The Vitamin Gummy War

My best friend Jessica and I had been practically attached at the hip since seventh grade, which made it absolutely devastating when she started sitting with the popular crowd at lunch freshman year. I'd catch her laughing at their jokes, hair perfectly glossy, while I sat three tables away wearing my dad's oversized beanie that I refused to take off even indoors. The hat was my armor—my literal security blanket. I figured if I looked like I didn't care what anyone thought, maybe I'd actually start believing it.

Then came the vitamin incident.

Jessica had been posting these aesthetic Instagram stories of her daily vitamin routine—little colorful gummies arranged in tiny glass containers. "Self-care is self-love," she'd caption them, because apparently that's what people did now. So naturally, being the idiot I was, I decided to start taking vitamins too. Not because I needed them or anything, but because maybe if I had my own little ritual, I'd feel like I had my life together the way she seemed to.

The problem? I bought the exact same ones she posted about.

When she noticed, which she absolutely did because her friend group pointed it out while laughing, she didn't say anything to me. She just posted another Instagram story—a screenshot of our vitamin gummies side by side, with the caption "when your friend starts copying your aesthetic 😂" and the clown emoji.

My phone burned in my hand. I deleted the photo, tossed the vitamins in the back of my cabinet, and wore my hat pulled lower than ever for a week.

But then something weird happened. Marcus, who sat next to me in chemistry and had never spoken a full sentence to me, slid a note across my desk during a particularly boring lecture about covalent bonds.

"I saw your story," it read. "Those vitamins actually taste pretty terrible. The peach ones are better."

I stared at him. He was wearing this ridiculous bucket hat that practically swallowed his head, and suddenly I realized—this was his version of my beanie. His armor.

"They're not my vitamins," I wrote back. "They're Jessica's. I was being dumb."

Marcus smiled, this tiny crooked thing that made something flutter in my chest. "You're not dumb. The vitamins are dumb. But the hat's kinda cool though."

That Friday, Jessica texted me: "coffee? my treat?"

And that's how I found myself sitting across from my oldest friend, both of us awkwardly NOT talking about the vitamin gummy war or the fact that she'd posted me as a joke. Instead, we talked about everything else—how much we both hated AP World, how her "aesthetic" posts took literally forty-five minutes to set up, how she'd missed having someone to make fun of Mr. Harrison's terrible comb-over with.

"I'm sorry about the story," she said, stirring her latte. "I don't know why I posted it. I just... I wanted them to think I was interesting enough to copy."

I pulled my beanie off for the first time in two weeks. My hair was probably a mess, but I didn't care.

"We're both dumb, then," I said. "Want to go buy some ACTUAL terrible vitamins and take them together ironically?"

Jessica actually laughed—real laugh, not her popular-girl giggle. "You're still my friend, you know that right?"

"Yeah," I said, and meant it. "And Marcus in chemistry? He says the peach ones taste better."

Jessica raised an eyebrow. "Marcus? The guy with the bucket hat?"

"That's the one."

"Well," she said, "at least your taste in friends is improving."

I laughed too. Because somehow, between the gummy vitamins and the ridiculous hats, everything was going to be okay.