A New Year's Eve Catastrophe

It was New Year’s Eve, and the party was just beginning downtown. Snow was still on the ground from the Christmas blizzard the week before, a slight breeze blowing through the air - not enough to be annoying, but enough to knock back the hoods of the coats of Jackie, Libby, Mary, and Genevieve - four of the best of friends since childhood.

“This way,” said Mary, pointing toward Altaficio Tower, the tallest building in the town square. As they got closer, the lights got brighter; the music louder; and aromas of chicken, pork, and pizzas became ever more enticing.

As the girls got some food, Genevieve noticed a bar serving very colorful drinks. “Girls!” she shouted, “There’s a bar over there!” She took the other three ladies over to the bar, they all showed their ID’s, and got served some Manhattans. Jackie really enjoyed her adult drink, so she ordered a San Francisco martini.

Across the hall from the entrance hall, there was a dark room, with loud music and bright, neon lights. “I’m gonna go on the dance floor!” exclaimed Libby, as she ran over to the brightly lit room, Calvin Harris’s “Sweet Nothing” blasting from the DJ’s turntables.

As the other three looked over, Jackie got an idea. “Hey,” she said to Mary and Genevieve, “I’m gonna film Libby dancing and post it online,” and she pulled out her phone, pointed the camera at Libby, and hit the record button as she freestyled on the floor amongst the townspeople, her long, dark purple hair whipping around as she moved. When the song ended, Libby made her way off the dance floor and got some more chicken wings.

As Libby satisfied her hunger, Jackie was posting the video online but was having trouble coming up with a good caption for it. Though Libby was not a professional dancer by any stretch of the imagination, it certainly was not the worst. Mary’s idea was for Jackie to tag Libby in the video and for the caption to simply say, “look at my best friend go.” Genevieve suggested the same thing, but also to add Altaficio Tower because that’s where the party was located.

However, while Mary and Genevieve found Libby’s dancing to be quite amusing and jovial, Jackie - the most inebriated of the three, found it to be nothing short of hilarious. She just could not stop laughing - and she came up with what she thought was the perfect description for Libby’s freestyling:

“Look at this woman. So insane even her hair wants to get off of her head so it can be in a quieter place hahahahaha.”

She said that she got the idea from Libby’s hair flying through the air so much it looked like it was about to take off from her head and leave for a different planet. This made the slightly-less intoxicated Mary and Genevieve chuckle ever so slightly, which gave Jackie the green light she needed to go ahead and post it to her profile with that caption.

The next moment, Libby’s phone dings, alerting her to Jackie’s new post. She opened it and saw that it was the video of her dancing, which made her smile as she thought it was nice of Jackie to show her some appreciation for what she thought was a slightly lackluster performance on the dance floor. However, the smile quickly vanished from Libby’s face when she read the caption:

“Look at this woman. So insane even her hair wants to get off of her head so it can be in a quieter place hahahahaha.”

Libby didn’t understand. She wasn’t a great dancer but she wasn’t a terrible one either. She could understand why some individuals would find it a little bit absurd or even bizarre, as she was high-functioning autistic, but for Jackie - one of her closest friends, someone that has gone through so much with her, and someone that could always lighten her mood even on the darkest of days - to say something like that, to see her having a great time doing something that she loved only brush it off as “insane,” was just too much for Libby.

Suddenly, there was a loud shout of “Augh!” It was so loud that other guests at the party were shaken out of their stupors. Mary, Jackie, and Genevieve looked over in the direction of the loud shout to see Libby running out of the party, tears streaming down her face like a pair of waterfalls.

“Libby?!” shouted Genevieve, trying haplessly to get her poor friend’s attention. Libby didn’t hear her, and just kept running out of the building and onto the street. “Come on,” persuaded Genevieve to Mary and Jackie, getting them to join in her effort to follow Libby to see what had come over her.

The chase was all but exhausting. All the girls had left in such a hurry that none of them had put their coats on. They all ran to follow Libby out of Altaficio Tower, down Main Street, and all the way back to her apartment building. While Libby made it inside of her own apartment, the remaining trio of women only got as far as Libby’s front door, Genevieve and Jackie panting and Mary wishing she had put her bright orange hair in a ponytail or a bun.

They all listened through the front door as Libby just cried and shouted about how she felt unappreciated by the very people she thought she could call friends. She went off to the walls and the ceiling about how Jackie’s comment made her feel awful. “This is just what I frickin’ needed,” she hollered, “All this time I get kicked to the curb, and then she does THAT?”

“What in the world could she possibly mean?” whispered Genevieve.

“I don’t know,” Jackie replied quietly. “All I did was make a harmless joke, but…”

She stopped.

“...but what?” asked Genevieve.

“I think I know what’s happening,” said Mary. “Jackie, think about it: we’ve spent our entire childhoods together.”

“Yeah?” acknowledged Jackie.

“We’ve spent our entire childhoods together,” Mary emphasized while pointing at herself and Jackie. “You can’t deny that we’ve spent a lot of time together, just you and me. Where was Libby during everything? Where was she when we were hula-hooping in your backyard that one time? Where was she when we were looking at boys in our yearbooks and picking out which ones were the cutest? Where was she when we went to the mall together every single week? Think about it, girl - WHERE WAS SHE? WHERE WAS LIBBY?”

At this moment, all those childhood memories came flooding back into Jackie’s mind, and she finally realized that Mary had a good point - and Genevieve was not happy at all. She escorted Mary and Jackie back outside the apartment building and laid into Jackie. “Jackie!” Genevieve shouted, “How on Earth does Libby call you a friend when you never spent as much time with her as you did with Mary?!”

“She’s autistic,” Jackie answered, “so I didn’t think she’d mind.”

“Exactly!” Genevieve screamed to Jackie, “She’s autistic! She already had problems with being included in society, and you - and Mary, for that matter - have spent all of these years exacerbating her problems! Didn’t you hear what she said? That was her entire childhood rebounding on her!” Jackie still didn’t seem to completely understand. “Think about it, Jackie - how would you feel if you were isolated and then excluded from the world because you have trouble telling people how you feel? THINK ABOUT IT!”

“You know what, Jackie?” Mary spoke up, “I think Genevieve might be right on this one.”

“What do you mean?” asked Jackie.

“Let’s face it,” said Mary, “we haven’t really been the best of friends to Libby.”

“Not from everything I’ve heard tonight,” confirmed Genevieve to the others, “now come on - we’re going back to my place.”