Justin was a jerk.

And I don’t mean that in a ‘oh, he was an ass to other people’ kind of way. The kid was a grade A prick. However, I seemed to be the only one on the receiving end of his asshole tendencies.

You name it, he did it. He tore the heads off my barbies. He’d steal my candy. He pushed me off my bike countless times. One time, the douche even made me eat a fucking worm.

And what did I do in return, you ask?

Not a god damn thing. Anytime I tried to even remotely retaliate, I got caught. Or, the asshat managed to weasel his way out of the whole thing.

I spent half of one summer plotting my revenge on that curly haired bastard. It was the perfect plan, really. Atleast it was in my 9 year old brain, anyway.

My older sister had been suspended from school for putting eye drops in an ex-boyfriends drink. (in case you didn’t know… ingesting eye drops leads to some serious time on the porcelain throne.)

I saved my allowance money for two weeks and bought the eye drops, then made my way to the general store. I bought two snocones. One for me, and one for my archenemies, cleverly laced with eye drops, of course. I planned to offer the snocone as a truce. Cause let’s face it… it’s impossible to be mean to someone who’s just bought you a snocone.

I rode my bike all the way to Justin’s house, balancing those damn snocones.

When I finally got to the house, Justin was in the middle of building a fort with that pint sized douche, Trace. (Oh yes… Justin had a sidekick to help with every bit of the torment he inflicted on me.)

I marched right up to that fort, presented the half-melted snocone to Justin and silently prayed that he’d shit his pants right there in front of me.

You know what the asshole did? Gave the damn thing to Trace.

Granted, I wish it would have been Justin sprinting to the bathroom, but getting even with Trace was a pretty decent consolation prize.

Now, you’d think somewhere along the line, Justin would have outgrown the smart ass, bastard kid thing. However, no such luck.

He treated me like absolute shit until the day he left for Florida, to be on that lame ass kids show.

I know a lot of people think the whole town viewed him as some kind of hero, like he was doing something to put our little Podunk no where’s ville on the map.

Wrong again.

I mean, sure… we all rushed home from school to watch the show, but there was no form of hero worship going on. We watched, just for the sheer joy of making fun of him as he paraded around dressed like some kind of circus freak, singing stupid songs.

The fact that it was broadcast nationwide made it that much funnier.

Of course, the show inevitably ended, and Justin came back home. He didn’t get some kind of prodigal son welcome either. As a matter of fact, nobody really gave a shit.

Really, life was exactly the same as it’d always been. Justin and Trace still mocked me. I still wished I could light both of them on fire.

Then, word got around that Justin was going to Europe to join some band. Since he was actually leaving the country, this was a pretty big deal. There were going away parties, crying girls… the whole nine yards.

I was just happy there’d be a whole ocean separating us, and I made no effort to mask that emotion. I told anybody who’d listen how excited I was to possibly be rid of him for good.

So, I’m sure you’ll understand my surprise when the idiot showed up at my house the morning of his departure, asking me to write him while he was away.

Write him.

I figured that sort of thing died out with the 1800’s. So naturally, I laughed at him, told him I hoped his plane crashed, and slammed the door in his face.

It took a month’s worth of letters before I finally broke down and wrote him back.

And I haven’t stopped since.