Slut. Whore. Man stealer. Scumbag. No-Self-Esteem-Having-Bitch (I made that one up myself because it seemed like something she would say.) These are just a few of the lovely names I’ve been stoned with because for once I did something that made me happy. Do I regret it? Never, and it’s not because I’m naïve enough to think that I’m going to live happily ever after; Nothing is guaranteed in life besides death. It’s because there is nothing worse than living in fear of the future based on the decisions you make in the present. Sure, there are those cynics who claim “There’s no such thing as love.” But there’s no point in discussing how hypocritical and jaded society has become, this story isn’t about that. It’s about what happens when two people fall in love. This could also be the story of how a so called “best friend” became an opportunist and leached off of me and my family for months. I’d rather not, there’s no point of verbally ripping her a new one, she does a good enough job at making a fool out of herself all her own.

“How could you do this to me Gaby? You know everything he’s done to me, how he’s treated me, what a piece of shit he is. You were supposed to be my friend.”

She took a trip to Colombia with her son and asked me to keep an “eye” on him, her boyfriend/baby daddy, or more so keep him company for she believed he would be miserable without her considering he had no friends. Ironically, he had friends, more than she did actually and would have been just fine without my supervision, but we enjoyed each other’s company and I didn’t mind taking on the task of babysitter. Besides, it didn’t hurt that we got along great and he was actually much more fun to hang out with than she had been at the time. Who is she you’re probably asking yourself? Melanie, my “best friend” at the time, now just a figment of my imagination.
We were inseparable; literally we lived together. As far as she was concerned things were just fine. We were still the same “una y mugre” (Translation: White on rice. Well, not the exact translation but it’s the same expression.) friends we had been for almost four years. We knew everything about each other; the good bad and the ugly as the cliché goes and our friendship was in fact at one point genuine. Unfortunately things were taking a turn for the worse towards the end. We were growing apart, not only as friends but as individuals in general. The saddest part was, I think I was the only one who knew. She was too self-obsessed to realize that things weren’t like before anymore. The same person who I’d do anything for was now becoming someone I had grown to detest. I was annoyed at the person she had become, a superficial hypocrite that turned into the very same thing she once swore she would never become.

(Oh god look at me, I’m bashing her after promising you this was exactly what I was NOT going to do. Forgive me, my subconscious takes over me and my fingers uncontrollably start typing all of my repressed feelings. I promise to keep myself in
check so as to not steer my story in the wrong direction.)

So here we were, my friend Franco that I had known since Junior High School, under the watchful eye of yours truly while his girlfriend/baby mama/ my “best friend” was off in Colombia getting lipo–Literally this was the purpose of the trip I’m not even trying to be funny. Add in the fact that we had great chemistry, plus it was the beginning of summer; It was a recipe for disaster. But the good kind of disaster. The kind that makes you feel alive because it just feels so right. The type that gives you butterflies in your stomach whenever you see each other. The type that causes you to feel like nothing else matters besides that present moment in time when you’re together. The kind where you find the most minimal excuse to see each other. The type that leads you to do crazy things. Maybe too crazy. But then again, is it crazy to fall in love with your best friend’s boyfriend? I wouldn’t call it crazy. Perhaps inconsiderate, selfish, fucked up, or just plain wrong. But not crazy. What would’ve been crazy was if we had done nothing about how we were feeling towards each other. And that’s exactly what we did. We did something crazy, kept quiet about the obvious attraction we had for each other.

“I can’t believe I trusted you. You stabbed me in the back after everything we’ve been through. How could you be so stupid? Did you forget everything he’s done to me and now you’re fucking him?

Their relationship was stale, for a long time. The amount of disrespect between the two of them stretched far beyond mending the relationship. Then again they had a child, and who wouldn’t do their very best to at least give it a try? “For the baby”, sad but it’s the only thing that gave him any incentive to stay together. That and memories. Memories of what once was, which was in fact beautiful but at the same time unobtainable anymore. She hated him. Made it clear every single time the topic came up which was ALL the time. It was a “Let’s roast Franco” conversation anytime he’s name would be brought up. Her motives for being with him were disingenuous but at the same time smart I guess; money, security, comfort, revenge. She was with him for every other reason besides love. There was no love between them, on the contrary there was disdain and it was something quite uncomfortable to be around. You know that tension in the room when two people can’t stand each other and you just so happen to awkwardly find yourself trapped in the middle? Yeah, that was my position in the whole mess. Both of them would tell me how much they hated each other, and every time I thought to myself, “Why are they still together?” They were already cheating on each other, why not just end it and move on with life. Then again making a decision as such take a certain level of maturity which at the time neither of them were up for.

It was late Saturday night, a night that will forever be engrained in my memory, for it was a turning point in my life. Fast forward Melanie’s arrival from Colombia, us having a falling out and ending our friendship(I’ll spare you the details because it’s irrelevant to my story and I know you’re smart enough to conclude that it was her fault), her moving out of my apartment, her breaking up with her baby’s daddy, and finally her moving in with her co-worker. All this in the course of just a couple of weeks, and the whole while me and Franco were still hanging out, even after her arrival and hence the end of my babysitting duties. He was no longer with Melanie and I was no longer her friend; it’s as if the stars were aligned in our favor.

Cheesy I know but believe me if you’re ever lucky enough to fall in love, you know what I’m talking about. We mustered up the courage to finally admit to each other why these butterflies were in our stomachs when we saw each other, not because we had bad sushi for dinner, but because we were falling in love with each other and we knew that this was a terrible thing. Terrible because of what people would say, what our parents would think, our friends, our neighbors, society in general. But then again, why was that important. If you live your life worried about what others are going to say about you, well then you might as well be their servants.

We decide to follow our hearts and be together, fully conscience that it was not going to be easy. She did the whole nine; verbally slaughtered me through the phone, threated to inflict physical pain towards me, harassed me through email and text. You name anything malicious you could think of to hurt a person, she’s done it. Because that’s the type of person she is. The type that feels satisfaction out of making everyone else miserable all while claiming to be the victim. But like I said, this isn’t about her and how terrible of a person she is, it’s about a love story that to many may seem fucked up, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Although tempted, both by desire and necessity, I could never find the guts to steal anything. My sister on the other hand, well let’s just say she’s much more daring than I am. We should have seen it coming; from a very young age, Andrea was always the mischievous one and constantly found herself in sticky situations, literally. I say this because one day when she was six, Andrea thought it was a good idea to open up a bottle of glue and rub it in her hair during Art class in school. And who can forget when Andrea decided to cut her own hair–“Mom Stephanie is so annoying! She’s always copying everything I do”. This was her response when my mom questioned her about why she decided to go all Paul Mitchell on her hair. Now, I know some may say that’s just kids being kids, but we all know Andrea is rather unique. Then there was the time she convinced Daniela, my youngest sister, to stick her to the wall using duck tape because she saw the guys from Jackass do it and therefore wanted to try it; So much for the disclaimer no one cares to consider.

At the young age of thirteen– you know that age where you have the entire world figured out and your parents can’t seem to bud out of your life, Andrea allowed her guilt along with peer pressure to force her into making one of the many mistakes of her teen years. I say one because just like any other kid, Andrea would continue on to making some pretty dumb decisions, but this one in particular was on another level. It was a usual Monday afternoon; I got home from another grueling day at school which was exceptionally grueling that day specifically because I took a Math test that I didn’t necessarily study for. I did the usual skimming of my notes and I knew that it hadn’t helped me in passing this test—Maybe if I look through my notes right before the test, I’ll be able to remember the information better; what was I thinking? That day, I looked forward to nothing more than to just get home and relax considering it was Friday evening, the prelude to the weekend which was my favorite days of the week. I’m sure many others share the same excitement I have for the weekend.
That night, dinner was being prepared by Daniela, whose personality is very similar to my own, in the sense that she always thinks twice, even three times about the decisions she makes. Some may think this is a sign of having no confidence, but I think of it as a preventative measure that avoids unnecessary trouble. “Gaby, you know what this girl in my class did, she broke the teacher’s pencil on purpose because she said that the teacher mad her mad. She’s so stupid.” These were the kind of things Daniela would tell me when I asked her how her school day was. She was always observing people, very rarely saying much, but one must wonder what lay in this girl’s thoughts. She would never find herself in some of the predicaments Andrea has been in. Daniela has always been the “quiet one, little angel, sweetheart,” and all the other cute and adorable pet names you would attach to a person who doesn’t talk much and smiles all the time. Although Andrea and Daniela are only a year apart, their personalities are at opposite ends of the spectrum, and that makes for a lot of arguing and fighting in our house.

As we prepped the table and listened to “Caso Cerrado”, the Spanish version of Judge Judy, which my mom cannot miss a single episode of, a phone call interrupted the commencement of our dinner. After being on the phone for about five minutes, my mom broke into tears and I couldn’t help but to think what minor situation was causing her to cry again. See, my mom is what you would call a “crier”. She will break out into full-blown tears over the most minimal situation such as over cooking pasta or loosing a game of Tetris. It turned out this time; the tears were legitimized due to the circumstance at hand. What snaps a teenager back to reality and forces her to reconsider some of her actions? The answer is to almost go to jail for stealing a cheap pair of earrings. This of course was the reasoning behind my mom’s unstoppable crying and all the traumatic hoopla that followed.
According to Andrea, her best friend and her were at the mall doing some window shopping due to the fact that they were both thirteen and still “too young” to get a job and be able to afford things any other teenager would like to possess. The girls stumbled upon the tween jewelry store Claire’s and decided to walk in. Among the rows of shiny jewelry, Melissa spotted the sliver pair of hoop earrings she had been eyeballing for weeks now. Andrea claimed that Melissa begged her to grab the pair of earrings for her. “Andrea please, please, please just hold them for me. I really want them and Ricky loves hoop earrings.” This was Melissa’s reasoning behind wanting the earrings. To impress a boy, sounds cliché but girls really do whatever it takes to impress their crushes. Seeing as how Melissa was her best friend and partner in crime, Andrea definitely didn’t want to disappoint, so she decided to take the earrings and put them in her pocket. “I was so nervous and I knew had a bad feeling about it but whatever they were already in my pocket. I couldn’t do anything about it”, Andrea told me.

They roamed around the store trying to act natural, but there was no use because the security guard saw the whole thing go down. As the girls were making their way out of the store, the guard stopped them both and asked them to clear their pockets. Allegedly, the two of them stood there like a couple of statues. After asking a second time, the two of them snapped out of it and challenged the security guard, claiming they didn’t have anything in their pockets. A couple of minutes of back and forth later, Andrea finally admitted to having the pair of sterling silver hoop earrings in her pocket. She gave it to the guard and both of them were escorted to a holding room in the basement of Queens Center Mall. The whole cab ride to the mall my mom was inconsolable, asking rhetorical questions such as “What did I do to deserve this?” or “Why me?” I couldn’t help but to giggle because although it was a serious situation, once again her reaction was way out of proportion. It was as if someone had died; she was crying so hard at one point, she made herself choke on her own saliva by accident. Daniela just sat next to me, observing my Mom and yet again, not giving any input on what was happening. “Andrea is so stupid.” That was her only reaction to the situation, which was actually her usual response when she notices that someone has done something she disapproves of. We arrived at the mall and ran over to customer service, explained our situation, and asked how to get to the holding room were the two criminals, Andrea and Melissa, were. This all sounds like a smooth process on paper, but the reality was that it was much more complicated than that. First of all, the customer service lady, who by the way was totally in the wrong profession because of her lack of patience which one would think is an essential quality to possess when in the business of helping customers, hence customer service, took what seemed like forever to understand what we wanted. “Uh mam, you gonna need to slow down and clearly tell me what you want from me.” On the one hand, I could understand her confusion because my mom was still getting over her tears, which made it a little hard for anyone to understand her, but after the fifth time of explaining ourselves, it became evident that this woman was absolutely incompetent to her duties.

Upon arriving to holding room, Andrea was unrecognizable. Her face was filled with tears and snot, which was a rare sight considering Andrea had a pretty tough demeanor and almost never cried. She had the look of embarrassment and shame all over her face, and I knew she was sorry even before opening her mouth and explaining herself. After hours of paperwork and a lot of uncomfortable silence waiting for paperwork to go through, we were all allowed to leave, including the two perps who cause this entire ordeal. It goes without saying that after a $150 fine and months of embarrassment from people on our block who had somehow found out about the shoplifting incident, Andrea never shoplifted again. Well, let me rephrase that, so far as we know she hasn’t had sticky fingers.