Two weeks into our senior year of High School, Travis Cross himself was throwing a party and we were invited. Robin couldn't have been more thrilled. We skipped school on Friday to go shopping for the perfect thing for her to wear. I loved going to the mall with her, she always had a fun sense of style, and often liked to explore the stores I didn't otherwise have the guts to enter – like the lingerie shops.

Robin Storm was the very definition of beautiful. I have no problem admitting that. She had long, thick red hair that shined in the florescent lights of our school hallways. Her eyes were forest green and shaped like emeralds. For a high school student, she had the perfect body – and she didn't have to get surgery. Sometimes I felt like I was the only reason she wasn't a member of the most popular clique in school. I was like a polar opposite to her.

I've always been a little on the short side of average height. No curves worth mentioning, just a stick skeleton. I had blonde hair, but it didn't really shine and I could never get it cut or styled just right. Essentially, Robin dressed me, so I could at least own up to good fashion.

We met in the third grade, believe it or not. We were seated next to each other in class because our last names are nearly identical. Hers is Storm and mine is Stone. The day we met, she declared we would be best friends forever, and it stuck. She has remained by my side all these years, and I couldn't get rid of her if I wanted to.

The party looked like something you'd see in one of those teen movies. The house was full, loaded with the school's most popular kids all trying to imitate a club. There was beer somehow, and some kids were smoking weed in the backyard. These were the kids I joined, because they were talking Star Wars – my kind of language. Robin sought out Travis and he took her upstairs.

About an hour later, she came to me, bouncing on the balls of her feet, grinning from ear to ear. When we were in middle school, we bought each other matching necklaces that we promised to wear every minute of every day until one of us lost our virginity. Just after we left the party, she took my hand and excitedly folded her necklace into my palm.

I was genuinely happy for her – a little jealous, naturally – but happy. Travis Cross was the guy in school that all the girls drooled over. He was class president, the leading man in all the school plays, and he played guitar in a garage band that didn't suck. I was probably the only girl in town that could honestly say I wasn't at all interested in him. Even when I said it, nobody believed me.

All the following week, rumors went around school that Travis really liked Robin and something serious might have started. She was just as confused and excited as the rest of the school, since he hadn't spoken to her since the party. Then on Friday, he pulled her out of class. He made a big show of it, calling her name over the intercom. Since the whole school loved him, including the teachers, he could get away with stuff like that.

Sure enough, they went on a date that night to the movies. She kept me up until four o'clock in the morning describing every detail to me over the phone.

Naturally, as the days went by, she spent less and less time with me and more time with Travis and his little circle of guy friends. I understood, imagining that if I was ever in her shoes, I would act the same way… probably. So I shrugged it off and started spending more time with the guys that were smoking weed and talking about science fiction movies and comic books at lunch.