I knew a girl.

She's intelligent, nearly insanely so.  You know how in most cheesy movies, the geniuses are usually megalomaniacs?  Well, those movies are obviously based in fact.  And I think most of the evil geniuses are based on this girl I know.

We met a little more than three years ago, but we became close friends only about a year after.  We spent the first few hours after we became closer just talking.  About ourselves, about our friends, about our families.  I revealed more to her in those few hours than I had to anyone but my then best friend.

I was her confidante for months, maybe even a year, and she mine.  Then one summer, everything changed.  She'd always been close friends with lots of other people, and I figured she told them the same things she told me.  But of course not.  I wasn't as up to date as them.  I was old.  My best-before date had passed, and now I was just good, not the best.  During the summer, she'd met a boy; she'd taken a writing course and therefore was obviously even more qualified to be a megalomaniac; she'd gone through so much that I apparently couldn't understand.

She omitted facts when talking to me and made others lie to me too.  She only told me about the boy she'd met months after we returned to school.  We'd drifted apart over the last year and a half, to be sure, but I still counted her among my closest friends.  She was still my confidante, and I hers.  So I thought.  How mistaken I was.

We took a school trip together.  We roomed together.  After our third roommate fell asleep, I decided to confide in her the last secret she didn't know about me.
"I'm bisexual."
"How do you know?  Who?"
I told her the name of the girl I liked.  I told her, and she accepted it.  So I thought.  How mistaken I was.  I didn't notice that she rushed into the bathroom right after I told her.  When I think back, I want to kick myself.

I thought I knew a girl.

We have a mutual friend.  He told me that she'd confided in him.  How surprising.
"She said she was freaked out when you came out to her.  She was worried you'd...do something.  You know, you were roommates."
My world began to crack.  ('It's okay.  It's just an initial reaction.')

We were going to have a sleepover, the three of us.  He was talking to her.
"My mom only lets me sleep over at guys' houses."
"Why does it matter?  I'll bet she's more interested in me than she is in you."
The hairline crack became a fissure.  ('It was just a joke.  Tasteless, but just a joke.')

I thought and thought.  I was always mistaken.
My world crumbled.

I don't know a girl.

For sure, I know what she looks like, I know what she smells like, I know what she sounds like.
That doesn't mean I know her.