As I'm sure you all remember, Amber really, really disliked me as a person. But this takes place before she learned to hate me so violently, back to the day that she and I met. It was a lovely late-winter afternoon, and she and I were both attending the birthday party of our mutual friend Jill. It involved skating, a game of tag, and a misuse of crutches.
Jill had transferred to our high school a year before I had, and in the process had made a slew of new friends that I would not be privy to until the next fall. When Jill's birthday rolled around, she invited me to go skating with her and her new best friend. I can't say that I wasn't totally jealous that I had been replaced as her best friend, but I understand that, sometimes, proximity can mean the world to a friendship, and she and I just weren't able to keep in touch as easily as we had when we were in the same classroom.
I met Jill at the skating rink, and greeted her family, and we waited around for a few minutes until Amber showed up. She was late because she had, if I remember correctly, sprained her ankle and could not walk, so why she agreed to go to a skating party, I have no idea.
Amber made an imperfect first impression on me by introducing herself as Jill's "greatest friend," to which I responded with an "...uh-huh," and then turned to say something to Jill's sister, Leigh. I could hear her mumbling to Jill behind me saying "well I am, right Jill? ...Jill?" and heard Jill say "let's not get into that," which Amber, somehow, took offense to.
We went and rented our skates, and Jill's parents went off to do something for the next hour or so while us kids slid around the rink. Jill and I sped across the ice, racing back and forth and laughing about something insanely stupid, and every now and then we would look over to the stands and see Amber sitting alone on the bench, her crutches strewn on the ground at her side. Seeing Amber looking so depressed at a party didn't seem to affect us, and we just waved and continued on our rounds laughing at how much more fun we were having than she.
At one point I had to go to the washroom, and when I returned I found Jill sitting with Amber on the bench talking to her. As soon as Amber saw me she had this mad glint in her eye, and when I sat down with them, she informed me that my skates weren't done up tight enough. She knew this because my ankles were pivoted as I was on the ice, and not straight as they should be.
I nodded, telling her that I was aware, but they couldn't be done up any tighter. I had large feet, and skinny ankles, there was nothing I could do about it outside of stuffing my skates with extra pairs of socks, but I had none to spare, so I would just have to deal with it. Even in our first meeting, she was unwilling to spare a snide comment, and told me that I "wouldn't have such a problem if [I] didn't have scrawny chicken legs." This was long before I learned to laugh at myself, so I'm pretty sure my retort came out far more cruel than I would have liked, but I told her that "not everyone can have fat ankles like [she did]," which was really just meant to mean that, compared to my perfectly normal-sized ankles, hers were ginormous.
This enraged Amber, and I'm sure that, had she been able to, she would have stood, but instead remained seated when she hollered "WHAT is THAT supposed to mean?!" Jill laughed, rolled her eyes, and said "you've got cankles. Deal with it." And with that, Jill and I were back on the ice, leaving Amber now depressed AND angry.
Leigh, ever the impartial party, continued skating around on her own, oblivious to the mind-games that Amber and I were playing with one another.
When Jill and I had grown tired of skating around the rink, we returned to the stands and asked Amber what she wanted to do. She was still so angry that she just said "whatever, I don't care," so Jill and I decided that we were going to go for a walk. We sauntered up and down the stairs, all the way around the ice rink, at least twice, possibly a third time, with Amber hobbling along behind us, constantly out of breath from struggling to get her crutches up and down the stairs.
Eventually she told us that we needed to rest, so we compromised by walking around the outside of the building, as there would be no stairs. But when Jill and I found ourselves on flat ground, our instincts told us that we needed to start running. There was no reason to start running, it just seemed right, and so, off we went, with Amber screaming at us to wait for her.
We finally came to a stop at the top of a ramp, and waited for roughly two minutes for Amber to catch up to us. She was, of course, out of breath and complaining that we had tried to ditch her. This is when I told her that that was stupid, and we weren't out to get her...and then I wrenched open the door to the building with all my might, slamming the metal frame into one of her crutches and knocked Amber to the ground. Amber couldn't hear my repeated apology over the sound of Jill's laughter.
When Amber had finally recovered, Jill's parents returned, and we all went off to Jill's house to watch a movie and eat dinner. Amber had calmed down quite a bit by the time we were actually eating, but seemed to have decided that the best course of action in dealing with me would be just not to acknowledge me in any way.
The rest of the night passed without a word between us.
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