Okay, this is beyond, beyond, bizarre.

I’m going to have to get into a story now that I never really wanted to get in to, for a few reasons. One, it only peripherally involves me and I feel strange talking about it as I don’t want to make the key player in this story uncomfortable. And if he reads this and wants me to shut-up, you know – anything for you baby.

Okay. So.

M - My friend. My best guy friend ever. One of my best friends ever, at all, really. Incredible person, all that jazz, not really the point.

Had a serious girlfriend sophomore year through graduation. Our junior year she was a freshman, and as M and I were on paper together and had a couple classes together (one of which was our capstone that involved serious hours) we spent unavoidable amounts of time with each other. No one was complaining either. Certainly not me.

I knew the Girl didn’t like me. I didn’t really care. Either she was too afraid to say something, or I just hadn’t really gotten to her yet, I’m not sure. But junior year she pretty much kept her mouth shut about M’s friendship with me. At least shut enough that it didn’t impact our growing bond or mutual respect and admiration.

Perhaps this is because they were having problems and she didn’t have her claws in deep enough to skew his impression of me, I don’t know.

Senior year she joins our paper. And I’d just like to make it known here that a major reason for her staff position is because I hyped her up. A. LOT. Granted, the incoming Chief was a good friend of M’s, but the outgoing Editors weren’t her biggest fans and neither was the incoming Managing Ed, who the Girl had written (p-o-o-r-l-y) for the previous year.

I gave the whole, she’s green, she has a lot of untapped talent etc. etc. speech. And lo and behold, she becomes the new Assistant News Editor. (With little to no Quark experience and absolutely NO concept of layout, mind you.)

Welcome to the year of hell, ladies and gentleman.

I’m not going to get into the nitty or the gritty, but take my word for it that it became both gritty and nitty. To the point of a tension so thick you could barely walk into the newspaper office. A vibe so bad we all sat on edge during editorial meetings. A spark of hate between the Girl and I so fierce we could barely even look at each other.

I don’t think I’m a hateful person.

But I hated this Girl. Hated her for many reasons, and sure jealously was imbedded in there, I’ll readily admit that, but it went beyond that. I hated that someone so wonderful could love someone so evil. I hated the way she manipulated him. I hated the way she manipulated everyone. I hated how cold her eyes were. How there was nothing behind them.

And yes, sometimes she’d let me in. There were moments I’d catch her smiling at a joke I cracked. Or looking relieved when I’d compliment her column or page.

But mostly she just looked at me with fear and loathing, yo.

And god, none of this is important anymore. He’s still in my life, not hers. And it’s not even that it was a competition, because it wasn’t. And I shouldn’t feel glee at her absence in M’s life. I shouldn’t. But I do. It makes me giddy sometimes. Because he’s free. Free, free, free. And he sees that now.

And. And. And I shouldn’t be writing about this. I shouldn’t be saying these things. But I can’t stop. I must tell this story.

Today I got an email from Matt, M’s friend who picked him up in town last week to drive him down to MU. We all went out to dinner for his brother’s birthday. He just wanted to thank me for driving his brother and girlfriend home after dinner. So he thanked me and then this is what he said. . .

Anyway, I want to apologize to you for basically two years of putting up with my shit at MU. I misjudged you unfairly for some odd reason. You are a very fun person, who is nicer and more considerate (i.e. selfless) to your friends than what I had you pegged for, as evidenced in picking M up from Oxford on Sunday. Hopefully we can be friends, because I think that you are someone I would want in my life (sorry about the wording, I am drawing a blank).

What the frickity fraking fuck? Okay, first of all this kid never gave me any shit. In fact, he always seemed to be kissing my ass. Second, why would he think I wasn’t fun? I’m fun! Why would he think I was inconsiderate? I’m considerate, dammit!

And then it hit me. The Girl.

The Girl who wasn’t satisfied with making just M shy away from me. She wanted all of his friends to hate me too. Because if they liked me, if they knew I wasn’t a real threat, that M and I were, shockingly, just.friends., they could convince him of her, shall we just say, shortcomings.

And this sounds so stupid and dumb and not even remotely a big deal when I write it down. Yes, it was a long time ago. Yes, none of it matters anymore. But you don’t know how this Girl made me feel.

Sad. Broken down. Jealous. Enraged. Hateful. Unworthy.

But mostly just overwhelmingly sad. Sad for M. Sad for how our hate tore an amazing paper staff apart. Sad for my loss of a friend. But mostly sad for her. So sad for her.

Physically, she’s unbelievably beautiful. Doe eyes, lithe frame, hair you just want to wrap your fist in. But she’d turn those doe eyes on you and cut you into pieces. I’ve never known anyone in my life who could burn me down like she could.

And I know I haven’t mentioned M’s role in any of this. He didn’t really have one. The Girl and I, our relationship consisted on that plane only women can reach. That plane where mother bears shred hunters to protect their young. That plane where protection is key, survival is a must. And you’ll do anything to come out on top.

I was a threat. I knew her secrets. I saw the darkness in her face. The confusion she lived with. The hatred she turned on herself fiercer than she ever could’ve lashed out at me with.

I don’t think she really truly feared M would love me over her. We all knew that was never going to happen. I think she feared I’d spill her secrets to him. She knew I knew. There were fairies that flitted between us, whispering her indiscretions to me and me alone.

In order to ensure her survival as M’s girlfriend; to ensure her position as his future wife; to lift herself out of a childhood of pain and an adolescence of confusion; to be forever embraced by loving arms and a stable family, she’d do anything.

So she began lying about me. A smear campaign, if you would. Turn them all against me, so if and when I try to rat her out, no one will believe me. They’ll think I speak from jealousy and insecurity. They’ll think I’m just trying to steal M from her.

And I knew her schemes. So I had to live knowing her lies. I had to live knowing her secret trysts. I had to live knowing this angel was really satan’s spawn. And I couldn’t tell a soul.

Try it sometime. It’ll eat your heart out. Try watching a man you love, love something evil, something you know will only bring him pain. Try knowing there’s not a damn thing you can do about it.

And I’m sure this all sounds so stupid and trite and junior high. Oh, and it was, don’t get me wrong, but it killed me. As I’m sure every day that went by another part of her was dying. Withering up. Writhing away.

And I just have to keep telling myself that it doesn’t matter anymore. This is all over. It’s done. It is finished.

It is finished.

But her hate still invades my dreams. Her doe eyes turn and look at me and they’re just empty sockets in a pretty face. There’s nothing behind them. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

I thought it would be easier to push her out of my memory. And now that I'm apart from it. Now that a couple of years have gone by, I can see that part of my fear of her was really just a fear of myself. In her I saw what I could've become had I let my own hate ravage my girlhood heart.

It is finished. Yet I wait for the nightmare when she turns to stare at me and I see my green eyes in her pretty face.