>>7813217Oh man, let me tell you guys about the girl next door.
When they found out they were pregnant with me, my parents moved to a proper house. As it turns out, another couple had the same idea and moved next door within a week of my parents move in. By the time I was born and the girl next door was born our parents were already good friends.
We grew up together more or less. We were best friends from daycare to the end of elementary school. However, by the time she was 10-11 our interests started to diverge. She was more into sports and hands on things and I was more into music and bookish things. We drifted apart, and we stopped really seeking eachother's company. Then in 7th grade she decided to start picking on me.
Typical middle school stuff, I suppose. Sucker punching me when no authority was watching, spitting in my food and water bottle, and just generally teasing me, mostly for smiling too much, of all things. I certainly didn't like the bullying, but we kinda started hanging out again.
I remember how several times I would be out in my backyard, reading some shitty YA novel, and she would walk over and start kicking dirt at me. The first few times I ended up leaving, but one time I got it in my head to climb the tree. I sat up in a branch, and she just kinda stared at me for a while. Then she tried to climb the tree after me, but I kicked at her and made her fall. That was the first and only time I saw her cry.
We had more normal encounters as well, mostly playing while our parents hung out. I was never exactly happy with that, she was meaner than we were little kids. She stopped wanting to play games I could win, like board games or video games, and nigh exclusively wanted to play "games" she would nearly always crush me in. Soccer, basketball, wrestling namely. She was a head taller than me, probably had 25 pounds on me, and was certainly more of an athlete than I'd ever be.
This led to what we later called the incident at the lake.
