Lakefield High School got its name from being built next to a modestly sized lake. Once a fine bit of natural scenery long ago that only few people used to come and go occasionally, at one point there came the development of a city in its area. Following this, the lake became integrated as a part of said city. Eventually, the foundation of Lakefield High School saw the surprisingly untouched body of water now taking up a portion of its massive school grounds.

Just like that, the lake became something of an iconic school landmark in no time. Both the students and staff of Lakefield High considered it an honor to be able to study or work near such a lakeside – one so gorgeous, people could easily snap a photo of it to use as a great choice of background wallpaper for either their computers or phones.

On top of that, the lake functioned as more than just a pretty sight to look at. Every day during recess, lunch break, or at the end of classes, students could be seen hanging out or relaxing at the shore closest to the school building. It really was the perfect spot for them to rest and take their minds off things after hours of tiresome studying, what with the tranquil atmosphere provided by the beautiful lakeview and its mostly preserved natural surroundings being enough to soothe any burnt-out individual.

And today was no exception; right after their lunches had been eaten, many students made their way over to the lake where they either stood around or sat down by it to exchange small talk, read books, or play on their phones.

Among these students, one second-year girl was walking around while her gaze shifted here and there, looking for someone. A brief moment later, she recognized another girl in the distance reading a book on her own underneath a tree.

The girl immediately walked towards her, but then slightly jumped once she had gotten near enough. For a split second she had been startled – albeit insignificantly – by the cover of the book being read by her friend, which had a rather creepy image of blood dripping down the nightmarish grin of a chalk-white clown face embedded in an equally white background.

This subtle reaction was still enough to make the reading girl notice an additional presence next to her and look up from her book, before greeting the other girl, “Oh hi Alice, you’re here.”

The girl named Alice returned the gesture, “Hey Winona.” And sat down by the tree with her friend. She then glanced at the book in Winona’s hand and mumbled, “That’s one hell of a way to design a book cover, it actually surprised me a little when I saw it.”

Winona couldn’t help chuckling upon hearing this, saying, “Oh well, scary book’s gotta scare…”

Being a person who didn’t exactly fare with horror very well, Alice grimaced a bit. “What kind of story does that novel tell to warrant such a cover anyway?” She asked.

“In a nutshell, something about a small Maine town being haunted by a bloodthirsty monster that likes to scare the hell out of its victims before eating them.” Winona replied rather matter-of-factly. “The more scared the victims are, the tastier they become to the monster – that’s its logic.”

Alice grimaced again at the sound of that. “Some logic that is.” She mumbled, before remembering something and asking, “Anyway, what was it that you texted me to meet you here and talk about?”

“Ah, right.” Said Winona, as her face fell just the slightest bit. “Honestly, the only reason I’ve even been preoccupying myself with reading was to try and get my mind off of exactly that.” She gave the bloody clown face on her book an upset kind of glance, and at that moment Alice had a sinking feeling she might’ve hit her friend’s nerve without meaning to.

But then Winona glanced at Alice with her mouth in a somewhat apologetic smile while her eyes still seemed troubled. This formed a strange look on her face that Alice couldn’t read. “But then I figured it would be better for my mind to talk it out with someone… which is why I called you.”

Having a hunch as to where Winona seemed to be going with this, Alice reassuringly said, “If you need to confide in me something that’s bothering you, don’t feel like you’re burdening me with your problem by doing so. I mean, what are friends for?”

Alice thought she saw a slight mix of astonishment appear in Winona’s eyes as she said this, then added for further encouragement, “Also, lest we forget that you never felt bothered by my own ‘problem’ when you found out about it that one time, and even went so far as to help me come out to others about it as well. You even told me yourself back then that it’s only right for-“

“-for friends to look out for each other when in need, yes, I did say that.” Winona finished Alice’s sentence for her, and nodded. “I guess I had way too much going through my mind to forget about that of all things, after…”

Alice waited for Winona to continue while she took in a deep breath of dismay, but once again the girl could guess what her friend was about to say next. Earlier that morning when the two had met at school before classes, Winona had half-excitedly, half-nervously told Alice she was planning to finally confess her feelings to a boy she’d had a crush on for quite some time.

“I felt like I couldn’t keep it to myself anymore because of how giddy the prospect’s been making me,” She had said to Alice, “but at the same time I was too embarrassed to let anyone else know just yet. So I was hoping I’d be able to compose myself a lot better if I at the very least confided it in the one person who has my utmost trust aside from family.”

Rather flattered upon hearing that was how much she meant to Winona as a best friend, Alice at the time had given Winona a pleasant yet encouraging smile and wished her good luck with that. This had prompted Winona to express much gratitude to Alice for helping her get that giddy weight off her chest. “Thanks so much Alice, I really needed that…”

So after such an exchange, Alice wasn’t all that surprised – but still felt sorry all the same – when Winona said she’d been rejected. “…after hearing from Tyler that he’s unfortunately not interested.”

Alice also sighed and, unbeknownst to Winona, tried lifting a hand to give her a pat on the back for comfort. But then she hesitated and put it back down, her face turning the slightest bit of pink. Instead, she simply resorted to saying, “I’m really sorry to hear that, Winona. I can’t even begin to imagine how much of a hard pill that must’ve been to swallow…”

“After all this time I’ve looked up to him and tried to get him to notice me, yeah.” Winona muttered. She sighed again and added, “Maybe it’s a good thing I didn’t tell anyone here about how I felt towards Tyler except you. I don’t think I’d be able to show my face at school if word got around.”

“Come on, don’t say that like you’re guilty of something.” Said Alice in the same encouraging tone she spoke in earlier. “As if it’s a crime to fall for a nice and talented pretty boy such as Tyler.”

In spite of herself, Winona had to laugh at those specific choice of words Alice used to describe Tyler. “I guess so.” She said.

“On top of that,” Alice added, her face reddening again without Winona noticing, “It’s not like you don’t deserve him either. Who wouldn’t fall for someone as amazing as you if they knew about it? Tyler just has no idea what he’s missing out on, and nobody’s to blame for that, including you.”

Winona laughed again, this time from flattery. “Oh, stop!” She chortled. “You’re just saying that to make me feel better.”

Hoping Winona would continue to be oblivious to the flush she could still feel in her cheeks, Alice turned to look at her friend in the eyes and said firmly but kindly, “Would I lie about any of the good qualities possessed by my best friend whom I’ve had years to get to properly know?”

Whether it was because she didn’t have an objection to that or was finally reassured enough, Winona nodded and breathed a sigh of what sounded like relief this time, saying, “Fair enough.”

The two girls kept talking like that for minutes to come, until they checked the time and saw they’d have to make their way back to class soon. By then Winona appeared to be feeling considerably better than when Alice had first seen her under the tree, much to her relief as well. Just like when she’d first told Alice about her plans to confess to Tyler, it seemed talking her problems out in the trustworthy and comforting presence of her “bestie” had lifted another weight off of Winona’s chest.

As they approached the school building, Winona let out one last sigh of the day and said, “If I’m simply not to Tyler’s taste in ‘ideal girls’, guess I’ll just have to accept that and let him go, huh?”

Alice couldn’t think of the right thing to say in response to that, so she just nodded silently.

Seeing this, Winona shrugged and spoke in a manner of recalling an experience of being denied something great a long time ago, “Oh well, we don’t have terms like ‘plenty of other fish in the sea’ for nothing, so as upsetting as what happened today was, I can’t be hung up on it forever, right?”

Alice nodded without a word again as she and Winona entered the school hallways, after which the latter piped up, “Still, it might be a while before I’m able to properly face Tyler again. Because the way I’m feeling now, which I expect might go on for quite a few days, I might die of embarrassment.”

This time Alice managed to regain her voice and mumbled in half-agreement, “I know what that feels like… the first couple of days after you pulled me out of the closet from accidentally discovering my ‘stash’, I was honestly dying inside with embarrassment too.”

“Good thing you don’t feel that way anymore.” Said Winona with a friendly pat on Alice’s back, before borrowing some of her earlier words to say, “Because it’s in no way something to be guilty of, as if it’s a crime to like girls.”

This made Alice blush again and laugh coyly. This was also the point where they had to end their conversation as they approached Winona’s classroom. Exchanging byes for now at the door, Alice watched Winona walk away and take her seat, then proceeded to make her way to her own class.

On her way there, due to what she’d been talking about with Winona just a second ago, her mind randomly flashed back to what she meant when she said Winona had “pulled her out of the closet” after “discovering her stash”.

One day during the winter vacation before this semester, Winona had come over to Alice’s place to hang out. After inviting Winona into her bedroom where she suggested they could play something on the computer, Alice had excused herself for a bit because she had to go to the bathroom. In the brief moment in which she had returned to her room, however, Alice wished with pure regret that she'd never left. Because when she opened the door, she was greeted with the sight of Winona kneeling down beside the bed, holding her phone in one hand and a paperback manga in the other – the cover of which featured two half-dressed, well-endowed ladies intensely making out together.

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

Alice didn’t want to know what had happened during her absence that had resulted in this, even as Winona tried to explain she’d dropped her phone and had only been retrieving it, when in the process she got curious from just so happening to spot a stack of manga strangely hidden beneath the bed. All Alice did want at the time was to run far away off to someplace nobody could ever find her and bring her back to human society again. How amateurish could she have been, she had thought, hiding those shameful things in a place where they could be exposed so easily like this.

Despite that, Alice had been unable to stop the truth from tumbling out of her mouth. Her brain seemed to have stalled from being clogged up by the extreme amount of humiliation she had felt in her, preventing it from coming up with any excuses, no matter how pathetic. Falling to her knees in sheer despair like her world had come to an end, Alice had said, “Okay, you got me, there’s no putting the cat back in the bag… I’m attracted to girls.”

After this revelation that couldn’t have gone over in a more embarrassing manner, Alice wouldn’t have blamed Winona if she just straight-up left the house, let alone her bedroom, right then and there from being so weirded out by her friend. If anything, she thought she had no one to blame but herself for ever allowing this to happen.

Which was why Alice felt her brain stall to impossibly further levels when she had seen Winona kneel before her gently, placed her hands on her shoulders almost in the same way a mother would to a crying child, and said soothingly, “You poor thing, how long have you been keeping this a secret from everyone?”

Alice had to give her brain a good several seconds to be able to start back up, before she could slowly look up at her friend and timidly ask, “You don’t think I’m a… a weirdo…?”

In response, Winona had glanced back at the manga beside the bed and back at Alice before saying, “If that’s supposed to be ‘weird’… then I don’t know how to define ‘normal’.”

Both Alice’s mind and body had frozen again at these words, giving Winona time to add, “And I don’t care whether you like girls or guys… this doesn’t change that I wanna be here for my best friend until she’s okay.”

If Alice’s emotions could be compared to a camel’s back, those words had been the last straw that broke it. For ages she’d been insecure about this side of herself more than words could say. She'd been afraid of what those closest to her – namely family and friends – would make of her if they knew. Afraid of being judged, or maybe even pushed away for it. Just simply thinking about the potential danger of her social life being turned upside down had been unbearable. Yet here she was, exposed before her best friend who not only didn’t judge her, but was willing to embrace her for what she was.

Needless to say, this breaking down of so many pent-up emotions had resulted in a ton of crying from Alice, as well as equally tons of comforting words and gestures from Winona. And by the end of it all, Alice couldn’t have felt more touched, grateful, and free of her insecurity’s burdens all at once. All thanks to Winona, whom Alice saw to this day as the best thing to ever happen to her.

What was more, almost everything that had followed after that faithful day could be described by Alice as nothing short of the greatest relief in her life. Like the absolutely wonderful human being she was, slowly but surely Winona had helped Alice come out of the closet to more of her friends who, to Alice’s pleasant and thankful surprise, had all been extremely kind and accepting of it, not to mention genuinely supportive.

The same could be said for when Winona had given Alice the courage to finally come out to her parents as well – at first they had said they were so sorry they made their own daughter feel like she couldn’t trust them enough to confide such matters in them. But after that, they were glad that she eventually had, and promised her she could always count on them to listen to and help with any problem if she had more of them in future.

Looking back on those past days, and also around her classroom where her other friends were seen sitting at their desks, Alice couldn’t believe she had ever been afraid of her so-called “insecurity” bringing her social life to a humiliating downfall. If anything, as far as she was concerned, it was turning out to be better than ever, now that the biggest weight on her chest that had been dragging it down was no more, leaving her a free girl at last.

That is… except for one additional thing. With the lifting of the previous weight on Alice’s mind, another one had taken its place – one that didn’t feel as heavy as the one before, but still dragged her back down all the same.

***

Later that day, after her classes ended and she parted ways with Winona, Alice came home where she didn’t do much except mind her own business such as homework, until her parents arrived in time for dinner. During it, as typically expected, a few conversations took place over the table. The talk eventually reached the subject of how school was today for Alice. Of course, considering the subject, mentioning what happened with Winona and Tyler was inevitable as Alice responded to the question.

“Oh dear, how upsetting that must’ve been for her.” Alice’s mother, Mrs Gray, exclaimed pitifully.

“It definitely was.” Said Alice, “Thankfully she seemed to do better after she talked it out with me over lunch break. I do hope it lasts, even though she did say she can’t expect herself to be hung up on it forever.”

Mr Gray raised his eyebrows at that. “Did she?” He asked. “That’s surprising – usually it takes several more days than that for most people to fully recover from a rejection.”

“Adam,” Mrs Gray shook her head a little in response to her husband’s words, “Surely Winona meant she just wasn’t upset anymore for the time being, nobody fully gets over something like this almost immediately.”

Alice added with a nod, “She did say it might take her a while before she could properly talk with Tyler again.”

“I see.” Mr Gray replied, before Alice continued, “But on the other hand, Winona also mentioned something about there being 'plenty of other fish in the sea', so you’re probably not too wrong either, dad.”

Mrs Gray glanced at her daughter in surprise upon hearing that. “I definitely can’t say what she said there is wrong, I’ll give you that.” She told Mr Gray, and turned back to Alice to say, “Sounds like she is indeed taking this better than most kids her age.”

“Mhm.” Mr Gray nodded in agreement. “Better to keep moving on with what’s right in front of you rather than uselessly dwelling on things out of your control. Your friend made the wise decision.”

Even though Mr Gray hadn’t said that as a joke, this still got a slight laugh out of his wife due to how abruptly deep a simple dinnertime conversation had become, “Where’d that philosophical insight of yours suddenly come from?” She asked.

Laughing along, Mr Gray replied, jokingly this time, “It’s just personal experience, think about it; would I have met you and had our precious girl,” he paused for a split second to glance at Alice as he said this, “if I kept chasing around my first crush long after she rejected me? People would’ve called me obsessed if I did.”

Mrs Gray laughed some more in agreement, gently chortling, “Better to end up with the family you have right now instead of a restraining order, when you put it like that.”

Alice laughed with them to keep up with the mood. Deep down, however, she honestly felt like doing anything but laugh at the subject being discussed – a subject that continued to linger in her mind all throughout dinner and even after she’d gone up to her room when they were all done eating. In fact, it was all she could think of as she lay in her bed unable to bring herself to be preoccupied with anything else (her homework had been finished before dinner).

All of this had to do with the aforementioned second weight that had been dragging Alice’ mind down. That being, how her feelings towards Winona had gradually developed into something far beyond just friendship.

All this time she’d been Winona’s closest best friend – and vice versa, especially – had made Alice realize at one point that every one of Winona’s good qualities she liked as a friend, she had begun to like as someone who liked her, in the same way Winona had liked Tyler. As if that wasn’t enough things happening with Alice’s emotions already, these feelings had only intensified after Winona had open-mindedly accepted her “hidden” side, as well as helped her come out to everyone, all while never wanting anything in return for such kindness (as proven from her attitude earlier today when Alice had offered to hear out her problem). So how could Alice possibly not fall for someone like Winona?

With all that said though, these emotions had also formed the new weight in Alice’s mind when she realized something else about them; that no matter how passionate and genuine they may be, they had no chance of being reciprocated either. There was no changing the clear fact that Winona was a straight girl regardless of whether or not she had eyes for someone else. If Alice was to be honest with herself, when Winona had first come to her for the purpose of confiding in her about how she felt about Tyler, and additionally the reason Alice was the only one she’d done it to, Alice had actually felt a great sense of heartache. One that had been hidden behind the gratitude of hearing how much of a good and trustworthy best friend Winona thought of her – a sense of heartache coming from Winona’s indirect reminder that Alice’s feelings towards her had always been a lost cause since the start. That she’d never like Alice the same way Alice liked her.

To add insult to injury, the very act of Winona confiding in Alice something on her mind she’d been unable to confide in to anyone else was secretly gut-wrenching to Alice in and of itself, as it was another reminder of another ugly truth – Alice felt like she couldn’t work this out in the same way she’d come out of the closet, or in the way Winona had gotten over her rejection from Tyler. In other words, this came across to her as one issue she wouldn’t be able to solve by talking about it with those around her, not even friends or family.

First off, Alice feared how Winona would view her if she ever found out her closest buddy of all people – no less whom she obviously had absolutely zero romantic interest in whatsoever – was this much heads-over-heels for her. Sure, considering Winona had never judged Alice for anything even after accidentally making her come out of the closet, this may seem like an irrational fear. But as most, if not all, irrational fears typically did, it came across as perfectly reasonable and hauntingly real to the person it belonged to; in this case, Alice. And as far as Alice was concerned, this was a vastly different matter from just admitting her “preferences” to Winona. Therefore part of her fear stemmed from her uncertainty as to whether Winona would have the same reaction to this as she did back then… or something else.

What if it made Winona uncomfortable to know her friend felt this particular way towards her? Hell, if what happened between Winona and Tyler today had done anything, it was cementing that fear deeper in Alice – she’d already heard from Winona herself just how awkward things would most likely get around Tyler, and neither of them needed to hear it from Tyler for themselves to know he’d feel the same way.

What exactly scared Alice about this was the thought of this same awkwardness happening between her and Winona if the latter ever knew about her feelings. This led to another anxiety-filled “what-if”; the possibility of them drifting apart if Winona really did feel uneasy around Alice as a result of that. And needless to say, Alice would be damned before she could see herself falling out with a one-of-a-kind person like Winona.

Then there was a different kind of fear fueled by insecure uncertainties, which was what held Alice back from telling people other than Winona about her problem so as to find a solution, or at least get the pressure off her mind. In fact, this wasn’t too far off from the fear that had kept her from coming out to her family and friends in the first place – the fear of being judged.

When she’d heard Winona say there was “plenty of other fish in the sea” and she ought to let Tyler go even though it hurt, as well as thought back to the words her parents exchanged over dinner just now, Alice was more afraid than ever of what other people might make of her feelings. Because truth be told, for Alice, there was no other fish in the sea. If anyone was to ever tell her so, the first thing that came to her mind was how out of all the so-called “other fish” out there, none of them were Winona – again, she was one-of-a-kind, and in Alice’s view, the only one for her ever.

That was precisely what fueled Alice’s fear. She was scared of those around her thinking of her as obsessive for being unable to let go of what was very clearly doing nothing but mentally drag her down. And if they did think of her as such, Alice likewise feared the prospect of whether they’d be able to view her the same way ever again. Yet at the same time, how could she just let go of someone she had this much complicated and genuine feelings for as easily as said someone had done so with her own crush?

This train of thought once more brought up what her father had said about Winona being wise by choosing to let go. With that plaguing her mind, Alice muttered to herself while curling up on the bed like a hurt animal, “If only it was that easy for me too… or to just tell any of you lot how hard it is…”