In a small world, people come and go in your life. Beatrice had to learn it the hard way. She grew up with the same circle of people, whom she did almost everything with. They were inseparable, they barely fought, and most importantly, they all had special bonds together. It wasn’t until they started high school that they soon discovered they weren’t the people they thought they were. On their first day, Beatrice went to look for her friends. It was quite difficult, she looked left and right around the big campus with tall trees and different buildings all around the school. It was almost impossible to find her group with the amount of people surrounding her. She heard a calling from afar. 

“Beatrice, over here!” her friends called. 

Beatrice quickly ran over to friends, relieved that she was able to find them. Days and days go by since then, things are the same as they were before. But soon enough, the group suddenly began to feel smaller. Beatrice didn’t see the same people each day, some came occasionally, but some never came back. She watched her friends leave and come back with new ones. It felt different for Beatrice, she was never used to people leaving and certainly not used to new people hanging around her group of friends. Her large group of friends turned into a small group, and eventually, she found herself the only person at the lunch table. For nights, Beatrice couldn’t believe that she had lost all her friends. She had always wondered what she did to deserve to be left out and why her closest friends were all of a sudden turning into random strangers. The feeling of being left out completely crushed her. Beatrice’s grades began to slip and she had no motivation to participate in class. Not only that, she had absolutely no motivation to come to school anymore. All Beatrice needed was a friend to talk to. Yet, no one showed up to the table even when Beatrice would sit there all alone eating her lunch. Beatrice came to wonder, is this what high school is like? Does growing up and moving to a different school change you that much? One day, Beatrice was talking to her lab partner Quinn. Quinn and Beatrice were good friends, but weren’t as close like Beatrice was to her old friends. Quinn was a sophomore, while Beatrice was a freshman. Unlike Beatrice, Quinn had many friends and was considered a really well-known girl at school.

“Why haven’t you been at school recently?” Quinn asked. 

“A lot has been happening recently,” replied Beatrice. 

Quinn had been seeing Beatrice sitting alone at lunch everyday, but Beatrice wasn’t aware of it. 

“You know, people change especially during high school. Some of my best friends from middle school don’t even like me anymore. But that’s fine by me! I’ve accepted that some people mature differently and become a whole different person from who they were in the past” Quinn explained.

“Not everyone will like you and not everyone will hate you. It just takes time to find the right people to treasure in your life. And if some people don’t want to be a part of your life, don’t force them to” she added. 

Quinn got up and left as the bell rang. Beatrice took Quinn’s advice and stopped waiting for her friends to come back. Instead, she decided to start branching out and meeting new people. For a moment, she felt happy. Those months filled with emotions quickly went away when she found the right people that made her feel happy. She found a new group of people where she sat with everyday and instead of new people coming and going, she soon noticed that the same people that were coming in her life were staying there.