My best friend(Marie Wayron) It’s been… well how long has it been? Soon 6 years since he died. He was my best and only friend for three years. Well, we were friends for almost 6 years, but when we moved and he moved with me and my family, he became my only friend. I was always bullied at school, and my only comfort in life was him. I loved, no I still love him. My dearest and most important friend.

We met when he was 1, and I was about 5 years old. We didn’t become friends right away though. The first time we met he actually bit my hand. But I was a stubborn child and I refused to let that chase me away, after all, I had taken an interest in him. So the next day I went back to meet with him, but he just bit me again, but I kept coming back because I liked him. He was cute and I wanted to make friends with him. I kept coming back, day after day, and in the end he gave after. I gave him an apple as a sign of friendship; apparently I wasn’t the only one that thought apples were the greatest thing in the world. He ate it happily up and snuggled close to me. I was really happy.

We started doing everything together; we took baths together, ate together, took walks together and went out to play together. Every day, we would go out on an adventure looking for bugs and other critters. I love animals and I always wanted to make friends with them. However my favourite thing to do, except playing with my best friend, was fishing, although he didn’t like water or the blood from the fish, he still went with me. That was one of the many things that made us such close friends. We grew up together in that small apartment we had.

But one day we had to move away. My mother lost her job and to get a new one she had to move away. But luckily my best friend in the whole wide world came with us. I didn’t really fit in with the other children at school, I didn’t like them at all, and I was often bullied. At some point I changed school even, but it was no use. I still got bullied at the new school and the only light in my day was my friend. We started going down to the ocean more than we had before, not always to fish though. We used to just sit on the rocks and watch how the waves swayed back and forth so carefree of the world. We used to vanish into our own little dream world. I dreamed of becoming the sea, then I too could be carefree, but I think he only dreamed of food. It was his favourite thing, and just for him, I always brought some apples whenever we went out. We were content with our lives when it was just the two of us and the ever carefree ocean.

Days kept going like this for two years, I went to school where I was bullied and beat up, I came home and I ran over to him, I picked him up and we both went out. Whenever winter came along we stayed inside because it was too cold to go out. But then we had to move again. I was happy to get away from the bullies, but I was afraid that I might not live close to the sea so I couldn’t go and watch the waves anymore. But I made up my mind, no matter where I moved to me and my best friend would always be happy together. And we were. We still lived close enough to the ocean, but it didn’t really matter as much as I thought, because I had my best friend with me. He was 5 ½ years old and I was 9 ½ years. Because of my dialect I was still bullied, but I made some “almost friends”. They weren’t really good friends, but they were fun to hang with at school. But my thoughts were always with my very best friend. I used to plan what we were going to do once I got home, and when I did get home I spent the rest of my day with him. He became the most important friend I have had, and most likely there will never come another one that will be more important to me than him. Every day I talked to him, and he would listen to me, he held all of my secrets and he knew everything there was to know about me. But… that is probably the saddest word I know of. The word “but,” is the one word that can turn what was supposed to be a happy story into a heartbreak. I guess I have to finish the story though, even if that word is there. But as all living things do, he too died. Some weeks before, he had gotten very sick and on the 14th of December 2007 on a Friday, my dad came to pick me up at school, I was eleven and my friend was almost seven years old. He said that my friend’s sickness was really bad and that he might die any time soon. I hurried to the car, skipping school and everything. As soon as we arrived at the house I ran inside. I hurried to his cage to pick him up. There he was, in the usual spot, that part of the cage where I always picked him up from. But he wasn’t breathing. My eyes got all watery as I picked him up only to discover that he was already dead. Tears started pouring out from my eyes and I couldn’t hold it back anymore. “I’m sorry! I’m so sorry! I should have been here, I should have seen it coming!” the words could barely get out from between all the tears. My heart was completely broken. My best friend was dead. I knew quite well he was just a Guinea pig, but to me he had become something so much more. And he was everything to me. I stroke my finger up and down his nose the way he liked it. His fur became wet from all the tears that fell down from my cheeks. I kept saying I’m sorry over and over again. I knew it wasn’t my fault he had died, nature goes its way, what I was apologising for was that when he had expected me to be there for him, to come and pick him up, but I didn’t come before it was too late. He had died alone, when I should have been there. He had always been there for me, but when he really needed me, I wasn’t there for him.

I stayed home from school the following week, all I did was cry and cry. We had buried him the same day he had died; I had put down an apple next to him before covering him in dirt never to be seen again. A nice little apple tree had started growing there, but the little sprout soon died because of the cold. It made me sad to see it die, since I wanted it to be his headstone, or headtree… but I didn’t need anything like that to always remember him. I just need to look at the ocean and remember when we dreamed together.

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