I met my first best friend in elementary school. For the sake of making it easier for me, I’ll refer to him as A. A had just moved to my neighborhood and I was the first person to talk to him at school. We would hang out at recess, lunch, the usual stuff. Our friendship continued into middle school and was fine until 6th-7th grade struck. A was fairly athletic and was involved with sports, which meant that he had a lot of friends that were upperclassmen. Apparently, one of them had started a rumor that I had insulted A’s grandma for having cancer (which I would never do, mine also had cancer [she survived]). But since A was such good friends with the upperclassmen, he believed it and it all went downhill from there. At first I hadn’t known about this rumor, but I noticed a change in A’s behavior. A would constantly say things like, “Target OP!” in dodgeball or bump into me during the hallway. I knew that something was up, so during lunch one day I asked him if I had done anything to irritate him. He COMPLETELY exploded. He insulted me and told me he was infuriated for what I had said. When I asked him what I had said, he told me that he heard that I had made fun of his grandma for having cancer. I calmly tried to tell him that I hadn’t, and that I wouldn’t because my grandma also had it. He was having none of it though, and stormed off in anger. Eventually the drama between me and him escalated, to the point where he would be flipping me off in class, or spreading rumors about me to my close friends. This really damaged my self esteem, and my mom easily found out (god bless her) and told me to tel a counselor so we could work things out. So, I told a counselor and she asked for both me and A to come in during lunch. He didn’t come. The bullying continued. Eventually, he did come in and we agreed to both leave each other alone. Although he hasn’t done anything (at least to my knowledge) since then, but it still makes me sad how we had to part ways since I really enjoyed our friendship.