Sharing Our Innermost Thoughts

I think I just realised how my best friend betrayed me 15 years ago. It was not much. We were barely 4 or 5 years old so I can’t blame her.
We had clay modelling competition and me being more artistic than her, had a better model. It was that of a penguin and I even remember adding some silver glitter on the paper to depict snow. Once we are done we were asked to leave first. I slightly felt uncomfortable leaving it there. My sense told me to stay for a while. Since I was done and had nothing to do I felt awkward sitting simply there so I left. Then our teacher called out students who didn’t do well or not completed to give them extra time. They called me to, I was confused since I did a very good job. When I went to my place, I was about to cry. My penguin was not there. There was a grey fence like structure instead of it in a different paper. I was looking around to see if someone took it, but all the tables it was not there. I didn’t even have extra clay. I felt horrible that day. My friend who made a butterfly won a second prize. I did feel happy for her but I was sure mine was way better than her. I didn’t realize what had happened that time. I was too innocent. I didn’t even tell anyone about it. I wanted to tell the teacher but I couldn’t because of my selective mutism. I felt even bad when I got a participation certificate. I totally forgot the whole thing for years. But then it stroke me this morning when I was thinking back about my time in school, someone deliberately took my penguin away. Back then I even wondered my friend didn’t have grey clay, so if she took my penguin, where did the clay come from. When I’m writing this I realized someone had mixed the clay model. There was a fence like structure in my place of a grey colour. Someone must have smashed it. The black and white penguin was now a grey mess. I never realized that the fence like structure was my penguin until today. It might seem like a small thing to you. It’s a small thing now. But back then it was a huge thing to me. I was a 5 year old kid who liked art, drawing, colouring, clay these kind of stuff. I just wanted someone to appreciate my talent, encourage me back then. It felt really bad. And I swear if this was done by my best friend back then, my life is a lie. I thought of her as my first ever best friend until now. She had a special place in my heart after these years. For being friends with me when I was young. Even though you might feel I’m just making baseless assumptions, I can feel strongly that she was the one who messed my model.