20

=Exposition/Inciting Incident=

It was the spring of 2005, the carefree year when my friends and I were all at the young age of 8 years old and didn't have any serious worries about anything. By my friends, I mean Ava and Jordan, my two best friends at my church, Livingstone Christian Church. We were born into the church together, so we knew each other since we were little babies, which explains why we were best friends. Little kids bond easily; you play some games together, and boom! You become best friends with them. Anyways, back to the spring day. The scenery outside was stunning. You could see my church, with its red brick walls and a lot of surrounding trees, and it has a soaring tower that reached into the heavens. The fragile flowers that announced spring with gentle voices were rising little by little, and the air was tinted with the fresh smell of their refreshing fragrance. The warm sunlight trickled down onto you when you walked outside. It was a beautiful day. "Hey, Lina, what's up?” I was pleasantly startled to hear my friend Jordan calling me loudly as I walked at a normal pace outside my towering church. She had long, straight, and black hair that reached to the very bottom of her back, and had a pretty face. She was very stubborn and capricious. She often changed her mind and got mad at people a lot. But she was great at giving advice and really listened to you if you had something important to say. "I’m good. Did you get into that dance competition that you wanted to get into?" "Yup, it all went pretty well.” Then Ava walked toward us. Ava had shoulder-length hair, and was very thin, although she always ate things that were like chocolate for a dog. For example, she loves to eat brownies and cookies. She was creative and likes to do crafts. "Hey, Ava, guess what? Jordan got into that competition that she wanted to get in to!" I told her enthusiastically. "Lucky you!" she exclaimed. Back then we were all still friends, but that was about to change.

=Rising Action=

One pretty average Sunday, the sun was shining radiantly, the flowers were in blossom, and the birds were chirping in their sweet voices, but a storm was inching slowly and steadily toward us, little by little. Even now, if I could live that day over again, I wouldn’t have been able to have predicted it at all. Ava and I were hanging out when we saw Jordan and a bunch of other people playing tag. Since we were kind of bored, we decided that we wanted to play tag with her and the other people. So I called out, “Hey Jordan! Can Ava and I play with you guys?” As we walked closer, I noticed something strange about Jordan. She looked mean and haughty, and she was smirking at Ava and me. Jordan stage-whispered to me, so that everyone could hear, “Lina, you can play, but that unpopular kid, Ava, can’t.” My eyes in slits, I glared at her menacingly. "Okay," Ava replied with no emotion on her face. Even with Ava's great "poker face", I knew that she was a little bit confused about why Jordan said that to her. I added, “Look, Jordan, I have no idea what you wanted to do to Ava, but that was about the worst thing that you could have done. And I thought you, Ava, and I were best friends.” Then Ava and I calmly walked away. “Hey, Lina, Aren’t you going to play with us?” She called back to me. But I didn’t answer. Even though Ava had no reaction to what Jordan had said to me, I was incensed with what she had done. But I shook off my anger as soon as I saw Ava head toward our favorite place, a garden with a wind chime, a bird bath, a cross, bushes, trees, and blooming flowers all around. Also, this garden was partly enclosed by bushes, and had a red brick path leading out towards the parking lot. She sat down on our favorite bench out of the three, a bench that had a bush right behind us. "Umm..Ava?" I asked cautiously. "Listen, I know that Jordan really tried to hurt you, but I'm sure that she didn't mean anything by it. Maybe she just was having a bad day or something, so don't take it personally, okay? Besides, sometimes Jordan gets a little pissed off at us, but it always turns out O.K. at the end, right?" She responded by fuming. "Yeah, I know, but sometimes, I really think Jordan is two-faced. She acts nice one second and then mean the next. What's up with that?" Ava just continued her monologue about Jordan while I just nodded or agreed with her whenever she paused. Usually, whenever Ava does this, it means that she's okay because she does this quite often. Over the next couple of weeks, their fight didn’t really progress, so I thought nothing of it. I was relieved and assumed that their whole fight would blow over in the next week or so. Was I ever so wrong! Since I tried to spend more time with Ava to make sure that she was ok and also because I was kind of miffed at Jordan just a little bit because of what she did to Ava, Jordan got a little jealous and tried to make me hang out with her instead, which caused the whole “silent treatment” that girls usually use against each other. It was horrible. One time, I even tried to get Ava and Jordan together so that they could reason together and stop this fight, but they wouldn't stay in the same room together on their own will, and whenever they had to, like during Sunday School, a blast of chilly air blew into the room. So when I finally got them to stand next to each other, there was just a stony silence in the room that I couldn't fill up. It was just too uncomfortable. After that failed attempt, I was daunted. Maybe this conflict might never end. Their fight was a rude awakening to what would happen in the outside world. Then, things got worse. Jordan started to tell rumors about Ava that said that she started the fight in the first place, and all the kids at my church began to shun her, except me, because I knew the whole story. I had no idea what to do. My mind was still trying to figure out why Jordan would do something like that. Maybe someone told her to do it, but she normally wouldn’t do something that someone else told her to do. So I was stuck with only one option: she just felt like being mean to Ava, and she did just that. Since I didn’t want to get involved with the fight, I was forced to hang out with Jordan too, even though I had mixed feelings about her. Ava felt worse than me, though. Even though she acted like she didn’t care at all, I could tell that she was confused, bewildered, and hurt by Jordan. She had no idea why Jordan wanted to hurt her in the first place, and I didn’t have the heart to tell her that Jordan just felt like doing whatever she could to hurt Ava with no legitimate reason why. During that time, everyone felt something in the air, but no one knew the storm dubbed “Friendship” was ready to break. No one expected it, least of all me.

=Climax=

The next couple of weeks, I was kind of exhausted of the fight because it was just stretching on and on and on. Ava and Jordan were also fatigued, from what they said to me, but when I asked them if they wanted to give it up and apologize, Jordan asked me if I was kidding, and Ava said that if anyone had to apologize, it was going to be Jordan, because Jordan started the fight in the first place. By now, Ava had done some things on purpose to irk Jordan, too, so they were even. She had called Jordan “stuck-up”, ignored her even when Jordan wanted to apologize, and other things of that sort. I was just stuck in the middle and was very exasperated. I had tried to remain aloof to their fight, so I played with both of them and still had the regular play dates with each of them. But that didn't work so well. They just kept on telling rumors and backstabbing each other so that one very unfortunate, wet, rainy, and foggy Sunday, I just couldn’t take it anymore. My anger was so intense that I could feel the white-hot anger bubbling up in me, so I did what any other person would do: I blew up. I called Jordan and Ava together to a room which we called the “office”, with a lot of white, built-in bookshelves, and loads of pens, pencils, scissors, and papers lying all around. It took a while for me to get them to stand by each other, but I managed-- with a lot of pushing and pleading pending from me. Then, when I was finally finished, I bellowed, “Jordan, what is your problem?!?!?! You deliberately called Ava unpopular just to make her feel horrible!! And then you told rumors about her, too!” “Yeah,” agreed Ava, smirking all the while. “Don’t interrupt!” I snarled at her. The smug smile on her face vanished. “And besides, Ava, you’re the same as her! You called her stuck-up and even refused to acknowledge Jordan’s apology, even when she was really sorry! Even if you don’t like someone, can you at least try to go the extra mile to try to empathize with that person? Now, will you please apologize? I can’t believe that I picked two people as best friends who are so inconsiderate!” “Sorry that I set off such a sorry situation,” stated Jordan in such a rehearsed and monotone voice so that I didn’t believe for a moment that what she said was sincere. “That wasn’t real,” I replied. “Think about what you two need to fix and do it. I don’t want to have two best friends that are going to be in the same dumb fight for the rest of their lives. Take as long as you need, but please do something about this quarrel.” Over the next week, while each and every schoolday was passing by really slowly, I was relieved that I had finally done something to help their dispute, but I was also kind of nervous to see if my "blow up" had any effect on them. It was an anxious week for me, full of doubts and reassurances happening every day.

=Falling Action=

The next week, it was early summer, and the trees, bushes, and grass were all clad like leprechauns in their brilliant shades of green, although there were some blossoms still out and about. I was outside, as usual, sitting down on the steps leading to the formal-looking front door that was at the front of the church where there was a courtyard, when I was surprised to see Ava and Jordan walking toward me. It looked like they had something important to say, so while they walked purposefully and determinedly toward me, I was thinking that maybe they were going to apologize, although I still had some doubts hidden in my head. “Lina, um, we, that is, Ava and I, decided that we want to resolve our fight, and um, we agreed on some things,” Jordan quietly stammered to me in a soft voice. I was kind of shocked. Jordan usually wouldn’t be the one that was so ready to apologize. Like I said before, she is and was very stubborn, especially when it comes to fights and apologies. “Yeah,” Ava piped up, “We decided that we would never exclude each other ever again, and that we would never tell rumors about each other ever again.” “Man, that’s awesome!” I congratulated them both. “So we’re good?” “Yeah, I think so!” Ava exclaimed. “This calls for a group hug!” Jordan said with an evil glint in her eye. We all groaned. Jordan gives killer hugs that hurt your stomachs in particular because she squeezes your waist, and she never gives you any mercy when you’re locked inside of it. It’s the same with her pokes, and you can’t even poke her back because she’s not ticklish. But I was also delighted that Jordan decided to give us a killer hug, which means that she’s starting to act normal again. I sighed with relief. Things were starting to look up. “By the way, guys, you have to tell me the whole story of how you guys made up, ok?” I asked curiously after Jordan was finished dawdling with the painful group hug. “Sure,” exclaimed Ava. “Well, Jordan and I felt really bad and stuff since you told us that you wanted us to apologize on our own, so Jordan came up to me and said that she really wanted all three of us to be best friends and all again, so she said that she was sorry about all that stuff that she said to and about me. And I said I was sorry back. So we agreed that we were being really stupid and that there really was no reason to fight, and we realized that we just wanted to do something a little out of the ordinary because we wanted to be like all those popular and dramatic people who have fights all the time, and it just turned out to be so stupid and dumb. We agreed that it is way better to keep your friends than to be mad at them all the time.” I was also stunned at Ava’s “speech”, because she usually didn’t talk that much about “girly” and “unimportant” stuff like girl-fights and gossiping. “Ha, ha,” I laughed. “That really is pathetic. And to think that we expended so much time and energy on this fight. So let’s just erase this fight from our memory, ok?” And they all agreed. So everything was back to normal, which is a good thing if you ask me.

=Resolution=

“Hey,” yelled Jordan to Ava. “What’s going on? I haven’t seen you in so long!” Then Jordan tried to give Ava a killer hug, and Ava sprinted away, narrowly escaping the excruciating painful hug that seemed to come around every so often. “I would be fine if you stopped giving me killer hugs every time I see you!” she shouted after her. Ava's voice darted everywhere in the empty space of the parking lot that we were in. I laughed with amusement at my two friends who were playfully bickering with one another. We formed a "circle" in which we joked around and told funny stories that had happened to us and our friends during the week at schools. The familiar sound of my friends' lighthearted laughter floated around me, and I relaxed. I thought about what had happened during the fight, and I shuddered. I really didn't want to go back to those days. While they were talking, I was lost in thought. Things were definitely a lot better now. Ava and Jordan kept their promise, and they never excluded or told rumors about each other again. And except for some little quibbles, like who had to be the seeker when we played hide-and-seek and who was "it" when we played tag, they haven’t fought yet. While I was looking back on that fight, I realized that I learned something very important on the day my friends made up. I understood that it’s way better to stand by your friends, even if something bad happens. After all, things may turn out to your favor in the end.