Michael Lopez

Following my Heart
It was freshman year and I was hanging out near the cafeteria with my friend group
whom I thought would stay together. The day she started dating him, it all changed.
Me and my friends were very close and talked about everything to each other. We would
get in slight arguments here and there, but we would move on right after. One day, one of my
friends was in a special kind of mood. She was all put together with her hair and make up done;
like something motivated her to look extra good.
“Somebody seems to be extra happy today” we all said.
She gave us a big smile and sarcastically acted like nothing happened.
“I started talking to someone” she said.
We all stood there surprised about what we just heard while also being happy for her.
“Um congratulations” one of my friends told her as they gave her a hug.
We all stood there, happy for her, but its as if something was telling me that there was a
problem. For a while things were going good between all of us. Everyday, we would talk and
laugh with each other. Life was good, except that gut feeling that there was going to be a
problem with her never seemed to go away.
The problems seemed to start when me and my friend decided to text her now boyfriend
through my phone to mess with him.
“What should we say” I said.
“I'm not sure, but he is pretty easy to mess with” she said thinking about things to say”
As we sat there at our lunch, we finally thought of somethings to text him. For hours we
were going back and forward messing with him. Me and my friend were having a really good
time messing with him.
After a couple of days, we got a different response. He had given my number to a friend
and I started receiving very disrespectful and vulgar things.
“Nobody cares about you and your beliefs” one message said, followed by “ f a g g o t.”
I was in absolute disbelief at the messages I received. Right after that, I told her what
happened.
“I'm going to come clean to him” she said confused.
“Yeah that’s a good idea” I told her.
She ended up telling him the joke we were playing except he never stopped with the
messages. He would continue to say the mean things.
One day its as if the weather was predicting the future; the clouds covered the sun and
our morning went from bright and sunny to dark and gloomy by lunch. Something was off about
my friend too. I told her about the messages he was sending and she completely changed her
attitude. Its as if she didn’t care about the things he was saying to me.
“Hey are you going to say something to him?” I asked her.
“I don’t see the problem” she said to me in a rude manner.
My friend who I thought was there for me and everyone else completely turned her back on us to
focus on her boyfriend. We felt disrespected. We felt used. We felt like we didn’t deserve it.
When we confronted her, she fought back and claimed that she didn’t do anything. This
led to our group splitting up out of frustration.
It was like this for the rest of the year until they made up the following year. I learned that
true friends would never do something like that to each other. They left me broken and
irreparable. People may criticize me for not being friends with her again and I tell them every
time that even though I forgave her, I learned that those people were not my true friends.

1. My emotional truth is that “friends” are not always as they seem.

2. The problem was that she got together with that guy which led up to the fallout we
had(climax). The falling action was when we all separated and the resolution was the
group getting back together/me realizing the true meaning of a friend.

There were not too many things to fix as stated in their review, but I just added the location to
the exposition and a line that described how I felt at the end. I also added the messages that I
received and I was hesitant about including them because it was offensive, but you noted that it
would make more sense so I included it.