Friendship Lemonade

Every mom in the carpool school drop off lane watched my neighbor Christian Martinez dropkick my face like a soccer ball. I don’t know why it took so long for one of these moms to get out of their car and stop this crazed 6th grade boy from beating the shit out of me, a terrified and already screaming third grade girl. Maybe it was because half the moms were secretly in slippers and pajama pants and there was a good three feet of snow outside or maybe (as I truly believed at the time) it was because they were all getting a kick out of my pain and liked watching me suffer but either way, this kid two times my size was wailing me like there was no tomorrow. I just kept screaming and using the only defense my little child sized brain could think of at the time which was digging my nails into this kid anytime I could possibly get a grip on any part of him. It must have looked insane, him punching and kicking and fucking me up while I just kept latching onto his arm or leg, whichever was closer during that particular atack, in order to stab my nails into him like mini make-shift daggers, but none the less none of these moms gave a single shit. It took an entire ten minutes, (I know because my mom watched it back on the cameras later that day) for a parent to finally take pity on me and drag themselves out of their SUV in, yes, slippers to drag this lunatic off of me and I knew right then, crying in the snow, bleeding just waiting for someone to help me that I would have to seek my own justice out in this world and I began plotting my revenge.

A few days later while I was still nursing my wounds, Christian and his parents knocked on my front door, which was right across the street from their house. My mom answered the door and called me over so that Christian could apologize. I think his parents were a little shocked when they actually saw my bruised face and two black eyes. I hoped they thought their kid was a psychopath because who the fuck beats up a little girl. I was mad, soooo mad but I was also abnormally smart and devious for my age, so when Christian apologized to me, I looked him in the eyes, smiled and forgave him. 

Three weeks and five days later I decided enough time had passed and it was time I could get away with the next step of my plan. I went over to my best girl friends on the block’s house and me, Sabrina and Dinova all plotted together to take Christian down once and for all. We mixed together a potion full of dirt, little pieces of grass, ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise, cayenne pepper, tabasco sauce, the dead body of one fly, an ungodly amount of salt, and every other gross but non deadly thing we could possibly think of into a base of strawberry lemonade. We thought we were pure geniuses. You couldn’t see all the crap mixed in with it being so pink and even less so when we put it in a black cup. We rehearsed and scripted what we planned to say and then proceeded to knock on his front door. 

When Chrstians mom answered the door I kept cool, calm and collected and told her I wanted to be friends with Christian again and had brought him a peace offering in the form of lemonade. Now, I guess some kids would’ve been too intimidated to do this in front of a parent but I was a special kind of kid, I was autistic and therefor didn’t give a fuck about what was socially acceptable and had my own secret hate for parents at this point after being neglected by them for a whole ten minutes in my greatest time of need, so I was even happier that Christians mom would play a role in her own sons demise. My allies, Sabrina and Dinova weren’t scared either because I assured them I would take the fall for everything. I remember his mom went to get him and dragged him to the door and forced him to drink my friendship lemonade as I called it. I batted my eyelashes with innocence the entire time, even as he ran away gaging, or as I would later tell the story throwing up, I’m still not sure which is a more true description since it was so long ago. The one thing I do remember is feeling like a legend, like my own savior, like I didnt need stupid adults to help me anyways.