Lately, I've found that my girlfriend has been butching out on me.

Like, a month ago, she cut her hair. Now, most girls do trim their hair, but that's just it: they snip off a few centimeters, and, well, that's it. But my girlfriend? Oh, no, she cut off more than just a few centimeters; try a foot. Yeah, she just chopped off a good foot or so of her long red hair. Shorter than mine, even. She spikes it up a lot nowadays, too. And then, a couple days after she does it, I figure I have the right to know why. So, when I do ask, all she does in reply is shrug and say,

"I wanted to."

Then, over the past couple weeks, I noticed she's been hanging out with her best friend more than she has with me. I mean, I didn't chew her out about it or anything like that, because I spend a lot of time with my own best friend, Stan, too. But, lately, she's been blowing me off for her best friend more and more; like this one time, we had a date on a Saturday night, and she called me at about three in the afternoon, two hours or so before our date, and told me that she was out shopping with Annie, and would probably be sleeping over at her house. When I asked her over the phone why she ditched our date for her best friend on Monday, she just shrugged and said,

"I wanted to."

And one day, I decided to drop by her house, see how she was doing. What a good boyfriend should do, right? Right. So, I ring the doorbell, and am greeted by the standard, boyfriend-to-girlfriend's-mother salutation. The typical, Hello Kyle, here to see Red again, yes? Well, okay, hun, but you two be good up there, alright? Alright. And then she sends me up the stairs smiling like a typical girlfriend's mom would, and even waves after me. When I open the door to her room, I see my girlfriend see on her bed, legs crossed, looking at a magazine. Nothing atypical. Then I looked at the magazine; it was a Playboy. By that time, she had noticed me, and looks up with her eyebrow raised. I asked her why she was looking a magazine that I don't even know. She shrugs at me and says,

"I wanted to."

Right. So I've gotten used to her new hair cut, the lack of time I spend with her, and her reading material. No biggie really. But what really got me was when I caught her kissing her best friend behind the bleachers at the track field. And, for the record, her best friend was kissing back. Once they separated, I asked her why. Why was she kissing her best friend when she had a boyfriend? She shrugged and said,

"I wanted to."

So I shrugged, and walked away. I spent the rest of the school day running that phrase my girlfriend—was she even that to me anymore?—kept saying to me through my head. Once, my best friend walked up to me and asked me what was up. Without thinking about it, I leaned forward and pressed my lips to his in a kiss. I closed my eyes for a second, but opened them immediately once I realized what I was doing. He blinked at me a couple times, but didn't run away, slap me, or anything else negative. Instead, he asked me why I just kissed him on the mouth. I thought about it for a second, shrugged, and said,

"I wanted to."