I didn’t know what friendship was until I met Rachel. Before her, nobody wanted to talk to me because I was weird, but, luckily for me, Rachel was weirder. Despite the fact that I was 2 years younger than her, she took to me immediately. We have been friends ever since the day we met.

Rachel is a very strange person, she always has been. She dresses like someone who has no one she cares to impress. She often ‘cosplays’ to school, which is just dressing up as a character from a show or movie or web comic or anything. She gets bullied for that a lot, but she never cares. People will shout things at her in the hall or girls will say mean things to her, but she either ignores it or hits them with a witty comeback. She is the person who has made me not care what others think of me. I’ll always owe her for that.

Hearing Rachel talk is sort of fascinating. She has a high voice and quite a vocabulary. She usually talks in a very formal tone and uses words better accustomed for a business meeting rather than over school lunch. I always tease her for the way she says “um”. It starts out in a normal tone, but midway through the u her voice goes up about 3 octaves. She doesn’t hear it.


Rachel has many talents. She is creative with her clothing, of course, but also with her drawing. She draws these cute little characters that look like they should be in a Japanese cartoon. She draws whatever she thinks of, and draws it very well. She also sings. I think she has a beautiful singing voice, “like in Les Miserables” is what I tell her. It is a beautiful smooth soprano voice, yet she does not do anything serious with it. She just sings for fun.

I don’t think anybody has the right to make fun of Rachel because she is different. Just because she doesn’t go through life thinking about what everybody else thinks of her before what she thinks of herself does not make her a bad person. Rachel is raw and real and passionate and creative and talented and amazing. There is a quote I see on the internet sometimes, though I don’t know who it is by, it always reminds me of her. “She was beautiful, but not like those girls in magazines. She was beautiful, for the way she thought. She was beautiful, for the sparkle in her eyes when she talked about something she loved. She was beautiful, for her ability to make other people smile even if she was sad. No, she wasn’t beautiful for something as temporary as looks. She was beautiful, deep down to her soul.”