Innocent

My ex-boyfriend broke into my house and slept with my best friend when I was on vacation with my mother and brother. Now that I've gotten your attention, I'll add in that we were just at the tender age of fourteen; I was mere months older than both of them, I had been "dating" (loose definition here, as the farthest we'd ever gone was hand-holding) this boy for about four months, and this friend had lived with me when her aunt kicked her out of her own home just before her birthday, and had only just returned at the start of the new school year, a process that was a bit less than a year. I didn't know betrayal had roots so deep until I got that fateful phone call from my father alerting me to what he had come home to. I had left for a long weekend with my mother and my brother, leaving my father at our family home. This was the one detail I had neglected to mention to them when excitedly detailing my plans, as it was my belief up until the last second that he would be coming with us, but alas, work got in the way. I was four hundred miles away when my phone rang, my father's number flashing on my screen, and I picked up immediately. He told me what he had walked into, and asked if I had known anything about it, which I did not. To my knowledge she, and only she, was going to hide out in my open backyard until her aunt came to pick her up from our middle school, as my home is within walking distance and hers was a fair distance away, which had happened countless times before, and was okay by my parents. I was rather heated as I got off the phone when a text came through.

"Cover for me?" from my supposed best friend. Perhaps if she had respected me like I respected her we'd still be friends, but in this moment I knew I never wanted to speak to her again as long as my life would go on. This would end up changing after a bit of time had passed, which I would've never imagined in the moment. I didn't respond to this message, and this only made her barrage my phone with her account on what had happened. She told me she had been talking to my boyfriend when they made the decision to go to my house together. She needed to use the bathroom so she decided to try a window, and upon knocking the screen out, had successfully gotten inside the house, him following her path inside. It was innocent, she claimed, much to my surprise, as my father had detailed my boyfriend pulling up his pants as she wiped her face when he surprised them by walking in the front. Innocent. The boy that was afraid to kiss me because of my sharp metal braces had kept me innocent to that point. In these moments I knew I was losing a different kind of innocence: I was learning that people aren't always who you think they are. My confirmation came in the panties I found in my bedroom that definitely did not belong to me and the pregnancy test she took in my bathroom weeks later after begging and sobbing to come inside. She was scared. I let her in. It was also in these moments I realized what it was to forgive. She craved love and attention, and this boy had come in and brainwashed her into thinking that's what his advances on her were. He knew I was too headstrong for this to ever work on me, so he cornered someone vulnerable. At points, I even thought he dated me so she would trust him, an easy way to get to the real prey. The last time I spoke with her she was still adamant nothing happened, that the specific sexual encounter I believe happened did not, and that the pregnancy scare was from something different altogether. I was willing to overlook a lot, be it my young mind or be it my wanting to see the good in everyone regardless at what they had done, but when she called my father a liar I knew the ties had to be cut. There was no hope at that point. It is seven years later at the time of my writing, and sometimes I think back to this moment and realize just how much growing up I managed to do in just a matter of minutes, and how I can only pray this kind of thing never happens to my siblings or to my own children someday. I have happily lost track of both of them, so I unfortunately cannot update on where life has taken them, but what I do know for sure is thanks to this event I will be much more selective of second chances, in this life and whatever beyond may be.