i went over to my friend rose's tonight. it was the first time all summer where it wasn't a huge group of us - just rose, jess, ryan and i. a lot of the time when the whole high school gang is together i feel left out, changed, different from them. but with those three, who were probably my three best friends in the underclass years, i felt for the first time since we left for college that everything is as it was. in a small group it's so much easier to slip into a long established rhythm, picking up the inside jokes and memories you share. i felt welcomed for once, and relaxed, and uninhibited. we joked around, i showed them lobster sticks to magnet, we played clue. it was good times.

things suddenly got ugly cleaning up clue, with jessica and ryan throwing dice at each other playfully. it became the opposite of playful faster than i realized i should stop laughing - ryan throwing the die smack at jess' chin, jess getting in her face and hitting her in her new and infected ear piercing, and ryan losing it, dropping the die, throwing jess to the couch and kicking her. a short screaming match followed and then everyone wanted to go home. ryan went upstairs to get her stuff. when she came back down in the middle of our now casual conversation, she was crying.

she kept apologizing and saying no, i don't agree with that at all (what she had done). i think it scared her more than anything. if she could snap like that in the moment, how badly could she hurt someone when she was really pissed? soon she was hysterical. and suddenly i didn't feel i fit in with these people so well after all because i had no idea how all this had happened and i had no idea how to comfort my friend. i just stood there dumbly watching this girl, once one of my best friends, trying to compose herself, having no idea what inside of her was so upset and so terrified of what had just happened. i realized there must have been so much more to her, so much more pain and neuroses under the surface that i never saw and certainly never imagined. there's so much about her i could never figure out and know i never will figure out - including why she for all intents and purposes turned her back on all closeness between us and made me feel distant from the whole group. i watched her crying and i realized i had no idea who she was at all.

so i write it off as stupid high school stuff. which it is. i love these girls to death but i've been back and forth with them too many times to really care whether i go back again. they're great to hang out with, but i'll never know them and they'll never know me. i don't know what went on inside ryan tonight - but i get the feeling if she hasn't shown me by now, she will never show me. i am not on the inside with them. i'm resigned to just hoping she gets over whatever it is she's going through while i wait for the next time we do nothing more meaningful than hang out and pretend it all never happened.