“My parents are going to Venice
on Saturday, and I was wondering if you wanted to come with us,”
Adriana whispered to Sandra that sunny, warm morning. They were in their classroom, sitting side by side, doing the first lesson of the day.
Sandra smiled happily at her new friend. As the new girl in school, she was excited that her classmates – some of them, at least – seemed interested in making her feel welcome.
Sandra had first come to Adriana's school three days ago. She then entered the classroom with Mrs Taylor, the class teacher,
and for the first minute - while Mrs Taylor was introducing her to the class -
she stood there in front of her future classmates, as calm as she could pretend to be, half excited and half afraid really.
But it turned out that her new classmates were more than OK, especially Cristina. She was a slender girl with reddish hair and cute freckles all over her face.
She was the best student in class, and very popular too. She always wore beautiful clothes and interesting jewelry. Cristina was sitting in the desk in front of Sandra and Adriana.
Sandra's deskmate, Adriana,
was a rather plump girl with wonderful blond hair.
She was Cristina's best friend. Sandra was happy to be friends with both of them.
Yet Adriana had become more jealous of Cristina by the minute during the last three days. And now that Adriana had asked her to go to Venice on Saturday, Sandra was wondering whether Cristina would join them. "I hope Cristina is coming too," she told Adriana. "Sure," came the answer, "we often do things together at the weekend." Sandra was happy, secretly hoping the trip would bring the three of them closer together.
On Saturday morning Adriana's parents, Adriana, Cristina and Sandra went to Venice
by train. Their town was not far away from Venice, and the sunny weather seemed to promise a great day from the first hours of the morning.
However, the green monster called jealousy soon raised its ugly head. Adriana's parents went to visit an old relative of theirs and the three girls had three hours to themselves,
so they decided to walk the famous sights of Venice.
Sandra was extremely pleased to see her friends would show her the highlights of Venice on her very first time there! But it seemed that no matter what they did or how slowly they walked, Adriana couldn't keep up with them. Soon Adriana started to feel that she didn't fit in any longer. Cristina and Sandra laughed happily and admired all the amazing things Venice had to offer them, while Adriana was always one step behind them, hardly keeping up.
The worst thing happened when they all got in a gondola
for the short ride to the island of Murano. Adriana didn't like water, she was even afraid of it, and the whole ride she just stayed curled up by herself in the middle of the boat, waiting for the ride to end.
She didn't say anything to the girls - she just let them be merry. But inside of her jealousy was growing fast, and after the trip was over.Late at night, tucked in her bed, Adriana knew something had changed that day, and maybe Cristina couldn't be her best friend any more as she now had Sandra.
The last stroke was still to come. It happened on Monday, at school. Even if she didn't seem to pay much attention to Adriana in Venice, Cristina actually kept in mind the fact that Adriana was so afraid of water, and in a conversation during one of the breaks with another classmate this sentence just popped up. By the last break many schoolmates were aware of Adriana's fear.
When Adriana accidentally heard two girls talking about her, she went to Cristina, extremely mad at her.
"Hey, that's not really friendly, what you've been doing," she started. "It actually is really mean. What if I told everybody about your crush on Marco Celentano? Ooops! It just slipped!"
"You'd better stop," answered Cristina, "or I'll tell everybody about the doll you still have in bed with you every night. Ooops! It just slipped!..."
Luckily the bell interrupted their fight. The teacher on duty, Mrs Taylor, who had witnessed the scene along with other students, Cristina included, told everybody to go to their classrooms, but stopped Adriana, Cristina and Sandra and told them they needed to go to the school counsellor's office.
Not really sure why they had to go there, the three girls left the schoolyard and headed for the school counsellor's office. When they arrived there, Mr Johnson the school counsellor was waiting for them.
"Your teacher tells me that you three started not to get along with each other a couple of days ago or so."
Cristina was the first to answer: "You are wrong there, Mr Johnson. We are best friends. We talk. We have just talked. So can we go now?"
"No, you haven't really talked," said the counsellor.
Adriana admitted: "Yeah, I have a problem with little Miss Perfect here. She's always trying to steal my friend."
Sandra started to answer her: "Adriana, I didn't know you felt that way..."
Cristina's words interrupted her: "You never want to hang around with me anyway, Adriana, and Sandra does, so I hang around with her. And there's another thing. You're always trying to be the centre of attention."
Stunned at first, Adriana began to understand Cristina's point of view - "Cristina is also feeling jealousy," she thought to herself - and something lit up inside her and almost cried: "I don't see why we can't hang around together. A person can have more than one good friend, right?"
Sandra was quick to agree: "Yes, I want you both to be my best friends!"
The counsellor was content. "Have you all learned something today?"
Following the girls' approval, he continued in a low voice: “Adriana and Cristina, do you think that you could both be friends with Sandra?” Sandra was again the quickest in answering that – “I really want to be. Can I be a friend to both of you?” The three girls hugged tightly after both Adriana and Cristina shouted “Yes!”
Mr Johnson felt relieved and proud that the girls could learn an important lesson: a person can have more than one good friend in life.
