In life, one of the things that hurts the most is being betrayed by someone you thought you could trust. My most recent mistake may have been letting myself get pressured into doing something wrong, but the first mistake I made was placing my trust in Taeyeon.

I met her in elementary school. On the first day, I arrived late and slid into the closest desk I could find. I hadn’t realized it, but someone’s things were already there. The girl came back to her seat with her friend right beside her. “That’s my seat.” she said, pointing at the chair I was sitting in.

My eyes widened and I got ready to gather up my stuff, but her friend, who had taken her seat beside me, said, “Just go find another one, Tiffany.” Then she looked at me and asked, “You’re new, right?”

I nodded. “I just moved here from California.”

The girl looked at her friend, as if what I had said just proved a point. “See? Let’s be nice.”

I didn’t think rejecting this girl would be a good idea. Obviously she had more authority than any of the other students.

“What’s your name?” she asked, looking at me with attentive eyes.

“Jessica.” I replied, flushing just a little.

“I’m Taeyeon.”

Through elementary school, Taeyeon protected me and built me up to stand on my own. She introduced me to her friends and they easily accepted me into their tight-knit circle. We all met up at Taeyeon’s house on Friday nights for slumber parties and played Truth or Dare and Apples to Apples. Life was simple.

When we got into middle school, the drama ensued. Everyone wanted a boyfriend and there were plenty of cute boys to choose from. I had my sights set on a boy I’d been admiring since elementary school.

At our weekly slumber party, Taeyeon began a conversation concerning who everyone’s crush was. I didn’t really want to tell them who I liked, but there would be trouble if I didn’t.

“Since we’re all besties, we have to know who everyone likes. We’ll go around the circle, starting with... Yoona. Who do you like?”

Everyone looked at Yoona, who looked just as calm as she always did. “I mean, I guess I think Daesung is kind of cute.” she said, not wavering even a little. Daesung was a few years older than us, in eighth grade. He wore glasses and had a big nose.

“He’s kind of nerdy, though. Don’t you think?” Sooyoung asked, looking at Taeyeon for approval.

“Sooyoung, we’re not going to judge other people’s crushes.” Then she looked at Yoona. “He may be a dork, but he has nice hair.”

Yoona smiled, immediately feeling more secure in her decision.

Next was Seohyun and she looked much more nervous than Yoona did. “Well, I find Jonghyun to be kind of cute.”

That’s how our conversation went. Someone would usually give whoever was speaking a bit of crap about their crush, but Taeyeon would swoop in and name a redeeming quality. Until it was my turn, that is.

“Jessica, who’s your crush?” Taeyeon asked, her voice sickeningly sweet. I’m not sure that she realized just how scary she sounded.

“I’ve liked Jongin for a while...” I mumbled, not meeting any of their gazes head-on. I heard a few gasps and some giggles, but all the sounds soon stopped. When I looked back up, no one would look at me except Taeyeon.

“Jess, you can’t like Jongin.” she said, not even hinting at giving me a reason.

“Why not?”

She smiled and looked at me like I was just a poor, confused puppy. “Because I used to like him.”

“But you don’t anymore...?” This was a question because my brain couldn’t process why my own crush was so bad. If she didn’t care anymore, why couldn’t I like him?

“No, I don’t, but that’s the rule. You can’t date your friends’ old crushes or boyfriends. It’s girl code.”

Multiple times after she told me I couldn’t have a crush on Jongin, Taeyeon broke the code, not caring whose feelings she ended up hurting in the process. She dated Seohyun’s old crush, Jonghyun, and Hyoyeon’s ex-boyfriend, Junho.

High school was extremely different. There was no ‘girl code’ anymore because everyone had grown tired of letting Taeyeon do whatever she wanted. We were still pretty much her underlings, but some of us had grown backbones. So we dated who we wanted to date, unless someone had specifically said we couldn’t and given a good reason, or if one of us was currently dating that person.

At the beginning of junior year, we were all sitting at a table in the cafeteria, gossiping about the girls who walked by and barely eating our bag lunches, when Taeyeon decided to call dibs.

“So you’re calling dibs on-”

“It’s not dibs. I just don’t want anyone dating him. Is that too much to ask?” For once, Taeyeon’s cool exterior was crumbling with defensiveness and nerves.

Not one to let her get by very easily, I said, “You have to give us a reason to not go after him, remember?” She’d used this point of the agreement many times. Whenever someone couldn’t give a ‘good enough’ reason, the request was denied.

She just looked at me with wide eyes, probably surprised anyone had checked her power. “I mean... It’s just...” She kept spluttering out sentence fragments until she got too aggravated to continue. “It’s not that I have a crush on him...” She groaned in frustration. “Just give me this one thing, please.”

Seeing Taeyeon pleading and begging was not a familiar sight and it almost scared me. Everyone just kind of started nodding in agreement, letting her have what she wanted.

Later, I was walking to the parking lot with Seohyun since our last class of the day was one we shared. I’d completely forgotten about what Taeyeon had requested during lunch, but she hadn’t. “Don’t you think that was weird?”

I was kind of startled by her question, not knowing what she was referring to. “It was just a regular day in history, if you ask me.”

She laughed. “No, I mean what happened at lunch.” When I didn’t respond, she said, “You know, what Taeyeon did...?”

Understanding dawned on me and I laughed at my cluelessness. “Sorry, I’d forgotten about it. I agree that it was strange, though.”

She nodded. “Like, why? Out of everyone that we go to school with, why is she suddenly banning us from dating Park Chanyeol?”

I just shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe she really does like him and she just doesn’t want to admit it.”

“If that’s the case, she should just tell us. It’s not like talking about people we like is anything new to this group, or Taeyeon. It’s just weird.”

After Seohyun brought it up, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. It reminded me of what she’d done back in middle school when I’d admitted I liked Jongin. Since I’d just met her a few weeks before, I couldn’t have known that Taeyeon had ever expressed interest in him, but I know she’s never talked about Chanyeol before.

A few months later, exams were finished and everyone was geared up and ready to go home for the summer. Except, I knew that not everyone was planning on heading home to sleep for the next two months. On the night of the last day of school, there’s always a party that almost everyone attends. In middle school, this party was super tame. Our parents came and we ate ice cream and maybe a few guys came over to play tag or something. Now, though, the party has morphed into something completely different. It’s not a celebration of the end of school; that’s just the excuse. This party is actually what it sounds like; it’s a party and people are going to go and get drunk and hook up.

Our group took two cars to the party since there’s so many of us. We split it up four to five. I rode with Taeyeon, Tiffany, Yoona, and Yuri and Sunny, Hyoyeon, Sooyoung, and Seohyun rode in the second car.

At the party, Taeyeon disappeared for a while. I didn’t think anything of it and just socialized with other people from school and my friends.

“Hey, Jessica.” a guy said behind me. I’d been dancing with Seohyun and Sooyoung, but they had ended up on the other side of the room. Or maybe that was me. I felt slightly dizzy and the music was getting really loud. The entire room just felt uncomfortable and the only thing making it any better was the comfort of whoever this guy was talking to me.

I turned to him, finally, looking up into a beautifully sculpted face. “Jongin?”

To this day, I still hear whispers whenever I pass by, people talking about how trashy I was in the video or the things he’s told people. I can’t remember what actually happened that night and I refuse to watch the video, but I don’t doubt what they say. Alcohol has never been my friend and I’ve come to know that neither was Taeyeon.

Since Seohyun and I were close before the events of that first night of summer party, she informed me that everything that happened with Jongin was a set-up crafted by Taeyeon. She says that I probably seemed like a threat to Tae since everyone else obviously liked me better. It doesn’t feel like they like me more, knowing that they’re all laughing at the table I used to sit at while I sit alone in the corner.