Never been a fan of friends. I like being around family. I trust my family. Up until 6th grade, my friends were my brothers and my younger sister. But I mainly hung out with my older brother Devin and a couple of my cousins. I was such a tom boy. I enjoyed trying to skateboard and hanging out with my brother’s friends. I wasn’t into nail polish, pretty hair styles and cute clothes. I could care less. Sometimes I would even steal my brothers band t-shirts and wear them until he took them back.

But Kaila Rae brought out my girly side. Rae is who changed me, the girl who I didn’t like when we first met. Rae was out going, girly, and loud. But what I’ve learned is that Rae is the type of girl that doesn’t care what anyone thinks, she is her own person, and I loved that, I wanted to be like her and maybe that’s why I felt how I felt pessimistic about her at first. We had a couple classes together, and she used to annoy me like crazy. She’s the type of girl that puts on way too mush lip gloss, I hate lip gloss. At the end of the school year she even won class girly girl in the year book. We were total opposites.

One of the many classes we had together was gym. I loved gym, so of course she hated it. One tiring cold Monday I wasn’t feeling good and had to sit out. Next to her. Before I had time to sit down she sparked a conversation. “Hey! I think we have a couple classes together, right? But you never talk, why not? You don’t like school?” She was asking me those annoying types of questions that a younger sister would ask. “umm hey. .? Yeah we have a couple classes together and I don’t talk because I don’t want to, why do you care?” After saying this, I felt bad. Maybe she just wanted to get to know me. Did I hurt her feelings? So I changed my attitude up. “What’s your name again? Sorry I’m not good with names.” She looked up smiling. “My name’s Kaila, Kaila Rae. But you can just call me Rae. That’s what all my friends call me. ” we started engaging in a real conversation and ended up having a lot in common.

She wasn’t annoying after all; she was just like no one I have ever met. And since she was different I didn’t know how to take it. But Kaila Rae helped me come out of my shell. We even ended up best friends before the school year was over. She influenced me to become a fan of makeup and taking time to do my hair cute. But she didn’t completely change me; Rae made me open minded. Instead of skateboarding now we would do each other’s makeup and hair. And I liked it. We could have fun doing anything.

Since then we’ve been inseparable. The middle of 8th grade year I and my older brother moved to Oak Park to live with my grandmother. I started seeing Rae less and less. It was like losing my sister. My best friend. We surprisingly kept in touch all these years and I’m glad that we did. Now every weekend I have off of work I try to visit her in Waterford for the weekend. We are still as close as ever. I don’t think we’ll ever lose touch.