I've only ever had two friends. One a backstabber. The other just plain rude. They weren't like that when I met them.

At the beach with Mr. Rude

I went to the beach with Mr. Rude (his real name is Jack). As soon as we got there he was saying how boring and ignorant I was even though I hadn't done anything. I got out of the car and waited. After several minutes I told him to hurry up. He said I was being bossy. He finally got out and I ran into the water. He got in and complained, "It's too cold. Why do you have to pick the worst beach ever?!" He was getting on my nerves. What finally did it was when he said, "Are you trying to make my life more miserable? "Yes!!" I screamed at him. I got in my car and drove off. He could walk.

At the beach with Mr. Backstabber

I was bored, so I took Mr. Backstabber (Henry) to the beach. He was my best friend. We got to the beach and jumped in. We swam around and had fun. When we got out, we grabbed our surf boards and jumped back in. After about an hour, Henry sat in the sand and watched me. Eventually, he got out his phone and looked like he was texting. When I came back on shore he got up and put his phone away. When I got in the car I checked my phone. I got a text from Henry. I looked at the text. Text: "Luke (me) is so weird. He can't even surf. This is the worst day of my life..." I put my phone away and drove Henry back home. When he got out I sat in the car and cried. I thought he was my best friend. All those years and happy memories. The best days of my life. All lies.

I hate a backstabber more. I can't really explain why, so I hope this fictional story did.

We're a pair, we two

You:

Incite arguments with each complaint, criticism, and carefully crafted concern

Snap and snarl at incompetence

Explode with no thought to consequence

Harp upon the little things that matter naught to the world at large

whereas

I:

Patiently listen through prattling, preening, and politely pathetic pedantry,

Babble and bob through society

Smile with no thought of impiety

Ignore the world at large that means so very little to the inner me

and yet...

When people invite us out, they avoid you

Not realizing that you are far kinder

Than the mask they see on me

But I will not go anywhere

without your honesty

anchoring me down.

Because it shows me who the true fools are

When they turn away from your truth

To the comfort of my trained lies

And should you ever feel weary of

them

Remember that you are truly the fairest of

us

"Women don't belong in the military."

I sighed and made a show of rolling my eyes. My leg cramped so I sat down slowly and waited for the others. Sure, I was slow. I ran 3 miles in 27 minutes but I was far from failing. But Yung, on the other hand, ran the same distance in only 23 minutes.

"How are they supposed to be our equals when they can't even hold our standards?"

I heard him huff but it wasn't him who I watched. Every other male looked at everything but me. Some were even toying with the grass. Cowards. Do they think the same as he does or are they afraid to stand up for me? I hear the word simp going around to those few that do. Somehow defending a woman is still seen as a weakness. It's been over one hundred years since women could join the Marines, yet there are those that wish "for a better time." A time when women weren't in the Marines. A time when these children were not even sperm floating around.

With the test concluded, we go home to shower and eat before showing up to work an hour later.

"Hey guys wanna hear a joke?"

I don't even turn around.

"Who was the first woman to fail a hike?"

Silence.

"Opha Mae Johnson."

A few laughs echo in the shop. Opha Mae Johnson was the first woman to enlist in the Marines when her country called for it back in 1918 when World War I was ravaging Europe. Obviously the "joke" hasn't been lost on me but I've heard it before. It's Yung's favorite and he seems to say it whenever I pass by. I used to argue and debate because I thought he was reasonable but once I heard his thoughts on gay men and our one Marine that was born in Africa, I realized it was a lost cause.

"Did you really sleep with Mason?"

I turned to see Gregson had snuck up on me with a barely audible whisper. I internally rolled my eyes and externally furrowed my brow.

"It's just . . . that's what's been going around."

Of course it was. I even know who said it. I knew from bootcamp that most of these children out of high school couldn't be trusted. I was 25, but many of them weren't even the legal drinking age. I had told Shock this in private to see if it would stay with her.

It didn't.

Just then, Shock walked out of the office and gave me a small wave and I reciprocated.

Bitch.

I once really thought women would have each other's backs. But they spoke their lies in the shadows. The men ruled the roost and some women saught to gain favor by casting down one of their own.

When our work was finished and we marched home as a platoon. Part of me seethed as always. I looked around as we marched and I saw Marines - but no brotherhood.

#Marines

#femalemarines

What happens if we throw a frog in boiling water? The frog immediately jumps out of the boiling water... But what happens if we put the frog in cold water and start heating the water slowly??? The frog ignores the heat of the water and eventually matures and dies...

***

If we tie the elephant's leg with a rope, the elephant will not pull the rope and will walk around the rope. But what if the elephant grows up? It is useless: the elephant wanders around the rope, forgetting that it has grown. In fact, the elephant is strong enough to break the rope...

***

There was a herd of donkeys. One day their owner died. Then the donkeys danced and rejoiced. But an old donkey was upset. The other donkeys asked: "Why you unhappy?"

Old donkey: "Fools, we are now possessed by another owner, and he beats us so that he may learn our deeds. Our old owner knew our deeds well and treated them accordingly.

"But now we are free!" said another donkey, "Otherwise we will kill the new boss too!"

"No," replied the old donkey. "To be free, you need to get rid of being an ass, not kill someone"...

***

F r o g

E l e p h a n t

D o n k e y

I didn't jump into knowing him blind.

I was prepared for the cracks and rough edges.

My eyes were already open to his faults.

He was proud that his anger, his blunt words, his sharp tone were always at the forefront of his personality.

He never hid who he was.

It made liking the little things easier.

It meants that smiles felt special and laughter was genuine.

Being prepared meant it was harder to realize how much worse it had gotten.

I almost wish that I hadn't known.

I think it might have made it easier to let go.

No one would ever expect them to be friends, yet as soon as the cameras started rolling nonstop, Stephanie and Evie became best friends. Viewers would be able to spot it a mile away if they had an IQ higher than a pickle’s. I could at least see what was happening the moment we started to try to truncate 128 hours of filming into a two-part pilot. Stephanie was your typical alpha female. Though she was pretty, she had a mouth that could drive even the most gullible person away. Evie was similarly pretty, and had spent most of her introduction bragging about her popularity then had the nerve to wonder why no one liked her. Once they met, Evie clicked with Stephanie solely because she was pretty, though the side she was on was almost immediately blurred.

We watched the footage while clutching cups of popcorn and taking notes. We had to fill seven roles and push the girls into them one way or another. Evie made her role very clear. The first night, when Stephanie got shitfaced and ended up passed out in her underwear in the foyer, Evie had gone with a few of the other, less compatible girls up to the rooftop. Liquor was still flowing but I noticed that Evie was sipping on her drinks rather than guzzling them down like the other girls. She had said that Stephanie was pretty but had no brain behind that pretty face. We all let out audible “ooh”s when we saw that and made notes of the time to ensure that that was in the final reel.

Later, goody-two-shoes Allyson went back to Stephanie with the memory of the night fresh. Be careful who you make your friend, the youngest girl in the house had warned. We made a note to dub her the good guy of the pilot until further notice. Being who she was, Stephanie cornered Evie and tried to talk to her. She was rude but not disrespectful. I thought you were my friend, bitch, but apparently, you’re talking shit behind my back. What’s up with that? Evie had backtracked, claiming to be drunk when she said that and assuring Stephanie that she didn’t mean it like that. Stephanie, being trusting, decided to give Evie another chance.

As the first week went on and later the next, the dynamic between them became chiseled in stone. Stephanie and Evie would talk shit about the other girls that they were forced to share a house with (some insults were facetious and some insults were genuine) then Evie would tell her friend Fredericka what was said after Stephanie went to bed (casually leaving out what she said), and the game of telephone slowly turned the girls against Stephanie. By the seventeenth day in the mansion, the girls had a plan to get Stephanie kicked out. Evie agreed to take Stephanie to the club the next night to let the girls prepare to ambush her.

We watched anxiously as Evie and Stephanie (along with Allyson since she was actually a neutral person and we planned to portray her that way) got ready to go clubbing. Stephanie was talking about her boyfriend or something that feigned as being chitchat when it was really rather deep. Hearing this girl talk about her how ex had driven her to the house where she got jumped for the first time by his sister and a few cousins made us want to intervene sooner than we did. But, this was just the playback, so all we could do was watch and regret our decisions.

One camera crew followed Evie, Stephanie, and Allyson while two others stayed behind and watched the other girls plot. They started with her bed. Every season is the same. Her mattress was covered with bleach and itching powder and tossed over the balcony. We had intervened before they put bleach on her clothes but not before some of her stuff was tossed in the pool, used to clog the toilet, then torn and ruined. The girls then went to work writing “liar” and “fake” all over her profile page. We watched for two grueling hours while they ruined everything this girl ever claimed to be hers.

The most painful part though came when the three got home. Allyson, being a rather likable (though spoiled) kid, came in and was clearly stunned by the destruction. She was followed by Stephanie, who almost instantly went ballistic, and Evie, who wore her signature devilish smirk. Stephanie raced up the stairs, saw her room, and went charging like a raging bull outside. There, the opposing four girls seized her and began to mercilessly pound on her. Allyson, hearing the commotion, ran out and jumped in it, but Evie just stood back and watched.

Security raced out and the shit really hit the fan. Security did more damage than good by tackling the huddle, sending them all into the pool. This gave them the opportunity to try to drown her which meant sending out more security to physically pull apart each girl and get them all safely out of the water. At this point, the head security officer had called me at three in the morning, screaming and hollering and cussing like he’d lost his damn mind. I had to go see them.

The scene was gruesome then but watching it back was hard. Stephanie was leaking blood and sputtering since she had been underwater for at least a minute before enough security guards could get there to separate them. Once they did, our medical team came to assess her. All of the girls had wounds (except Evie who’d only got involved to save face) but Stephanie had it the worse. She had gotten water in her lungs, which immediately sent her to the hospital, but she also had a broken hand, a bruised tibia, a cracked rib, and an unsightly gash on her head that needed stitches. We had to cut filming her short, especially when she tried to threaten to sue despite the terms in the contract, and sent her home.

We had given the girls a severe verbal lashing the next day for the brawl and cut everyone but Allyson, Evie, and Stephanie’s pay severely for sending Stephanie to the hospital. Yet, watching it back filled me with such rage. The whole time, we had been rooting against Stephanie for her mouth. We called her fake, chastised her for talking shit, and had typecast her as being the bitch for this season. But it wasn’t her. The girl may have been a loudmouth who never bit her tongue, but the real bad guy was the snake in the grass, and the fact that none of us caught that until the very end made me sick.