I'm going to write a new story. One with pretty words and happy endings. It'll be about my old friends-how we laughed and smiled and felt like everything was okay when we were together. I'll write about all our inside jokes and our games, all our misadventures and ploys. But I'll also write about our fights and our break-ups. I'll write about the times we couldn't even stand to look each other in the eye because we all knew one of us was wrong. I will write about the time my best friend and I dated the same guy, but how we're better people because of it. I can tell the world a simple story about a group of teenage losers who were anything but losers to each other. I can tell you that we had the best parties, without beer or drugs, and how we could spend hours behind the bar in my basement mixing different sodas together. I can tell you how at one point we were divided right down the middle, and how we all fell apart when our futures took us in different directions. But for now, I will tell you this: it won't be a sad story. This story is all about our memories, our jokes, and how much we needed each other.

When I'm writing this now, I'm thinking about how everything has changed so much. I have new friends, awesome and whom I love, but we still don't have that bond yet. You know, that bond where you could sit around and do nothing, but not want to leave just because of the people you're with. Or when you know what each other are thinking just with a passing look. I'm looking at my old pictures of us and I can see that my smile reached my eyes in every one. Even when I'm not smiling, there's just something about that picture that makes me smile now. Not longing, but just the memory of what was.

I got my first boyfriend last year, and the only way to describe that experience is to say that it was the absolute worst time of my life, but all the most wonderful. It almost ruined my friendship with my best friend, made my best guy friend hate my guts (and no, it's not because he had a crush on me or anything like that), and made me go back on a lot of my morals. But like I said, this isn't a sad story. It also helped me understand myself better, and remember what was really important. For a while I knew how it felt to have somebody other than my family love me, and I know that I needed that. It was just a chapter in my life that affected everyone and that none of us were ready for, and we all just had to adjust- which we did. And if I look back now, we all made a big deal out of it. But we were naïve; we didn't know what it meant to have a real boyfriend, and the fact that our friends eventually made up and joined to make one giant group, made all of the unnecessary drama worth while.

I would have a party for us every month, and we would just chill in my pool and my basement, talk about nothing, and mix our sodas. We didn't need to get high to act absolutely ridiculous. We were chill without ever being stoned. And we were definitely stupid enough without ever taking a sip of beer. I could sit here and tell you all about how much we got bullied, and how one girl put my friend in tears every week. And I can tell you how we gave our share of insults and started our slew of rumors as well. But we're teenagers, that's what we do. And I'm pretty sure that at this moment, I understand what it means to go through life with no regrets. There's definitely stuff I wish I had never done, but at the same time I wouldn't change anything, because if I didn't make the mistakes that I did then, I might not be sitting here, writing to you now.