Cat's Reviews > Better Off Friends

No, this is not really a review, because I haven't read the book yet; more of my personal thoughts and a story to go along with it. Read on only if you're interested.

This sounds so promising. Elizabeth Eulberg is absolutely amazing, and I'm excited for this, after my favorites The Lonely Hearts Club and Prom and Prejudice. (Take a Bow was okay, and I haven't read Revenge of the Girl With the Great Personality yet.)

But I will say: guys and girls CANNOT be best friends.
At all costs.
I doubt this book will make me change that notion.

Friends, yes. But best friends? No.
(Unless the guy or girl is homosexual.)

LET ME REPEAT: A GUY AND A GIRL CAN BE FRIENDS.
BUT NOT BEST FRIENDS. EVER.
Because it always bound to change.

Best friends are just too close. They love each other--between guy and guy, and between girl and girl; it's different from loving your boyfriend/girlfriend, or your family, or your daughter/son. There are so many different kinds of love in the world, and friend love is one of them. Best friend love is huge, since you basically trust this person wholeheartedly, tell them your secrets, spend memorable moments of your life with them, know they can lift you up when you're down, understand them like the back of your hand... there's a reason there is the "best" in best friends. Best friends are one level up from normal friends. Your best friend is always supposed to be there for you.

So what happens when that best friend is of the opposite gender? You spend every single day together and know each other so well you could practically be joined at the hip? Isn't it inevitable that stronger feelings than friendship begin to develop?
You start seeing him (or her) in a different light. You start staring. Blushing. Trying to hide it. But it doesn't work out. Eventually the other person is going to find out.
And when they do...? Nothing will ever be the same. I know for sure. Because this has happened to me before.

Once upon a time, my best friend was a guy.
As you can predict, we had a falling-out. He was my best friend. He knew everything about me--my favorite colors, the kinds of books I liked to read, the way I liked to wear my hair. We wrote stories together when we were younger--you know those Magic Tree House books? We rewrote all of them the way we wanted them to be. He was Jack and I was Annie, except instead of being brothers and sisters, our characters, Jake and Cathy, were BEST FRIENDS.

We sat next to each other during a class and had to be moved to opposite ends of the room because we spent too much time talking and not enough time focusing on the lesson. We shared secret, naughty grins during solemn, silent fire drills. We shared a swing and laughed the entire time, rushing through our hair. We challenged each other to see who could eat a box of pizza the fastest. (Of course, he always won, but it didn't hurt to try.) We played practical jokes on our teachers (he made our third grade teacher sit on a whoopie cushion; it was hilarious). We told each other stories about our lives--I still remember his tale about how his sister threw spaghetti across the room and it landed on his face. We stayed after school to help clean white boards, sweep and vacuum the floor, and pick up trash--only together. If he couldn't stay after school, I wouldn't stay. If I couldn't stay, he wouldn't stay. We did everything together.

Until one day everything changed.
My so-called "friend" had exiled me from my own game. I'd invented the rules of how to play and she wanted them changed to fit her. I refused, and she told me that nobody liked me so I should just hand my leadership over to her. I was a threat to her, and she had to crush me. My other friends were afraid of her. They didn't dare stand up for me when I ran off, crying.
Except one.

I could hear him yelling at her as I ran away. I just had to get away. I finally collapsed against a wall and sat slumped there, my hands covering my face as I sobbed. I heard footsteps.
It was him.
I looked up and smiled at him. "You came."
"I wasn't going to let her do that to you," he said.
"Thanks," I sniffled. He reached out a hand and pulled me up.
We started walking back and forth, and as I dried my tears, we talked seriously about how terrible my decision to befriend her had been. I knew. He knew it, too. But to lighten my mood, he told me more stupid stories to make me laugh. Before long, my tears of sadness were tears of laughter, and I just stared at him in amazement. "Thank you."
"That's what best friends are for," he replied.
I kept staring at him for a while. People had always teased us that we were a couple. My mom joked I would marry him someday.
The words were out of my mouth before I could close it. "I like you. Not as a friend."
I was scared. But then he said, "Me too."
And he took my hand.
I was in love.

But not for long.
That summer, I was extremely busy. We didn't keep in touch, and for the first time when we returned to school that year, we didn't share any classes. It was terrible. Fearful.
And I already knew what was to become of us.

Jake became a guy.
A real guy.
And he left me behind.
He had no time anymore for his former best friend.
He wasn't going to be caught dead with a girl; what would his tough guy friends think?
My heart broke.

Two years and a hundred tears later, I had moved on, and so had he. He wasn't my best friend anymore, but a small sliver of him still lived inside of me. And a small sliver of me still lived inside of him. It explained why I teamed up with him to play volleyball against our opponents. Why I was by his side when nobody else was when he cried. Why I listened to him talk about his crushes--though painfully, I wished it were me. Why I gave him lollipops and he gave me answers to math homework.
Why he was there when my best friend broke me.
We were supposed to present our favorite book to the class, and originally I'd teamed up with my best friend to do it. But we had different book ideas, and I wanted to do mine badly, so we split apart and vowed the best to win.
Well, I poured my time and heart into making sure my classmates would be enticed into reading my favorite book, but when it was my turn to present, my teacher's computer malfunctioned, and my whole presentation was sabotaged as the music defected, the graphics blurred, and everything went haywire. I felt terrible.
And then, as if to mock me, when my best friend went up to present, she'd CHEATED. We supposed to pick books targeted to younger readers because we were presenting to younger readers, and she'd gone and picked a YA book about zombies and war. I stared at her in horror as she presented her book, with effective music, exciting graphics, and a really alluring description. The computer didn't malfunction once. And everyone applauded for her when she sat down. Nobody paid attention to my other best friend's presentation--she went next--because they were too busy asking my first best friend where they could buy the book and so many other interested questions. I was so angry because I was watching my other best friend's presentation and trying to ignore the praise, while feeling horrified as even her presentation was screwed up by the haywire computer.
So why only my first best friend?
Why did she deserve all that when I'd spent as much time on my presentation as her, and hers wasn't sabotaged?

Jake, noticing my silence, leaned over and asked if I was alright. I shook my head. When class was dismissed, I ran away as the tears began to free-fall. I definitely wasn't alright, and my best friend finally noticed as I ran away. Jake ran after me and tried to calm me down. He didn't ask me to speak, though, because he knew better than anyone that if I tried to speak with tears rising in my throat, I would just start crying harder. And his goal was to get me to smile, not cry. So he did what he was best at--he talked. He talked until the tears stopped and I was giving him a tentative smile. It was déjà vu, I realized. This had happened two years ago. I looked at him and saw--for the first time in a long time--the same boy I'd fallen in love with. And I finally, from the bottom of my heart, smiled.
Seeing I was okay, he gave me a huge hug and said he had to go. I nodded. He'd restored my cheerful mood. My best friend ran up and tried to talk, but I didn't want to hear it. There wasn't anything she could possibly say that would make me feel better--"I'm sorry my project didn't get sabotaged." It would all be lies.
Then I realized I'd never thanked Jake for being so sweet, and I turned to look for him, hoping I wasn't too late. I wasn't.
But he was talking to his current crush, and they were smiling and laughing with each other. I froze where I was and turned away slowly, my smile fading.

I still loved him.

To this day, I will never touch a book written by the author of the book my best friend did her presentation on. It's a stupid grudge, I know, but it reminds me of my past, and I don' believe in the motto "put your past behind you." I say, "hold your past close, because it shapes who you are now."
Just don't let it control you.
My best friend and I are still, indeed, best friends--though our differences threaten to tear us apart more and more every day--and Jake is no longer in my life, but I don't regret a thing.

At least, not in my life the way I'd like.
He sits next to me in math class now.
But I hate him.
He's NOT my former best friend. I don't know him. I refuse to acknowledge that he could possibly be the boy I once loved.
Because he's a dick.
He mocks and sneers at everyone. He calls me stupid when I get the wrong answer to a math problem. He steals pencils and pens from the girl sitting behind us. He laughs cruelly at others' misery. And I hate him so much.

Not just because it's plain disgusting that two years could do so much--two years from when we confessed our love to when he comforted me the exact same way, and two years from when he'd comforted me to when he became a total asshole--but because he'd let the cycle take him.
Jake was bullied a lot when we were younger, and I'd always stood up for him. In fourth grade, sixth graders told him he'd put his momma to shame and that she probably wished he'd never been born. It had nearly destroyed him. But I was there for him. I gave him strength to keep going on, just like he'd in turn did the same and gave me strength when my so-called best friend banished me from my own game.
He swore he'd never become a bully and make other people feel the way they'd made him feel that day.
But he is a liar.
And if my best friend could see himself now, he'd agree that he's put his momma to shame.
This is the poem that describes this exact scenario: http://www.quotev.com/story/4322657/S....

And yet, I don't regret a thing.
Jake has shaped me.
He has helped make me who I am now.
And if he wants to destroy his life, so be it.
I can't look out for him forever.


But it proves my point.
Guys and girls can't be best friends. Somewhere along the way, everything changes.
And that is the sad truth.