Five
Five Friends
“Can I steal those chips that you totally aren’t eating right now? Thank you!” said a fifteen-year-old girl sitting cross-legged in the long grass at the foot of a tree, rushing over her words as she always did.  She had already reached over, snatched the bag, and was munching on a chip before her friend could even respond.  
“Abby!” exclaimed a brown-haired girl of approximately the same age, though noticeably shorter.  Her shoulder-length hair fell across her dark-skinned face and into her gold-flecked eyes as she reached out in attempt to stop Abby.  “I was rushed getting out of the house this morning and those chips were the only thing I had time to grab!” 
Taking on a sarcastically pretentious tone, Abby responded. “Shame on you!  I can’t believe that my oh-so-responsible Jessica would ever sleep in for so long that she was unable to make a lunch for herself.  Let this be a lesson to you to get up earlier in the future.  I expect a full, nutritious lunch tomorrow with each of the four food groups young lady. ”
“Six,” interjected a third girl sitting slightly set off from Abby, Jessica, and two other girls huddled under the thick trunk of the oak tree whose branches were creaking in the harsh wind.  The stark outline of the spindly tips of the branches were swaying against a thin blanket of clouds with slivers of a murky blue sky showing from behind.  The weak rays of sunlight breaking through washed the entire school in a strange yellowish-gray light, and the entire landscape looked as if it was a photograph taken with a Polaroid camera.     
“And the mysterious Cassidy speaks!  What has it been?  Twenty-seven days?  And, actually, I was reading this really interesting article the other day put out by the Food and Drug Administration, and they’re seriously considering officially removing two of the groups - something about some vegan health initiative,” replied Abby with a grin on her face.
“Um, I don’t think you understand how veganism works,” responded Cassidy, her severe features emphasized by the surreal shadows and her perplexed expression.  Her electric blue eyes popped against her paper-white skin.  Long, silky black hair flowed over her shoulders and down to her waist in a pin-straight sheet on the rare occasion that it was not pulled back into a tight ponytail, as to keep it out of her face while she was reading.  If she had chosen to wear leather jackets, chokers, band t-shirts, and heeled black combat boots, she would be the archetype of an angsty, rebellious teenager.  On that early October day, though, she was dressed as if she were a Catholic school girl in thick-knit tights, a gray and blue plaid skirt, a cashmere v-neck sweater, and Converse.  On most people, the ensemble would look absurd and out-of-date, yet Cassidy managed to pull it off.    
“Oh, no.  It’s this totally trendy new form of veganism in Washington D.C.  It’s so strange though that I’m fairly sure it may also be some sort of cult.  You know how people say that all politicians are liars?  Well, whether or not that’s true, I know now that they are completely mental.  First, it’s the FDA.  Next, they’ll be spreading their strange demonic ways to the White House, and we’ll really be in trouble.”  As a small snort chuckle Andrea’s mouth, her tightly curled auburn hair bouncing up and down with suppressed laughter, Abby stared at her with an utterly serious expression before her always-present, playful grin returned to her face.  “Anyway, what were we talking about? Oh yeah,” she said, turning back to Jessica.  “You, young lady, need to get more sleep.  You’ve been texting that nerdy boy in our math class that you have a crush on all night, haven’t you?”
“Nerdy boy in our math class?” muttered Jessica under her breath.  Brushing the comment aside, she replied,  “Actually, my sister -”
“Yeah, yeah.  We’ve all heard the story before: My sister was in the bathroom for forty-five minutes doing her make-up, and I wasn’t able to get in the shower until seven!  She puts so much junk on her face that she’s starting to look like Pennywise,” interrupted Abby.  She mimicked Jessica’s overly-serious and slightly whiny tone flawlessly while replicating her perpetually crinkled eyebrows and pursed lips.
“Abigail, how rude!” exclaimed Jessica.  At that moment, she perfectly resembled Stephanie Tanner from Full House.  “I sound nothing like . . . okay maybe a little bit,” she confessed. 
“First of all: If I already know what you are going to say, why should I let you finish?  I may be a little bit rude sometimes, but at least my stories aren’t predictable and slow like yours.  Second of all: Wow, how many times am I going to have to tell you guys that Abby is not short for Abigail?  Speaking of names - and stories -, that reminds me; you guys won’t believe what happened this weekend,” said Abby, taking in a long breath as she prepared to endeavor yet another one of her trademark rambling anecdotes.  “So” was the only word she was able to get out of her mouth before a cold, biting gust of wind whipped her long, honey-colored hair into her hazel eyes and open mouth.  Her pale pink lips and rosy cheeks with a spray of light freckles across her nose and heart-shaped face completed the cutesy, girlish appearance.  Her clothing definitely matched the look, as she was wearing a white shirt with thin black stripes and a honey-colored skirt that reached halfway to her knees, a jean jacket, teal, knitted headband that covered the tips of her ears, light brown lace-up boots, and thick white stockings.  As outgoing as she was, she could have easily been one of the most popular girls in school.  In a certain sense, she was, but, despite the fact that she had talked to nearly every one of the three hundred students in the sophomore class every week, not one of them could confidently claim that anything they knew about her was true.  While she annoyedly attempted to untangle her hair, Abby’s friends resumed the conversation they had been having.
They were all evidently relieved her seemingly endless babbling had finally come to an end.  Though her stories were always amusing, they could become tedious when, everyday, her friends listened to the meticulous details she incorporated to add yet another string to the elaborate and amazingly enigmatic web of stories that composed the facade of her strange life.  Abby had realized the impatience that her friends often felt with her years ago, but she could no longer stop herself.  It had become an addiction.  She also realized, though, that she really didn't care.

Five Words
“Anyway,” started Andrea, “back to what I was saying before the whole “not-so-mysterious stolen chip incident.” Before she could finally say what she had been trying to tell everyone for the past ten minutes, though, Abby interjected once again.
“Hey, if you want to try to give stuff witty names, you’re going to have to step up your game.  “The Whole Not-So Mysterious Chip Incident?”  This is why storytelling is my thing. You should maybe consider -”
“Yeah, yeah okay.  You can be the storyteller or medicine man or whatever you want to -”
“Medicine man?” laughed Andi, displaying her perfectly straight, white teeth as she walked down the walkway by the unkept dark green grass, heeled boots clopping on the stone and dark, silky waist-length hair swishing behind her.  With her flawless olive-toned skin, huge dark brown eyes, thick eyelashes, and full lips, Andi’s looks competed with Cassidy’s.  Everyday she wore a full face of makeup, though it was hardly necessary, and combat boots, despite the fact that she was already five foot eight.  “If we’re all going to be part of some Indian tribe can I be a hunter or huntress or however you say it. I think using a bow and arrow would be pretty cool.”
“Wow.  Andi finally says something that doesn’t have to do with shopping, guys, or partying,” Abby responded with a momentary scowl that distorted her cute features followed immediately by a seemingly sincere laugh, as if the sharp comment had been no more than a light-hearted joke.  “Oh and now that you mention it, hunter sounds a lot more fun than storytelling.  I already shoot my bow in the woods behind my house all the time.  Can I just be both?” 
“What you can be is quiet!” exclaimed Andrea, raising her usually calm, quiet tone and catching the other girls’ attention.  Abby put her hand on her heart and gasped mouthing, “I’m hurt,” but no one interrupted her again. “Actually, now that Andi is here, she can just tell you guys.”  Andrea glanced over at Andi, who had sat down next to Abby, as she said this, but, noticing that she was focused on texting someone, continued herself.  “Okay then, guess who asked Andi to homecoming.”
“Well, I’m assuming this means we have your permission to talk again. Ummm,” she wondered, looking straight ahead and furrowing her eyebrows, apparently deep in thought. “Oh I’ve got it!  It’s totally Jacques, isn’t it?” she asked, though it sounded as if it was a statement because her tone was completely. 
“Is there even someone named Jacques in our grade?” asked Cassidy, mirroring the confused expression that everyone in the group was wearing as well. 
“How do you guys not know Jacques? He’s the foreign exchange student from France who came last year.  All of the girls thought he was super hot. I mean I can’t say he was too bad looking myself. He asked me to homecoming last year, but I said no because he’s pretty boring.  It turns out that that wasn’t even the worst of it, though.  He became kind of stalkerish after Christmas break and requested to follow me on Instagram and Snapchat and all that.  I mean that wasn’t that strange I guess, even though we hadn’t talked much.  Or at least by my standards.  But, honestly, what guy wouldn’t want to follow me,” she said sarcastically in an airheaded voice as she flipped her hair.   This time she was fortunate enough that the wind didn’t blow it back into her face.  “Then it for real got super weird because I started seeing him whenever I was out - at the mall, walking my dog. He was always alone though. I really got freaked out when he came to my little sister’s funeral.  You didn’t say you would go with him, did you?” She told them all of this with wide, concerned eyes.
“Your sister’s funeral?”  asked Jessica, Cassidy, and Andi asked in unison.  “You don’t even have a sister,” continued Andi.  “I’ve known you since fifth grade.  I think I would know if you had a little sister.  Especially one who had died last year.”  Cassidy, who had looked up from her AP Biology homework once again looked the most skeptical, but before anyone could question Abby any further on the subject, Andi reminded them of the original conversation with the corners of her mouth turned up slightly. “So, what were you gonna say again, Andrea?”
“What? Oh, yeah. Um what were we talking about again?” Andi sighed with exasperation as Andrea simply stared blankly at the ultra-modern main office building that stood in front of her, somewhat stunned after Abby’s rambling description, but mostly lost in her own thoughts. The weak sunlight glinted off the glass and stainless steel, making the newest addition to their campus appear even more out of place than it usually did. Some of the buildings had been constructed in as early as the 1800s, but the entire school was remodeled in the sixties. The cracked red bricks, intricate cast iron fence, and thick vines lacing the walls could make anyone believe that “The Secret Garden” lay hidden beyond any one of the tall hedges of prickly leaves. The interior, though, did not match the intriguing exterior, for it was bland with beige lockers, tiled floors, and wood paneling.
Just as Andi opened her mouth to begin explaining everything that Andrea had meant to say, Andrea’s head snapped back up. “Oh yeah. Sorry about that. I was just thinking about this conversation I had yesterday.  Have you ever realized that if you turn a chair - Nevermind, you don’t care.  So anyway, Andy’s going to homecoming with Tyler.”  As Andrea said this, Abby’s face flashed with confusion, but it was gone so quickly that only Andi, who had been glancing over at her with a slight smirk on her face, had noticed.
“Oh yeah.  He was in my German class last year.  I guess he’s pretty cute, but, then again, isn’t everybody who asks out Andi? The rest of them are probably too intimidated,” Jessica commented with a small smile spread across her lips that was likely meant to hide her disappointed and frustrated face. After a few minutes of prattling on about how it was completely unexpected when he asked her, she grew bored with the topic and began telling the story of a boy in her English class “who was totally hitting on her” yesterday.
“And he’s so hot. I don’t mean in Tyler’s puppy dog, I-look-like-a-six-year-old-boy kind of  way. He has to be at least six foot and he’s got the coolest green eyes. Also, when he -”      
“Also when he was talking to me I just felt like we really connected because he was talking about this episode of Friends. And I was like ‘Omigosh, I watch Friends all the time.’  Then he kept talking on and on and on and I just laughed at whatever he said so that he knew that I was totally interested!  I mean I don’t think it will actually go anywhere.  From what I can remember, he was pretty boring.” As Abby completed her imitation, her face darkened and she continued without missing a beat.  “You’re kind of a horrible person. We both know that Tyler has liked you since seventh grade, and I mean you guys used to be like best friends.  Don’t just turn him into another one of your little boy toys that you’re gonna dump after a week.”
Andrea and Cassidy were simply looking from Andi to Abby with pursed lips and raised eyebrows while Jess awkwardly crunched on a chip she had taken a moment before from the bag that she had reclaimed when Andrea had been busy trying to get everyone’s attention.  The silence stretched on for what seemed to be an acceptable amount of time to allow everyone to process what Abby had just accused Andi of.  Then, Cassidy was the first to speak, an uncommon occurrence.
“How would you guys describe your lives in five words?” 
Five Lives
“Why five?” asked Jess as she put down her bag of chips looking somewhat intrigued.
“Knowing Cassidy, she probably has some weird scientific reasoning behind it because of this article she read in Psychology today,” said Abby as if she had already completely forgotten about her outburst.  Attempting to appear indifferent, Andi stared down at her phone with a blank expression.  Only Abby paid any attention to the nearly imperceptible tug she was giving the hair that she had gathered into her fist, an idiosyncrisy that always betrayed when she was frustrated or angry.
With a small shrug, Cassidy corrected her. “No.  It’s a pretty common game.  Like six-word memoirs.  I thought that six is a kind of awkward number though, so I thought I could change it.  Ten came to my head first, but that’s too long.  I don’t want to hear your whole life story or anything.  So why not five?  It doesn’t really mean anything I guess.  It could just be interesting to get to know a little more about each other.  We don’t have to get super deep or anything, but it would be nice to know that there’s a group of people out there who will always just get you - understand you a little bit better than most people do.  And now I’m getting weird and deep.  At least think-” The blaring of the bell cut her off mid-sentence, signalling the end of what had been a strange lunch for all of them.  Looking up with narrowed eyes until the ringing stopped as if her glaring alone could stop the obnoxious noise, she finished by saying, “Think about it, okay?”

Five Lives
“So I thought about.  I think I have a pretty good one,” Abby declared unnecessarily loudly  as she approached their spot on the grass.  The four girls already sitting underneath the tree looked up at her, as she had interrupted their intense debate about whether or not water should be considered wet.
Jess was the first to realize and acknowledge what Abby was referring to.  “Oh yeah.  You mean the five word thing? I forgot about that.  Why were you so late getting here anyway? You’re math class is pretty close.”
“I had to finish a test though. Well the whole class did.  My teacher was super interested in this story I was telling her and we ended up starting the test like twenty minutes late.  It was about this species, the Mediocris, and a Mediocrian girl, Aequum with two “u”s but no “w.”  Kinda weird, yeah?   So pretty much the gist of the story is the Mediocr -”
“Isn’t Mediocris just a kind of cloud? And Aequum is Latin for . . . Oh I don’t remember anymore.  It’s Latin for something though,” interjected Cassidy.
“Wow.  Good job making my story super boring.  It’s not even worth telling anymore.  So, as I was saying, I came up with the five words thing.”
“And?” prompted Andi, maintaining her usual disinterested expression despite the slight edge in her tone as she fidgeted with the frayed end of her jean skirt uncomfortably with one hand and tugged at the end of her hair with the other.  Andi had seemed tense and anxious all of lunch, especially in contrast to her usual confident, if not arrogant, manner. 
After a short pause, Abby answered in an uncharacteristically quiet and unsure voice.  “Finding comfort in every lie.” 
Question after question and day after day they learned not only the story behind Abby’s five words but also the secrets and emotions that each of them had kept hidden and the five words had finally revealed.  They were all amazed that Abby, who had always seemed so guarded as she hid behind her curtain of lies, was able to open herself up to them so suddenly.  Having heard Abby’s struggles with her parents’ horrific divorce and their endless list of broken promises to her, everyone began opening up, and they learned to feel comfortable with one another even in the awkward, difficult, or uncomfortable moments.  Jess’s five words, “little did she know that . . .” led to a nearly week long conversation about all of the times that they had felt ignored or pushed aside.  Andrea’s five words, “Change is the only constant,” brought up all of their experiences of trying to adjust or living in seemingly endless turmoil.  Eventually, most days one of the five girls only brought up the game as a joke or to tell a cute saying that they had thought of. Whenever they had something serious to talk about, though, and they felt completely overloaded with everything the world was throwing at them, it always seemed easier to tell in five simple words.
---
“I can’t believe this is the last day before finals week. And then we're literally done with high school,” said Andrea with wide eyes as if she were literally staring at the daunting future that lay ahead of her.
“Not metaphorically?” replied Abby.  Her already-squinting hazel eyes closed as she gave a short laugh.  Unlike Andrea, she was not protected from the harsh summer sun by the oak tree’s shade.  Her long blonde hair, which was swept into a messy ponytail, appeared golden in the sunlight filtering through the trees branches, and she altogether looked virtually the same as she had three years ago  “But I know, right? I would be super stressed out but I think I'm just kind of beyond that. It is what it is at this point. Plus, I've already gotten into Berkeley, so I'm good to go until summer’s over. Then I'm entering a living hell.”
“Didn't you tell us you were going to UCLA for sure? There was that whole argument you had with your dad because you wanted to go to some weird college in Nebraska with an art major, and he said that you would be wasting your talents and whatever?” asked Jess, her eyebrows scrunched together as usual.
“For the record, I would make an amazing art curator or whatever it is people with art degrees do. But really? Nebraska? And do what? Visit the farms? They have farms out there, right? I don’t know what possessed me to tell you that one,” she said, laughing more than she did when Andrea quoted Dwight from a The Office, which she did at least one a week.
“You're lucky you're entertaining, Abby, because sometimes your absolutely insane,” observed Jess while rolling her eyes.  Everybody murmerd their consent except Andrea who had taken to her odd habit of simply staring at the glass building they still sat across from, stuck in her own head.  The modern structure was not as out of place as it once was, though.  Most of the school had been remodeled the previous summer, and where there had once been an ominous iron fence and mysterious hedges, there were now xeriscape planters and newly planted trees.     
“Insane? Maybe a little bit. I think liar describes me a little bit better.”
“I worry about you, Abby,” Andi replied jokingly.
“Well I guess you have a reason to. Do you guys want to hear a story?” Abby’s seemingly random question was met with confused silence.  ‘I will take that as yes.  Don’t worry.  This is shorter than most of my stories.  Pretty much, three years you all started a sort of game - the five word stories about your life.  The game I was playing though was a little different, but a lot more fun.  It was more like ‘see how dramatic I can be and still get them to believe me.’  Wow,  my witty names are really slipping.  They’re almost as bad as Andrea’s. ”
“Sure that’s what happened.  So you’re trying to tell us that you’ve been lying to us for three years straight?  It may have been one of your weirder ones, but that actually was a pretty funny story for once.” Andi replied sarcastically as Andrea chuckled to herself and shook her head, returning to reality to hear Abby’s explanation.
“What’s kind of funny is, even now that I’m telling you, you guys still don’t want to believe it - won’t believe it.  Have you ever thought that maybe being ‘real’ is overrated?  I mean people just see what they want to see anyway, so what’s so bad about being ‘fake’? Take all of you for example.”
“Let me get this straight.  You’re saying that you’ve been pulling some elaborate prank on us or something?”
“Well when you put it like that . . . I would just say that I’ve been making life a little bit more interesting for all of us.”
“So you've been lying to us for the past three years?”
“Okay, yeah.”
“You're crazy. And a kind of horrible person.”
“At least I don't delude myself into believing that I can change like I’ve heard you all do every single week.  You talked, and talked, and talked, but you never did anything about our problems.  You never even tried to change or grow or do something about whatever situation you happened to be stuck in that day, or week, or month, or even year. Did you expect me to just sit around and complain all day like you did?”    
` “At least we’re not living a lie.” Jess retorted quickly after Andi’s short interrogation had come to an unexpected end.  Her pithy statement was as telling as Abby’s overabundance of words. Abby's sharp tongue had definitely influenced her over the years.
There were a few moments of uncomfortable yet thoughtful silence.  It was only broken when Cassidy laughed, somewhat sadly, as the bell marked the end of the last lunch the five friends would ever eat together under that tall oak tree. "We're not at all ready for the rest of our lives."
"Is anyone ev-" started Abby, cut short when the warm summer breeze whipped her hair into her face as it did so often.  Everyone couldn't help but laugh as they remembered all the times this had happened before and how much their lives had changed since then.  They couldn’t help but realize the hard truth, no matter how much they tried in their peculiar ways to avoid it: their lives were changing, and each of them were already beginning to fall behind.