Most of the time, Mark was okay. He could be pushy sometimes—real pushy—but he was also a good friend. he gave me a total of five posters, and even my mom noticed how good my room was looking. You're supposed to accept friends for who they are and not criticize them for the little things. After all, he was friends with me, and even I had to admit that couldn't be easy.
After all, the closet thing was only for a few minutes, and I probably should have laughed it off. I did, actually, after I calmed down. He was probably right not to let me just run off like I wanted to.
Also, mom, a pretty good judge of people, liked Mark and how his parents treated me. Things were working out pretty well, I thought, except when Mark got in the mood to be bossy with me. I just went along with it most of the time because it usually was little things, like where we would eat lunch or what movie we would watch (we started getting into a regular thing of watching movies at his house nearly every afternoon). He could still be embarrassing sometimes—we went to a store just because he still thought wearing briefs was babyish, and he insisted I buy new underwear. That was one of his weirder moments, I guess.
I did everything I could to make sure I didn't act childish around him, and I made sure (even though I still thought he was being unreasonable) to shower right before I went to his house. I even left my hair soaking, so it would still be a little wet when I got to his house, and he would know for sure without my saying anything.
Mark's parents invited my mom out to dinner with us the following weekend, which both made me nervous and was kind of cool. They talked about how much they liked me, how much Mark liked me, and how smart I was, and mom told them pretty much the same about Mark. We sat there and just had to laugh at all the things they were saying. I even whispered to Mark, "If they only knew how bad we really were!"
When we got home that night, my mom asked me something I hadn't thought about.
"Do you ever see his other friends?"
I knew all of them from school, of course. They were part of his gang, the people who had helped make my life a nightmare. I hated all of them.
David.
Jordan.
Andrew.
I hadn't seen them at all during the summer, and I didn't think of asking him why because I didn't care. I didn't want to see them. The more I thought about it, though, I realized that with the tons of time we were spending together, he wouldn't have time to see them.
I told my mom I hadn't seen them at all, "Maybe they're not around," I told her, though it didn't make any sense that all three of them were busy all summer long.
I was curious, but I also didn't want to know. Mark was getting to be okay with me, and I wasn't sure what would happen if they started coming around. So I decided not to mention it at all.
He still came over most mornings without telling me, and I still answered the door in my pajamas. Finally, I convinced him I could do what I wanted in my own home, and he stopped commenting. At his sleepovers, though, he said it was a rule, like having to shower in the morning in his bathroom without a lock. That's the only time he mentioned his other friends, telling me that sometimes three of them are in the bathroom all at the same time, and nobody cared about anybody being naked because "we're all guys."
"Well, I'm private," I told him—but he still ignored me. He even walked into the bathroom when I was pooping once, just to tease me because he knew it would embarrass me. He actually said that. I rolled my eyes at him and waited him out until he got bored and went back into the bedroom and watched tv. I didn't get angry at that sort of thing anymore, accepting it as just his weirdness.
So, when Mark and his parents invited me to come up with them for a 3-day weekend at their cabin up in the mountains, I wasn't worried. I thought it would be fun.
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