Girl Friends or Boyfriend

            by Maria Parangueo

 

 

My friends are weird, especially when it comes to boys.  I have this friend, who is called Mk for short.  Mk is African American, tall, likes to have fun and tries not to worry about guys. Then I have another friend, Jesme, who is crazy about boys.  She is tall, wears glasses and has bushy eyebrows.  Jesme, Jesme is obsessed with guys.  Boys are all she breathes, eats and thinks.  She is not that clever.  I don't think that she has a brain, or if she does she never uses it.  The only time she uses it is when she thinks about how to get boys back or to make boys jealous.  Nobody from our group likes her.

Her voice is the most annoying quality.  "Oh my God you guys", "Twin", and her special "Buddy", are the common phrases she uses at school.  Jesme started to say “Twin” to me right after our history teacher said that we were like twins since we were together most of the time. At first I didn’t cared that much, but after a while I wanted to put tape over her mouth.  I can even hear her from miles away.  As soon as we hear her going down the stairs, we run as fast as we can.   She is like a horror movie that lasts eight hours every single day.  Her voice over the phone is even more irritating. The two-hour phone calls that are only about don’t even include “Hi”.

It was worse when I had History with her. I would always get a puzzled, "What are you supposed to do", right after the teacher had explained the assignment.  Half the time she talked about her ex-boyfriends.  Jesme didn’t care if she got a bad grade in that class.  All she cared about was her guys and if she had her guys she was happy.  The problem was that I was the one that had to deal with her problems. 

"Maria, Chan is not talking to me", or, "I am so in love with Carl".  Mk and I don't know what is worse, her talking about having a boyfriend or not having one.  When Mk and I had fourth period together last year we started to write about her.  We turned a simple innocent notebook into our little dark, hate-book.  In our notebook we would talk about what made us not like Jesme or just things that we wouldn't like about her.  It lasted for a year before we burned it so that Jesme wouldn't find out.  Mk and I felt a tiny bit guilty.

I remember last year, a day before rally we were in the C building in the first floor.  She told me that she had broken up with her boyfriend Chan because he wasn't treating her right.  That day she was crying her eyes out, so Mk and I decided to skip first period to help her out.  We went behind of the C building to have a talk.

 "Jesme it's ok he’s not even worth it,” I told her.

But apparently she did not need us for anything.  Two days later, she realized that she needed a guy because she was lonely and wanted to know, "Why did I break up with him?”

 

 WTF!!!

 

From then on all Jesme wanted to do was to talk about how much she regretted breaking up with Chan. Mk wanted to murder her.   We wanted to help her by giving her advice. But all she wanted to do was try to get Chan back at any cost since he was the love of her life.

Chan didn't want anything to do with Jesme.  Chan stopped saying hi to her and started ignoring her.  It was a weird situation for Jesme to be there with us when Chan would come to say hi to Mk and me.  He would just plain ignore her, and Mk and I would enjoy it a lot.  In a way we wanted her to suffer.  That way she could at least learn something from it.  Right after he was gone we would get her famous," Why is he not talking to me" speech.

She broke up with him and now she wanted him back, but Chan didn’t want Jesme back.

F*&%#@g move on, forget him.

 

That was a mistake.  A big and stupid mistake.  And for some stupid reason she decided to listen to me when before she didn't even care what advice I had given her.  She came up with a plan to get Chan jealous because that way she could get over Chan.  That plan was a senior named Aldo.  Without Jesme there, Mk and I built a stronger friendship. 

That happiness shattered when Aldo broke up with her for another girl.  It was back to square one with Jesme, crying her eyes out and asking herself “What have I done wrong?”

One day, Mk saw Aldo with the girl that he left Jesme for.  Mk and I had tried to warn her before Aldo would break up with her. We told her but she refused to believe us because she thought that he wouldn't do that.

Right.  He wouldn't do that to you because he is faithful.  What kind of a person is stupid enough to not believe her "best" friends?

She got over Aldo really fast.  Once again she decided to get a boyfriend in order to get her ex-boyfriends jealous.  She ended up dating Aldo’s friend Jesse. My family and some friends have asked me "Why do you even hang out with her?"  I ask myself the same question every night before I go to sleep. 

“Mk, why do we hang out with Jesme”, I asked her one day, wondering what she was going to say.

            She laughed and then said she couldn’t think of anything.

I can never get an exact answer either.  Jesme, Mk and me had an answer to this question two years ago when we hung out with our friend Kayla.  "Kayla, we don't want to hang out with you anymore."  Just like that, with no feelings involved.  There was no hesitating or any attempt to not sound mean.  I felt bad.  I had met her mom and had even been to her house, yet we did that shady thing to her.  I regret doing that to her.

 Sometimes I think that that is the reason why I can't tell Jesme that I don't want to be her friend.  I feel kind of bad for her.  She is so sentimental and she doesn't really have friends.  I also thought that there could be some hope left.  As in she could change her whole perspective about having a guy with her all the time.

 There was a moment where she was there for me.  It was last year.  One day after school I wasn't feeling well.  I was about to faint.  I left right away so I could go home and rest.  One hour after I got home the phone rang.  It was Jesme asking me if I was ok, when nobody else seem to care.

“ Hello, Maria,” she said.

“Hi Jesme what’s up?”

“I just called to see if you were feeling better,” she replied.

“Yeah thanks Jesme.  I am feeling much better thanks,” I told her.

“Ok then I’ll see you tomorrow,” she finally said.

“Ok, I’ll see you tomorrow.  Bye.”

“Bye,” she said back.

 I was surprised and I started to think that she was a "good friend".  I even thought that I was being mean to her, especially when she was trying to help me.  I decided that we were going to start fresh, without me being mean to her. After that, we considered each other good friends.  The type of friends who would care about each other. 

I have always been the type of friend that whenever someone needed me I would be there until the end.   I have always helped people with their problems and things they need help on.  The more I helped her, the more I had to deal with their problems.  I have learned from this exact experience that I need to stop helping them so often.  Especially if I don’t want deal with my friends and their stupid boy problems.   I have also had so many problems with my past friends for helping them out.  One time one of my so-called friends said that I liked her boyfriend.  Another a time I was accused of trying to steal a guy.  I started to hang out with other people.

 

            I thought that once I was in high school, things were going to be different.  I thought that students were going to be more mature and start acting like young adults.  That was not the case.  On my way to be more mature I bumped with Jesme and her childish guy problems.

In the blink of an eye I became a "bad friend", or better yet not a "true friend", according to her grandma.  While I was a "bad friend" Mk became a "liar".  We just told her to move on.

 But how am I a bad friend?

             I am still trying to figure that out.  I was always there with her through the good times and the bad ones.  I have always tried to help her out with her problems. She's all in my face getting mad, getting hysterical and saying lot of thing that don't even make sense.  Just because Jesme can’t resolve one problem named Chan.  Just because I told her to move on doesn't mean that it's my fault. Then Mk came over to see what was happening.

"Yesterday I just went home and kind of talked to my grandma about all this and she thinks you guys aren’t my true friends, because I told her ya’ll telling me to give up and she says that friends don’t do that.”  

“ Jesme trust us.  We want the best for you.  We want to see you happy but not with him,” said Mk.

“I agree with Mk,” I said to Jesme.

 

"You guys don't even care about how much I love him because if you did, then you guys wouldn't be telling me shit that is not true.”

“Why would we lie to you about something like that?” Mk said.

At that moment I wanted to tell her the whole truth.  Chan had moved on since last year.  He now has a girlfriend and he even makes fun of Jesme.   Once again I told her that for her own good she should move on.

Jesme was even more mad and said, “I am going to do what my mom and the rest of my family says, not what you guys want because by trying to push me away from him and trying to get me to stop loving him, you guys are the ones trying to hurt me, not him.”

“ How are we hurting you? “ I replied back.

            “ You guys just don’t like him that is why,” she said.

            “ We talk to him all the time when we see him,” said Mk.

“What the hell makes you guys think that you are going to make me stop loving him? It hasn’t worked the past fucking year, its not going to work now.  I am going to end up going out with him when everything cools down, I don’t care what you guys think.”

“ Ok then do whatever you want with your life.  I am not going to talk about Chan no more.”

“Maria, all I want you to do is to support me in the decision I make and not go against me,” Jesme replied back.

“ Yeah I am going to support you on whatever decision you make but I don’t want you to talk about him no more.”

I  said that to get her off me and to stop involving me in her problems.  That is when I decided to give up and let her do whatever she wants to do.   Now we are not that cool with each other, but we act like nothing has happened between us.    I won’t see her after high school and that means I only have to deal with her for eight more months to.  I am not even going to remember her.