Thoughts

October's Very Own: The Price of Friendship

Tuesday, 30 October 2018.

11:41am

I am tired now.

I am tired of reliving the past that is full of torment, suffering and pain. The first eighteen years of my life were a hell that I would love nothing more than to erase from my mind.

Funny how the one thing I want to forget is the only thing I fail to.

It doesn’t matter anyway. What is done is done. My life does have fun moments in them. Like my time in collage. Those were the days I lived for. My first experience with boys was not one I would care to share with you all so don’t ask. It was at a party and I was drank for most of it. But like all my life, collage had those moments you’d wish you were dead during.

I found Gwendolyn Lynch there.

Barbie could not just stay away from me for any amount of time. I was sure that my life was going to be a replay of Secondary school, but with more shame and social abuse than ever before.

But Gwen was, for a lack of a better word, quiet. She kept to herself most nights at parties. She didn’t hang with a large group of girls that would highlight her pretty face nor did she socialize with boys that all wanted to get on second base with her. If I didn’t know any better, she was trying to stay invisible here. If she had finally gone broke and decided to be down to earth then my life would have been too good to be true.

And yeah, it was too good to be true.

So Gwen wasn’t reformed. She was just homeless.

Let me explain. Mr. Lynch had been on an overseas business adventure that would have racked in millions and millions of dollars for the empire he had already built. Trouble was that the meeting wasn’t all too legitimate in the eyes of the law. So one thing led to another and he was now sitting in a federal prison somewhere in China. Gwen, being a minor and having no real connection to the illegal dealings of his father, was left with only the petty cash they kept around the mansion, which was seized by the state and sold.

As of now, Gwen was on a half scholarship at the university, pending her curriculum performance.

I am not a heartless monster. But seeing Gwen in this state was pure elation to my heart. You have no idea how many times she had shoved my head down a toilet in high school. She had been constantly treating everyone like trash just because she had more money than us. I could not have been happier than seeing Gwen in second hand clothes.

Her attitude on the other hand was not improved in the least bit.

I admit that I should never have approached her at the party. But I was intoxicated and already looking for a fight. Her first reaction to seeing me was priceless. She was completely surprised, which turned to fear in an instant.

Why would she be afraid you ask? Well, in this world that we lived in now, I was rich and she was just another pretty girl I could ruin completely. I will never forget that face as long as I live. It keeps me going when I sometimes wake up in the morning and start coughing up blood.

Anyway… the fear didn’t last long. She recovered herself long enough to ask me to please leave her alone. The fact that she had dared to use the word “please” was just a plea for me to ruin her.

And ruin her I did.

Looking back at that night… I think I really am a heartless monster. I don’t regret talking bad about Gwen. Don’t get me wrong but the girl had it coming to her. What I regret, and I believe is my worst mistake, was bring her family into it.

It was bad.

Bad enough for Gwen to retaliate by reminding me just why exactly Edna and I were coming to see them all those twenty eight weekends in different countries all over the world.

I am not proud of what happened after that.

Plus, who knew Gwen was strong enough to be able to send both of us through the first floor window and into the pool? No one was injured. Well, unless you count my mild concussion and Gwen’s sprained wrist as injuries. When I woke up I was at the hospital having six stitches on my head where the glass had grazed me on my way out the window.

So, the university was not super thrilled that a window was broken on campus. Not only did we have to pay for it, a hundred hours of community service was required from both of us.

As if I needed a hundred more reasons to hate Gwen. And four hours of my day spent with her cleaning up the campus was not even the number one reason.

But you learn a lot when you spend four hours of your day for a month doing chores with the same person. Two weeks into our sentence and it became apparent that Gwen was not invisible in campus by choice. People didn’t just notice her, even with all that beauty she had.

What was weirder about this was that Gwen was not in the least bit quick to correct this social error in her life. When my friends came to spring me from jail, Gwen was always collecting her things and going off in the opposite direction I was heading. It was impossible to believe that Gwen, Barbie Gwen of all people, courted the solitude that came with being a loner.

We never spoke for the month we were together. Not until the final day of the sentence, and it was the briefest of conversations.

“Your friends are fake.”

That was what she said to me. Ninety six hours of no communication between us and she opens it by slandering people I have known for about a year. Gwen really was a ray of sunshine in this world.

She was right, of course. My friends had mostly been with me since I financed many of our escapades. Sometimes I missed being alone with just Edna and Roni. People who knew that I was just a normal orphan who was shown this world of money as a mercy. But if that was the price of friendship, I was more than happy to pay it.

I could afford to anyway.

But Gwen had a solid point on the topic since. Not one of her “friends” helped her take care of her twin sisters when her father was locked up and their home taken.

That was all true. Every bit of what Gwen was saying was true. But I reminded her that were she not such an insufferable ass in high school, then perhaps she would have been assisted by anyone else apart from her ‘Barbie Squad’. So in reality, her own misfortunes could have been greatly reduced if she had only been nicer to people.

I really wish I could tell you I saw the errors of my ways and went to make it up to Gwen for being an ass myself. That all my friends deserted me the moment money ran out in my life.

But that just never happened. Gwen went off to whatever corner of the world she could find after collage and lived her life working three jobs a day just to take care of her family. I, on the other hand, finished my alma mater in stunning fashion and became the sole beneficiary of the empire Edna built as Roni was more insistent in following her mother than truly necessary.

But I always think of Gwendolyn Lynch. She was a horrible person when I was young. Even when she was at the lowest point in her life, she would rather die than accept that I was better than her. I had always thought Gwen was in capable of reason and feeling. That she was just a spoiled brat who knew nothing about being alone in this world.

Collage taught me a lot about friendships in the end.  Time and mutual trust are a necessary price that very few people can afford to pay.