I was at school. It was before Grade 5, in France, in a small public school near my house. I remember sitting on a bench, reading, just like I always did. I didn’t really have any friends to play with, and books were the only thing that distracted me from this constant loneliness. I could hear all the other children shouting in the playground, running after each other, and wished I could join them. But reading also brought me calmness, knowledge and the best thing in the world for me then; words. So many words that I was bursting to just say them out loud, to tell everyone how many I knew and to enjoy the beautiful sounds they created.
Suddenly, my train of thought was interrupted by a girl, one of my few friends, shuffling towards me. She looked like someone who was about to do something she would regret, and that is exactly what she did. She came up to me, and started talking to me about my birthday, that she wouldn’t come because she didn’t want to, that I was mean and she wasn’t my friend. Tears were running down my face, and I felt hurt and betrayed. She hunched her shoulders and turned away, running back to her other group of friends. I just stayed there, on the bench, and went back to reading, still crying, trying to forget that one of my friends had just said those hurtful words to me.
After school, I went home, trying not to think about what had happened. I just acted normal, had the usual conversations with my family at dinner like talking about my day at school, asking how work was and so on. I said absolutely nothing about my friend’s “betrayal”.