March 2008

"Have you seen it?" Selena demanded angrily.

I knew what she was talking about, of course. She was talking about Miley's parody of us with her friend, Mandy. I could tell just by Selena's tone that she was pretty annoyed about it, but it hadn't bothered me. In fact, I actually found it kind of funny. It wasn't the end of the world, and I wasn't too upset by it. It was a little bit of fun on their part.

"Yeah, I saw it," I answered.

"What is her problem? We haven't done anything to her!"

Strictly speaking, that wasn't true. Sure, I hadn't done anything to Miley. Unfortunately, I couldn't say the same for Selena.

I knew how she felt about Nick. I knew that she liked him, and that she would have done anything for him to be as hung up on her as he was on Miley. She wanted him to write songs about her like he did about Miley, and she wanted him to see her the way he saw Miley. She wanted to see that spark in Nick's eye when he talked about Miley, but for her instead. She wanted him cherish her and worship her and be wholeheartedly devoted to his love for her like he was for Miley. She would have - and eventually she did - change things about herself to please him. She did things that weren't in her nature, and constantly got me to invite him and his brothers out with us, just so they could hang out.

It didn't help that we were being labelled as Miley's 'replacements', especially Selena. Miley wasn't stupid – she had clearly seen that Selena was moving up in both the media and in Nick's opinion, and she obviously didn't like it. So did I blame Miley for the video? No.

"We have to get her back."

"I know that you would never do anything to get revenge, Selena, especially not for everyone to see. It was a joke."

"Why did she do this?"

I knew, but I didn't tell her. I had figured out that, although I hadn't gotten to know Miley well, she was still heartbroken over what had happened with Nick. She had come to view Selena as someone who was trying to fill her place, both where her career and Nick were concerned. It was all just a series of misunderstandings.

Selena didn't know the full story about what had happened with Nick and Miley. Nick had never divulged that delightful little nugget of information, and it wasn't my place to fill her in. It was Nick's story to tell, and if he had never brought it up after that night he called me, who was I to intrude on both his relationship with Miley and his relationship with Selena? He had been dating Miley, not me, and it was his job to tell his prospective girlfriend about his history with someone who viewed Selena as a threat.

I let Selena moan and complain about how she had done nothing wrong, because that was just what I did. I listened to my friends because that was what they needed me to do. They didn't need me to tell them what I thought or who was right or wrong. They didn't even need advice. They just needed to know that there was somebody there to listen to them while they tried to work through their issues.

Selena's feelings for Nick were never going to end well. I always knew that, and I probably should have warned her that, when it came to Nick, Miley would always be his first choice. Anyone with a working pair of eyes could see that. But Selena didn't. She ignored the songs and the signs and she even ignored her friends, because she wanted to believe that Nick loved her.

Selena always has been and probably always will be my best friend, but the first time around, she was only ever his rebound girl. He was hurting after Miley, and he used her to try and push his feelings for his ex-girlfriend aside. I should have stepped in and stopped it from happening. I did nothing, and maybe that makes everything that happened between the three of them my fault.

Miley was Nick's number one, even when he was flirting with Selena. While he texted Selena during the day and acted like everything was fine, he went home, sat at his piano or on his bed with a guitar in his lap and continued to write songs for Miley. Maybe those songs would bring her back to him and maybe they wouldn't, but either way, he needed to let his emotions out, and that was how he did it.

The video didn't offend me like it offended Selena. It offended Nick and his brothers more than it offended me. To me, it only confirmed the sad truth that the three boys who had been Miley's best friends a year beforehand had suddenly turned on her, all because things had ended badly with her and Nick. Two of her best friends had left her in the lurch over something that wasn't really anything to do with them. Sure, there was all that sibling loyalty crap, but sibling loyalty didn't mean abandoning a friend in her time of need. Sibling loyalty didn't call for you to look for reasons to hate the girl you had once seen as a sister.

That was the decisive difference between Selena and me. She, like the boys, was looking for reasons to hate Miley, not because she wanted to be in Miley's position but because she wanted the one that Miley had that Selena could never have – Nick's love.

Perhaps the saddest part of the story is the simple and often unrecognised fact that, throughout everything, they still loved each other. Nick continued to write about her, and Miley continued to write about him. But their relationship had been diminished into this taboo subject that we all avoided like the plague, and it killed me. I knew that they still loved each other, but I couldn't even tell him to man up and fight for what he wanted, because he didn't want to hear it. He was stubborn and difficult and didn't want to admit that he was wrong that night in December.

Maybe, just maybe, if I had stopped worrying about getting caught in the middle, I could have stopped everything that happened.