Once again, I was in a new school. There was a girl in my class named Paris. That's where the similarities ended.    I was tall and she was small. I was one of the oldest in the class while she was the youngest. I was awkward  and shy. She wasn't. I couldn't stand her, considering her my enemy. But she wanted to be friends with me.    One day, she invited me over and I said yes---I was too shocked to say no. Actually no one had invited me over to play before. But the girl, who wore the latest fashions, wanted to see me.    She lived on the fourth floor in a two-room place with her mother, her stepfather, her two brothers and her sister. When we got to the room she shared with her sister, she took out a big case of Barbies which was my next surprise. I would have thought she'd outgrown  them. I had never played with them. But we sat on the floor of a walk-in cupboard laughing as we made up crazy stories about the Barbies. That's when we found out that we both wanted to be writers when we were older. We both had wild imaginations.    We had a great day that afternoon. Our jaws ached from smiling so much. She showed me her outfits , which had mostly come from a designer clothing store down the block. T he woman who owned it used her as a model sometimes for her newspaper ads and gave her clothes in exchange.    Paris had the whole neighborhood attracted. The bookstore owners lent her fashion magazines, the movie theater gave her free passes and the pizza place let her have free pieces. Soon I included in her magic world. We slept over at each other's house, spent ever free moment together. My dark hair grew out and I learned to love being tall.    Paris, my first real friend since childhood, helped me get through th tough teenage years and taught me and amazing thing about making friends: your "worst enemy" can turn out to be your best friend. The writer and Paris were similar in that  _
both of them were new students both of them were friendly both of them were tall both of them were the youngest in class