Before high school, I never thought of something like this happening to someone I knew. I thought it was insane, as if it couldn't ever occur with someone I had (small, if any) contact with. When I started high school, I'd seen what kind of girls I could be pressured to be like, but I told myself it wouldn't happen. Despite how many times I told myself to be different, to be my own person, I ended up being exactly like the people I didn't want to be.

I saw you on the first day of sixth grade. You had a group of friends, not the most popular, but you had them. I knew no one, I didn't have friends. On the first day, I sat in the back corner of the classrooms, I sat in the hallway during break, I sat alone for lunch. I saw you with your group, playing games, laughing, enjoying each others company. I was jealous. So jealous. As sixth grade continued, I had some friends, nothing like the group you had, but at least I had some. Not many people knew you, but they recognized you way more than they recognized me. I told myself it didn't matter, that as long as I had a few friends, nothing else mattered. My popularity was non-existent, yet irrelevant. That's what I told myself. Seventh grade rolled around. By the first semester, I had more friends than I could think of. As I rose to petty middle school popularity, you were at the same place you were in sixth grade. I saw as kids looked at your group with darting eyes and smirks, whispering cruel things, making cruel jokes. Not once did I stand up for you, not once did I scold those friends for saying those things. We began to laugh at your friends at lunch, calling you nerds, dorks, sometimes worse. I never had any classes with you, but I knew you were there. Soon, eigth grade came along. I hadn't realized how fast middle school was going. By the beginning of eighth grade, I was friends with almost everyone in our grade, and then some. I had a great group of friends, I was having the time of my life. I saw you once in the hall, all of the stuff in your locker fell out. No one else was around, and I was walking with my friend. You were going to be late for class, extra late if we didn't help. As you kneeled down to pick up countless papers and binders, we continued to walk, narrowing our eyebrows. More stuff started falling, and stuffing your locker wasn't very successful. Instead of helping, we laughed hysterically. I didn't realize how cruel it was.   Before eighth grade ended, my previous friendship was broken. While I was in a constant battle inside, dealing with my friendships and constant struggle to achieve popularity, I saw you content with the same friends you made in sixth grade. When eighth grade was finished, I found myself forgetting all about you. I saw you on the first day of freshmen year, but you weren't acknowledged. I made new friends, a lot of them actually. High school was treating me well. Sure, I lost a lot of friends from middle school, and I wasn't as popular as I thought, but I had friends, and that was all that mattered. Sometimes, I would go to an art class with my friends during my open periods. I saw you in there. You sat alone. I would laugh with my friends, watching you sit there making crafts, completely silent. Not once did I approach you, ask if you wanted help, or simply just my company. No one ever did that. At times, I overheard people talking about you and your friends, just like they did in middle school. Rarely, I would catch myself saying rude things. I thought it was alright, I mean, you should've been lucky that some people actually knew who you were. That's what I thought. I saw you during finals week, you walked alone in the hall. I walked past with my friends, laughing loudly, looking down on you as if I were your superior. Quicker than I thought, freshmen year flew past, and I couldn't be happier. On the last day, I laughed and said my goodbyes. It wouldn't be long until we were all back together again next year. Where were you? Of course, this thought never crossed my mind. Why should I care where you were? It's your own problem for not interacting with people. It was only a few weeks into the summer, days went by slowly. I took to social media one day, and I saw that someone had tweeted R.I.P with your name after it. It took me a moment or two to try to remember you. It was probably a joke, a cruel one that some people do. Right? I waited an hour. I saw another tweet, two, three, four, five. You were dead. I didn't even think those people who tweeted about your death had any contact with you. I thought about it. Should I tweet something? Sure, I didn't know you well, but why not? Everyone else was doing it, so why don't I? I didn't. I thought that if I tweeted about your death, people would believe that we were friends, that we were close. We weren't. I didn't have the right to remember you. All during that week, I pretended like it didn't happen. But no matter what, every day I would have to hear about it. When I went to practice, at home, at my friend's house, on my twitter, my instagram. I saw your picture everywhere. Eventually, I accepted the fact that something did happen, and that you were dead. I heard about your funeral. A bunch of people from school were there. I wasn't. For a short time after, I convinced myself that I didn't know you, that I didn't remember anything about you. But I did. I remembered myself wanting a group of friends like you had. To be honest, I may never have a group of friends like that. I remembered being jealous of you. I saw you, but I didn't acknowledge you. I saw you.