Toddlers Narrative

Toddlers. They were surrounding me. They stared at their cupcakes and licked clean the plastic princess rings from on top of them. Among these toddlers was a boy with curly brown hair and brown eyes. He licks the frosting off of his glittery pink princess ring and then brings it over to the girl with red pigtails and blue eyes. “Thanks,” she says. She means it. That little girl was me and the boy is my best friend Ben. Ben and I have known each other for longer than even we can remember. We were inseparable, always at each others houses having way too much fun. We went through preschool and kindergarten together and he was one of the first people to meet my brother when he was born. We were each other 's one and only. Things started to change

“Hi Taylor!” she says. Her speech was so fake even my mother glanced back at me. The house was as it always was. The scent of challah and furniture clinging to my lungs with the plasticy smell of pony action figures and solo cups. The look of cleanliness and the elephant sculpture in the corner, something my family wouldn’t be caught dead for having in our own home. And something about the hardwood floors and the way the grooves felt in between my toes. It was my second home and yet something felt so new and strange. “Ben’s upstairs.” It was Lisa. She caught me in my daydreaming. I ran up the stairs. Behind the door, was a boy I’d hadn’t seen in months. A stranger. A person too depressed and scared to leave their own room. I was scared. Frightened. No, terrified. There was no turning back. Ben was subconsciously counting on me. I did what I had to do... I opened the door. “Taylor!” He said. I smiled. This was the person i’d missed for months on end. It wasn’t someone afraid to be themselves. We talked for at least three hours. Just the two of us alone in his room as if I was visiting him in his prison cell. He wasn’t what others had told me he had become. He was just a person. I was astonished to see that just a visit from me had made him put on a facade. You could see how he was trying hard not to yell at me for doing something that bothered him. He was trying to protect me from the person he knew he was. A person that he didn’t like that