She was pretty, but quiet. Looking at her made you wonder what was going through her head at that moment. She didn’t talk much but when she did you listened. She was a very sweet person, she would give as much as she could to please other people. She was smart but she didn’t show it. She was the type of friend that you would fight to have in your life, and cry when you lost her. She was a great listener, and could lift you up with her words. She was all of these things and she was loved. Her name was Aaliyah.

All throughout fourth grade, Aaliyah and I didn’t talk, other than working together in groups, or if we sat at each others table. She made friends with a girl named Ashley P., not the Ashley that me and my friends hung out with, that was Ashley F. Ashley was very possessive and would cry when Aaliyah made other friends. So I hung out with my group and Aaliyah hung out with her one friend.

The first day of fifth grade, I saw that Aaliyah was in my class. She was still just as pretty, and still just as quiet. I looked around for Ashley, I didn’t want to cause any problems, but Ashley wasn’t in my class. I got up and sat next to Aaliyah. She looked at me but she didn’t say anything. I was running through my mind trying to figure out how to start a conversation, finally I asked, “Hey were you in my class last year?”

Aaliyah looked at me, and slowly she smiled, and said, “Yeah,” she laughed, “I moved here from California before 4th grade started.”

“You made friends with Ashley pretty quickly though, that’s good.”

“No it isn’t really,” she said, looking down, “I don’t really like her, I was just being friends with her because I felt bad.”

I was mean back in elementary school and I started laughing, “Everyone feels bad for her,” I said in between giggles, “she’s really weird.”

“It’s okay though kid, you can sit with me and my friends at lunch. Okay?” I wrapped my arm around her.
“Okay.” She said, and she wrapped her arm around me.

All that first day of school we talked about ourselves and our lives, she told me about California and I told her about Colorado. When lunch came I walked to my table, my friends were already there, Mikiyla looked at Aaliyah and then at me, and then back at Aaliyah. Mikiyla looked Aaliyah up and down, she was sizing her up.

“This is Aaliyah,” I said and I dragged Aaliyah forward, “she’s gonna be sitting with us, so play nice.” Everyone greeted her and from that day on Aaliyah was one of our group and she was my best friend.

The thing about Aaliyah was she made me happy and she understood me a lot, and she was very quiet but when you got to know her she was really goofy and dumb. My Mommy had just passed away not a year ago when I met Aaliyah, and she helped me a lot during that time. I told her everything and vice versa, I talked to her about my family problems or when I was sad.Aaliyah knew everything about me.  I didn’t treat her so good at first, I took her for granted and took advantage of her. Katie, another friend in my group, and I used to talk bad about her and make fun of her.  I realized though that what I was doing was wrong and I stopped. Through all of our petty little 5th grade drama me and Aaliyah stayed close, even when our whole group was breaking apart. Then we all hauled off and went to middle school.

Middle school was hard for me, I didn’t like all the people and I didn’t have any classes with Aaliyah. Ashley, she hung out with us in 5th, became close with Aaliyah. I felt like a third wheel so I stopped hanging out with either of them and went off on my own, it was hard losing Aaliyah, she was my best friend. That’s when my depression and anxiety really started. I felt like I wasn’t good enough for anyone anymore and I had anxiety that everyone I cared about was going to leave me.  Then the drama started, Ashley started to run her mouth about Aaliyah and I, we all ended up just talking about each other. Ashley wouldn’t say anything directly to my face, no she would just tell people that I was talking about them and then act like she didn’t do anything. There was so much drama.  When Aaliyah and Ashley stopped talking then Aaliyah and I started talking again. It was like we never had problems we were still just as close.

Aaliyah was always at my house but I never went to hers. Aaliyah’s parents rented a basement in a friend’s house and they were embarrassed about that, so they wouldn’t let people come over. When her Mom, Tiffany,  saw how close Aaliyah and i were becoming, she agreed to letting me come over. That night was great. Aaliyah and I built a fort and talked and ate a whole bunch of food and did all sorts of stuff. I also bonded with Aaliyah’s mom, Tiffany, I didn’t know Tiffany at all but she had gone through a lot of stuff that I have gone through.
That summer Aaliyah and I did everything together, I was at her house constantly and she was at my house. We practically lived together and when we weren’t physically with each other we were texting, or talking on the phone, or something. Aaliyah was my whole world. Even my little sister,  Evelyn, called Aaliyah her big sister.
Tiffany would come pick me up, and we would drive around the city, talk about stuff, and just bump to music. Tiffany would take us to the dollar store and we would buy a whole bunch of candy and mess around.

One day Tiffany pulled into a gas station she went inside to pay for the gas, and Aaliyah and I were sitting in the car messing around and listening to music. Then “Or nah” came on by the Weeknd. This old lady who was at the pump in front of us could hear the song through the car and she started glaring at Aaliyah. Aaliyah glared back and then she rolled all the windows down, opened the sunroof, and she turned the music up so much that you could feel the bass vibrating the car, it already was but it was way worse. Then as if that wasn’t enough she climbed through the sunroof so that her upper body was out of the car and she started literally screaming the words to the song. I was laughing so hard. Tiffany thought it was pretty funny too. The old lady was shocked and her eyes got all big. She got in her car and like sped out of the parking lot. We laughed about it all the way to Aaliyah’s house. This is my favorite memory of Aaliyah, it’s how I remember her. Aaliyah didn’t think twice about what people thought of her, she just did whatever she wanted and she didn’t care about what anyone else had to say about it.

As a proverb once said, “all good things must come to end.” that’s exactly what happened between me and Aaliyah. Aaliyah moved to a new house and her house was out of the boundaries of Shadow ridge the school that I went too. Aaliyah ended up going to online school, and because our schedules were so different we didn’t see each other that much anymore. We were slowly beginning to grow apart, and as much as I hated it, there wasn’t much that I could do about it. Aaliyah would call me and I would be busy doing other stuff, like homework or I would be with kids from school.  I made other friends and I began to do more things with them. Instead of talking to each other, we started talking about each other, it resulted in a huge fight. I got mad at Aaliyah because she wasn’t answering me and she said I never had time for her when she wanted to talk, we started arguing and then calling each other names and things went South really quick. Now we don’t talk anymore.
You know how the meteor came down and supposedly killed all of the dinosaurs, well that’s what losing Aaliyah felt like. It felt like a meteor came down and knocked my whole world out of balance. I loved Aaliyah, not in a weird way but she was a piece of me. I have a new best friend, that I love to death, but Aaliyah was one of a kind and I miss her a lot. I try not to feel sad about losing her, instead I try to focus on the good times that I had with her and enjoy remembering them.