Prologue

My mother always told me that I'd find my best friend in college. That whatever I thought about what friendship had meant in high school would go sailing out the window and I would meet someone that would be my best friend for the rest of my life.

I thought she was crazy. I thought that she was insulting my friends from high school, insinuating that they weren't really true friends and that they were replaceable. I wanted so very much, at the time, for her to be wrong.

But she wasn't.

I fought against it for a long time. My first year was filled with superficial friends who came and went as the seasons changed, and a boyfriend who ended up ruining my idea of relationships for years. But as the last few months of my freshman year wrapped up, all that changed. I met The Idiots and my life was never the same. People cringe when they hear that We called ourselves the Idiot Club, thinking it a name that was insulting or demeaning. But we didn't see it that way. Sure, it was given to us by one of our brothers after we got lost in the city of Rochester because I couldn't read a set of simple written directions, but it stuck. We were smart, for sure, but together we sometimes did really stupid things. And so we were The Idiot Club. And as you can probably guess, this is our story.

We've all been out of school for a few years now, but what happened to us over those four years is something that will never go away. It was hard. People tell me sometimes that they look back on their college years with such fondness that they wish they could go relive it. Except for my Idiots, I look back at college and wonder why the hell we put ourselves through that. Why would I want to go back to the crying and the lying and the drinking and the daily gnawing in my stomach that I don't belong there. If I had to give a reason, not for wanting to never go back, but for wanting to go back, it would be my Idiots. Together, we made things bearable for each other. Though, admittedly, sometimes we made them worse, too.

The year we all moved in together started off rough. Someone had asked one of my roommates if they were worried about living with me because I was, "you know, like that." No explanation or anything given, but there was a huge confrontation in our living room three days after the semester started. And for weeks, I wondered if we'd bounce back from it. I don't know that we ever did, so much else was going on.

There was always so much else going on. Put four girls together in an apartment, and there's never a drama free moment. Hell, put four girls together in the dining hall for a few hours and there's never a drame free moment. We were a mixed bag. We loved each other and sometimes, we hated each other. But, even when we hated each other, we were there for each other. Even now, years later, if I have a problem, I call my favorite Idiot.

My mom was right. I met the best friend I'd ever have.

This is our story. This is how four girls went from complete strangers to best friends and then began to unravel. How boys and booze and sickness and death threatened to make our lives miserable. And in a lot of ways, succeeded. We were four Idiots, but now we're three. And we did it to ourselves.

This isn't a happy story. Sure, it has happy moments. And I turned out alright. But the story itself? What happened to us? Not a happy story in the slightest. It is, instead, a story about persevering, the testing of friendship and a lot of tears. It has its funny moments, sure. But when I tell this story, my stomach hurts and my heart aches. I wish it could have been so much different.

It was different for the others in a lot of ways - not entirely - because each of us carried something: something heavy and unwieldy. But that something was different. So I'll tell you parts of the story, but so will they. They'll share with you what they thought, too. Because sometimes, as much as I hate to admit it, they didn't like me very much. I wasn't a likable person, really, until the Idiots. And after, well, sometimes I'm still not. But that's just me. Bianca.

Megan and Stacey and Rachel were my best friends. And some of them still are.