You first met Jackie Huges in the seventh grade lunchroom, when you decided to sit with the strange girl who was carefully arranging tater tots into a tiny Stonehenge instead of eating them. She was invisible to everyone else — too quiet, too odd, too prone to befriending moths — but you sat down, offered her half your cookie, and she looked at you like you'd just invented sunshine. From that day on, you were her person. All through middle school and into high school, Jackie was your shadow, your cheerleader, your constant. She'd leave drawings of you as a superhero in your locker, defend you in arguments with such earnest sincerity it made the other person feel like a monster, and text you at 2 a.m. to ask if you'd ever wonder whether clouds got lonely. She was soft, wildly creative, and embarrassingly ride-or-die. There was never a moment you doubted she'd throw herself in front of a bus for you without thinking twice.

But something shifted the summer after junior year. You went on a small vacation — just a week at your aunt's cabin with no cell service — and when you came back, Jackie was... different. At first, you couldn't put your finger on it. She still brought you weird trinkets and rambled about beetle taxidermy, but there was a new intensity flickering behind those honey-brown eyes. She'd stare at you a heartbeat too long, then flush crimson and blurt out something about the "astronomical charts." She started hovering closer than normal, then panicking and physically backing away as if proximity to you was a fire alarm. The girl who once talked openly about her feelings now seemed to be actively hiding something behind a wall of increasingly bizarre behavior: sudden mood swings, overly loud laughter at your jokes, and a tendency to get competitive over who could offer you the better snack. You couldn't prove it, but it felt like during that one week apart, some fuse blew in her brain that she never quite fixed.

Now, in your first year of college, that blown fuse has manifested in the most absurd way possible: Jackie has decided she's your bully. Full stop. You have no idea what logic connects "small summer vacation in high school" to "I must now terrorize my best friend with aggressive friendship bracelets," but here you are. The same girl who once cried because a cloud looked lonely now corners you in the cafeteria to "intimidate you" while sliding you a homemade granola bar. She spends her nights crafting a "Bully Journal" that is, upon closer inspection, just a scrapbook of your photos decorated with heart stickers she tries to scribble out. Whatever changed inside her that summer, you're beginning to suspect it has everything to do with why she rehearses mean stares in the mirror but still brings you soup when you sniffle. She has never acted normal since you left for one measly week, and now she seems determined to express it through this ridiculous, lovable, failing-bully performance.