E is for Emily.

I have often wondered why we end up having the friends that we do. What attracts us to them and them to us? Is it our similarities? Similar interests or similar fashions? Or do we like to unconsciously swim away from traits that we find in ourselves and pick friends that are our complete opposites? Opposites do seem to attract; sweet and sour, hot and cold, tall and short, fat and thin, rich and poor and even at times intelligent and.. less intelligent.
Do we even pick our friends or are they occasionally forced upon us? Are we friends with the other girl that got left out of playing kiss chase because no one wants to kiss her either, resulting in no other choice but to team up to form the ‘undesirable two’.
Finding friends at school is like trying to get hold of the perfect dress that has recently gone on sale. Those who arrive at the shop first manage to grab the dresses that fit them best, but if you arrive too late you are left with the slightly baggy around the chest dresses, the ones that don’t really fit but they will do.
Emily was my baggy dress. She was a largely plump girl, with a perfectly rounded face. This face always seemed to be creased with an eye squinting smile that often looked like she was experiencing mild pain. Her lips were thin and noticeably chapped and when they opened they released a high pitched twang in her voice. Her mannerisms were always exaggerated: when she laughed at jokes her laugh turned into a brutal cackle and when she’d hug me hello she would boisterously launch her arms at me causing me to topple over.
As a child I was relatively timid, or ‘painfully shy’ as my mother would say. I would never leave her side when at a children’ party and when I was spoken to I would hide underneath mums coat. To the observer I was a very blonde and scrawny little girl; I wasn’t much of a talker and tended to keep myself to myself. The complete opposite of Emily. Emily’s family were all incredibly similar to her, when I walked into her house I felt small and inferior, an alien to their way of living and acting. However, in a strange way I didn’t seem to mind. I would happily spend my time with this slightly over powering brute. Once, we even went as far as sticking our hands together with super glue so that I would never have to leave her house. Obviously our plan failed when my mother was forced to enter the house to help Emily’s mother prize our hands off of each other’s using fairy liquid and water. To my mother’s relief, when I left to go to a separate secondary school I never saw my opposite, Emily, again.