f r a n c e s c a

As stated I had a huge crush on this guy and it was blood obvious to anyone involved - Tom included. He had already made it clear to me and others that he did not look for a relationship with anyone and this was confirmed by his friends, some of the girls told me that he just had a couple of short relationships during high school and that the girls had been the driving forces behind getting into said relations. Somehow I managed to push my feelings aside far enough to spend time with him as a friend, (God knows how a 17-yearold girl managed that) but I had my angsty, upset and jealous moments for sure…

And then, somehow, we started to spend more and more time together and on a friends Halloween party he actually asked me if I wanted to date him - as boyfriend/girlfriend. I was on cloud nine for sure and as happily in love as only a teenage girl can be. Until our group of friends found out. Their reaction was to “blame” me, saying I made Tom agree to date me, that it would never last more than a few months at best and then he would get bored with me as he had with the other girls and even so far as to once telling me to break up with him and move back home. I realized later that several of them must have had a crush on him at some point or another and then I showed up… Teenage girls can be brutal.

Anyway, most of those friendships crumbled as they tend to do, especially reinforced by the dislike from several members of the group. I got on with my life, school ended and I went through a couple of jobs before ending up as a manager at a local restaurant. I was working an evening shift when two of my old high school friends who had been very vocal about my unpopular relationship with Tom (lets call them Maddy and Ellie) walked in and seated themselves at one of my tables. It must have been at least 5 years since I last met them and even longer since we used to hang out together. I took their orders but they kept on looking at me, trying to figure out if and why I was familiar so I decided to help them out.

“Yeah, you know me. We used to hang out after school.”

Both of them shines up and smiles at me, that way you do when you meet people you have not seen in years or even thought about at all but still want to be pleasant to as to find out what they are up to now and if its interesting. And then Ellie goes

“Yes! That’s it! You’re Meenite! We used to be in the park all the time! And you used to date Tom!”

Oh, that glory, that wonderful glowing sensation of victory that you usually only find in the daydreams of a teenage mind - to have the privilege to be able to experience it for real.

#LocalLens: Splashing Around Brazil’s Bonito with @jescikalemes

In this series, local Instagrammers show you their favorite places to shoot around where they live. To see more photos of Bonito taken by Jescika, follow (@jescikalemes) on Instagram.

(This interview was conducted in Portuguese.)