Nathan Ratcliffe

Me and Nathan, just like Brandon and Michael, went to preschool together.  The difference between me and Nate's relationship and those between me and Brandon or Michael is that we've stayed friends ever since.  We went to preschool, kindergarten, elementary school, junior high and (currently) high school together.  We've always been pretty good friends but not really super close.  I don't know why not; we have lots of things in common.  But our friendship has always been pretty, ah, professional(?) or something.  We hang out about as much as me and anybody else, but things just seem to be sorta weird.  It's not weird-uncomfortable, though.
Nate lives about three miles away from me.  His family is pretty down.  Me and his parents have had more conversations than my parents and myself about my future.  It's cool like that; they're pretty much my only adult friends.
The time that me and Nate were probably the closest was while he was going out with Dana.  He introduced me to her, and even though me and Dana's relationship is not exactly perfect (light sarcasm), I appreciate his introducing us.  I don't know why Nate and Dana's going out brought me and Nathan together.  I guess it had a lot to do with Dana having an ill-gotten reputaion amongst our friends at school, mainly from a slightly bitter Preston spreading some lies about her.  Preston tends to do that a lot, so i figured she was probably pretty cool.  Plus, if she was as stupid as Preston made her sounds, why was Nate such good friends with her?  Well, P-Losche managed to kill any respect the girls at school might have had for Dana. Nathan apparently didn't want to entirely give up his friends at West to go hang out with Dana all the time, so I hung out with them a lot.  Plus, I thought Dana's friend Emma was extremely hot, so me and Nate started making Dana's house a pretty regular stop on our Friday and Saturday evenings for about five months or so.
The half-hour drive each way kinda gave me and Nate the chance to catch up on the last few years of each other's lives that we'd missed.  Not so much MISSED necessarily, but we had definitely not been as good of friends then as we had been in elementary school.
Nathan's probably my smartest friend.  I don't mean that he's the only friend I have with a 4.0 GPA (he does have one, but so do lots of my friends), but he's also pretty wise beyond his years.  Unfortunately, we still do stupid stuff a lot of the time.  Nothing serious, but just lame little things that I'm sure we'll regret when we're older.  It's odd: when it's just me and Nate hanging out, we act a lot older than we are supposed to.  I guess kids are expected to act the same from age 13-17.  When it's just me and Nathan, we actually act our age.  It's cool.  But if there's a girl either of us like involved, or a group of guys, me and him tend to try and be all "cool" and do stupid stunts to gain attention and respect.  How gay is that?
But Nathan's a cool guy.  If you know me or him, and think otherwise, then you suck.