The Girl Next Door Chapter 30

Over the first week and a half of the Olympic break, before the guys came back for practices, Kate had a lot of free time. She didn’t realize how much time she had been spending with Sidney and the team, and how much time she spent at games. With her free time, she got to spend more time with her friends, and during that week and a half, she realized how her friends truly were.
“So, Katie,” Amanda said as they walked around the mall the next weekend, “now that the team’s gone, you’ve got time to spend with your old friends?”
“It’s not like that,” Kate replied.
“No, that’s exactly what it’s like,” another friend, Ashley, said.
“What are you guys getting at?” Kate asked.
“Well, you spend so much time with them, you hardly ever spend time with us,” Amanda stated.
“You’re always with all those guys,” Ashley added.
“They’re my friends too,” Kate told them. “And, as I told Stacie last year before we had our falling-out, I’m sick of doing the same old shit all the time, and sick of driving my drunk friends home all the time. I mean, sorry I don’t drink and all, but that’s cause my cousin fucking died in a crash from a drunk driver. I don’t make stupid choices like that.”
“We’re not asking you to drink,” Amanda told Kate. “We’re just asking you to come out with us.”
“Ya,” Kate said sarcastically, “so I can drive your drunken asses home afterwards. And sorry I’ve got other friends too.””You’ve changed Katie,” Ashley said. “You’ve changed a lot these past few months.”
“So?” Kate asked.
“Everyone has noticed,” Ashley told her. “You’ve changed, you’re a lot different.”
“How?” Kate asked.
“Mainly how you act, and your personality,” Amanda told her. “I mean, you never want to do stuff with us anymore, you don’t like to party with us, you’ve just changed. Like how you’re thinking about Pitt, seriously. Shit, Katie, Pitt is so ghetto and trashy. You got fucking accepted to Boston University early, or did you forget that? It’s fucking BU. We’re just trying to help, but it’s like you’ve forgotten who your true friends are.”
“Well, you know what?” Kate asked. “I don’t want to go to BU. I don’t want to go to Boston. I want to stay here. I applied to BU because at first I was considering it, but now I’m not. It’s down to Minnesota and Pitt. And Pitt is not ghetto, it’s a great school. And you’re right, I have changed. I stand up for myself a hell of a lot more than I used to, and I’m gonna do that now. And one thing I do know, is that I know my TRUE friends wouldn’t say stuff like this. My friends, the guys I hang out with who happen to play hockey, are my true friends. I can call them anytime, anywhere, and they won’t tell me to fuck off, like you guys do. I just finally woke up and realized I don’t need to deal with this shit. I’m beyond this high school pettiness. You know what? Call your moms, cause I’m leaving, and you’re not getting a fucking ride from me. I thought you guys were my friends, but I guess not.”
With that, Kate walked away from her friends, who stood there with their jaws dropped, and walked out of the mall, and went home. On the way, she called Sidney, who she had been talking to about her problems with her friends, and when she told him she stood up for herself and told the truth, he applauded her. Kate was usually really shy (so was Sidney, that was something most people did not know), but now was beginning to stand up for herself a lot more. She was a mean girl on the ice, but off the ice, she was usually shy and soft-spoken. But, this year, since she had been hanging out with Sidney and the team a lot, she had begun to creep out of her shell. The team had helped her with that, and she didn’t realize it until now that she had become more confident, and that they had helped her in ways she didn’t even realize. She was more comfortable around the people she had known for only a few months, because they were hard-working people, not trust-fund babies like her friends who took everything for granted. The guys on the team liked her for who she was, and never told her things like her “friends” told her. She loved her new friends, and realized how wrong she had been to hang out with her old friends, who had changed right under her nose, and she hadn’t realized it until this school year that they were a waste of time, and two-faced bitches.