I want to go, I want to go, too.

((I'd like to preface this by saying once again, I have changed this girl's name from her real name to Elizabeth, to hide her identity. All other names in this have been altered from originals as well.))

We all changed.

We all changed when we reached 6th grade. I no longer cared where I fell on the social elevator at all. My best friend wanted nothing to do with me. Dell, a kid I had considered an acquaintance because he wasn't into "fitting in," suddenly became another "popular kid," dropping his love for books and drawing birds of prey. Paul began to care less about school, and started to fail classes, seemingly unbothered by it. Pam dropped her witty, educated self, turning into what one of my friends, David, calls the "soccer bitches." David? Yeah, he changed, too. He still cared about school unlike many, trying his hardest during class. But he doesn't ever do his homework anymore - homework time is now taken up by his obsession with suggestive Japanese anime. Noel, who I already hated for being notorious for needlessly starting drama, became faux goth, wearing as much eyeliner as her helicopter mother would allow.

We all changed.

I had to say goodbye to the people I had once shared many jokes with - well, not by choice.

But my emptiness, the gaping hole the Dark Ages had tore in me that could only be filled with jokes and laughs with friends, overwhelmed me. I searched for a friend who will not, does not, cannot desert me. I was a slave to my erotic desire to have someone to talk to. In my cat I found a friend I could confide in. But like a rubber ball against the floor, the information bounced back. I spoke one language and he spoke another, and scholars had yet to figure out how to translate between the two.

Cue math class, about three weeks into the year. Cue me, in a desperate haze, blinded by reality, I do not see that someone I could trust, who would share my interests, my hidden hatreds, who was capable of producing jokes that hurt my stomach from laughing, and who would appreciate my jokes as well, is sitting beside me in class.

The first week, and many weeks following, my math teacher began our Monday period five math class by asking us how our weekend was. And this girl, who at the time I could only describe as "white headband girl" because of her obsession with wearing a white headband everyday, boasted about how her absence the first three days of school was due to the fact her family had been in Disney World. Their family went there every year to the park, as well as Texas to see her step-brothers' mother, and North Carolina, to visit a beach they'd been going to for eleven years. I wondered how anyone could afford so many trips, every. single. year.

Following that Monday I referred to her as "rich white headband girl" since I really didn't know what to call her. But only for a short while.

I believe that through a group assignment in math class where I had no say in who I was to work with I was joined with rich white headband girl. It seemed that one minute I considered her a spoiled brat, and the next, we were talking infinitely about our appreciation for cats (my two to her eight, my love to her like). We discussed our love of video games; watching people play these games, playing them ourselves. I reached myself within her. Elizabeth explained to me her siblings (and step-siblings) names, ages, relations, and if they lives at her mom's or dad's house. I invited her over so I could show her a game, Minecraft, and teach her some tricks I had learned from my many hours of play.

I never asked if she wanted to be my friend because we kind of just were. And today we are friends, and yesterday we were friends, and I hope to God we are friends tomorrow.

She says I am the only person she texts and I hope that's true because I love her. And I believe it is a "best friend" love but I do not know. And I may have been different between fifth and sixth grade but then, when I met Elizabeth;

We all changed.

Through her, there was me laughing again. Through her, there was me knowing I had a friend again - a real friend. Through her I was bright again and I was having fun and through her I found that she hated everyone who wasn't me. And through her I found I could say that, too.

We were inseparable, I'd like to believe. I shared books and video games and funny pictures and songs online with her and she shared hilarious jokes and fantastic wit and videos and books and maybe even her time with me, and we laughed. I wouldn't give up that for anything. I needed someone to share their time. She did. And without even knowing it, pulled me out of the hardest point in my life. We both shared things, giving each other what we needed. But then we shared what only we could share - memories. Jokes between us two and quotes of books and movies. I wanted only to talk to her and no one else, and I learned what it meant to have a true friend.

But what if she dies.

And that's not a question mark because I know she's going to. And I know I'm going to, as well. The 25th president of the United States of America, William McKinley, has famous last words. They were, in response to his wife saying "I want to go too! I want to go too!," said, "We are all going."

We are all going.

When there was a fire in her backyard, Elizabeth texted me "we are all going!" We shared a laugh but then, maybe not jokingly, she said she wanted me to plan her funeral if she died. And I promised I would. We are all going and we might be missed if we leave an impact on this world. I hope I die before her because I know I have left an impact on her, just like she left one on me, and I learned from my research you die when you have completed your purpose here on Earth. I hope I die before her because that would prove my theory that she has a lot more to do in the world that is important and necessary than I do.

Yes, Mr. McKinley. We are all going.