Me and Ben

This is a story.
Please don't think that it's inapropriate or weird because, well, it really isn't.

Once upon a time, there was a girl who was starting Junior High after not going to school for five and a half years. She was tall, skinny, had her hair in her face all the time, wore skinny jeans and t-shirts, Converse sneakers, and had no friends because, well, she was new.

On her first day of school, she didn't really talk to anybody in her homeroom. They all had friends. The first part of the day was really boring. She didn't know anybody and she felt weird.

After lunch that one day, she met a girl named Emma. Emma was a goth girl who was actually very sweet. They were instantly best friends and had tech ed. class together. They swapped numbers, became Facebook friends, and started hanging out in between classes and in homeroom.

One day there was a cookout for school. She was bored and decided to go find Emma and they met up. There, Emma introduced her to her boyfriend, Ben.

Ben was weird, she could already tell. He ruffled her hair, proclaimed it soft, informed her she was his kitty, and they hugged before he even knew her name. After only a couple days, they became best, best friends.

The thing about being best friends with somebody is that people know you're best friends. Ben was tall, skinny, had hair in his face, wore skinny jeans and t-shirts, and Converse sneakers. Seeing a trend here? Everybody saw them together. A lot of people liked to ask the same questions over and over again.

"Wait, are you guys brother and sister? Because you seriously look related. You could be twins! Or cousins or something. Are you serious?"
"Um, no, we just met a few weeks ago."

After about a month, Emma and Ben broke up. It was hard on all three of them, but Emma and Ben wanted the girl to choose sides: be Emma's friend or Ben's friend. They wouldn't speak to each other and were being very disagreeable. She finally just told them that if they kept it up, she would just hang out with other friends.

Luckily, after about three weeks, Emma and Ben made up. They started speaking and sitting at lunch and in class, and they even apologized. And after everything was fixed, the girl got closer to both Emma and Ben, which raised another question:

"Aw, you guys are such a cute couple! Are you two dating? You are SO perfect for each other! I mean, adorable!"
"No. We're just friends."

But nobody seemed to hear that. Rumors started, crazy ones, about the two, and they were getting really mad. They both put up Facebook posts informing everyone that they weren't dating. They didn't want all this weird attention when they were just friends.

Even though the rumors didn't stop, they didn't really care. They just continued to act the way they did, just like normal friends, and told people to mind their own business and no, they weren't dating. Even through these rumors they survived.

Well, duh, the girl in the story is me. We live happily ever after. Ben really is like a brother to me. He's seen me cry (many times, heh heh), he's made me laugh, and even though people are spreading obnoxious rumors about us (some of which are just mean), we continue to hug in the hallways and shove each other off the bench at lunch and I'll continue to steal his food at lunch and he'll continue to copy my homework answers. It's just some little annoying things we do, because Ben is my best friend. We're not dating, it is actually possible to be friends with a boy and not be in love with them.

And of course, Ben could never replace my Christian friends, like Krista, Liam, and Ozzy, because they ARE family to me...in Jesus. But I really wanted to post this so that you guys could see that I've had stupid rumors thrown at me about my friendship. We ARE awkwardly close for two opposite sex friends. I know that. But it's okay with us. We're stupid teenagers.

And until I stop stealing his tater tots at lunch, we always will be :)