I have many friends, but I have three close friends; Chelsea, April, and Caitlin. I have known them all several years and we are like sisters. We formed a sort of unspoken club, to face life together, good or bad. Each girl has her own personality and style, as different from the next as day is to night. How we all manage to be so different and stay such great friends is a mystery.

April, the newest to the group, is the oldest. She is smart, beautiful, and very sensible. She is conservative and yet still very stylish and polished. She knows the answer to just about any question and can debate you on anything. Yet she is the nicest and kindest person you will ever meet. I met April three years ago. We were both crammed in a car with our sweet, but very talkative, mutual friend and her entire rowdy family. You could say we bonded in an attempt to defend ourselves from the chaos that surrounded us. After that I introduced her to the group and the girls liked her instantly.

Chelsea is the free spirit of the group. With her artistic vision and dramatic flare, she is definitely the most outgoing of us all. While she is smart and beautiful, she is also eccentric and unique. Her bedroom walls are plastered with movie posters, art works, magazine pages, and bulletin boards (full of letters and notes from friends and admirers.) I met her about four years ago when her parents joined my family’s church group. I’d seen her in school and church but she was always too cool to notice me. When we were introduced I already knew her full name (along with who she was going to homecoming with) but after spending time with her I realized I didn’t really know anything about her. It turns out that nobody at school really did. All her cool friends and admirers were simply shallow people desperately grasping for popularity. I learned this quickly and we became true friends. I am proud to say I am one of the few people who can truly say that. After that meeting my days at school were made ridiculously simple in the social department. Chelsea protected me if someone tried to tear me down, and took my level self-esteem to new heights.

Caitlin, the youngest of the group, is my oldest friend. To look at her, you wouldn’t guess she was fifteen, but rather twenty-one or so. She is mature, smart, ambitious (in a purely scholarly way) and beautiful. I met her six years ago when she first moved into the house across from mine. I was climbing a tree beside her house and she was taking out the trash. There was nothing memorable or special about this meeting. She simply asked what I was doing and I answered. From then on we were inseparable. Her family became my surrogate family and vise versa. We did everything together, from playing roller hockey in her brother’s old jerseys to starting up a pet walking business. We’ve had six years of friendship under our belts and we are the original two of the group. Chelsea came along and made the group official, but it started with Caitlin and I.

The only thing these girls really have in common is their friendships with each other and myself. And I’m proud to say that I am the reason they are all friends. We support each other when we are sad, celebrate with each other when we’re happy, and protect each other when needed. We’re as close as sisters and secrets don’t exist with us. We’ve faced unbelievable hardships and had fantastic good times, and we’ve stayed together. True friends until the end of time.