn to accept it now. I can't hold back any longer.

I lost my best friend to the teenage years.