Danielle and I have been inseparable for years. We were close since we were little. Every time we saw each other, we would yell, “FAVORITE COUSIN” across the room. When were we younger we played babies’ together, and made up all these crazy stories about them. To this day, we still remember we’d always have a really ugly Barbie trying to steal the other ones boyfriends. I know everything about her and she knows everything about me. Danielle Jade Heemstra is my best friend, cousin, and has been there for me my whole life.
Throughout the years of knowing my cousin, I’ve found out many things about her. She’s only sixteen years old, and she’s been through a lot in her life. For an example, when she was fourteen years old, she was diagnosed with chromes disease. She’s going to have to deal with it the rest of her life. In the peak of finding out about her disease, she was in the hospital most of the time. Danielle was never one to care about herself, she is always thinking of others first. For an example when she was in the hospital her brother, Dylan, had limes disease, and was in the hospital too. She was more concerned about him that she was about herself.

We were all crammed into the small hospital room, me, my mom, my aunt, my sister, Kristina, and my cousin Whitney, and Danielle was laying on the hospital bed. Danielle’s usual long blond curly hair fell flat against her head. Her usual bright glowing skin was pale and drained. She had huge black bags under her eyes. She looked very sick and thin. We were all visiting her in the hospital seeing how she was doing. Her mom had come to tell her that her brother was in the hospital too with limes disease.
“What!” Danielle shouted, now sitting up in her bed with fright in her eyes.
“Calm down, he’s going to be okay. Just lay back down and rest,” Danielle’s mom said.
“No, I want to see him,” Danielle stated trying to get out of bed.
“Stop!” My aunt yelled.
“Well, I just want to she how my brother is doing. I’m sure I’d brighten his day up a bit,” Danielle stated back.
“Okay, I’ll call your dad and see how he’s doing,” my aunt said.
“Good,” Danielle said falling back into her bed.
I was stunned at how kind-hearted Danielle was. I had always known that she cared about others more than herself, but she was laying in a hospital bed with IV’s going through her veins and machines beeping all around her. She was going to get out of the hospital bed in her hospital gown and find her brother, because she was so concerned. This made me realize how great a person my cousin is.
Although Danielle is serious when she needs to be, she is probably the funniest person I know. There are so many stories of me and Danielle and the hilarious messes we’ve gotten into, but one will always be stuck in my head.

Every year my entire family goes camping with all my aunts, uncles, and cousins. Every year something weird happens that we all can’t stop talking about. This one involved me, Danielle, and some strange guys.

Danielle and I were biking around the camp ground when we saw some of my other cousins in the pool. Since we had our suits along we decided to go in. After we got out of the pool, I changed back into my clothes, and Danielle didn’t. Our hair was soaking wet and piled on top of our heads. The sun was beating down on us drying our skin. We both hopped on our bikes. I threw my wet suit over the handle bars. Danielle balled up her clothes and held it by her side. We were just pulling out of the parking lot, and we were heading down to our camp site when Danielle’s bike made a weird clanking noise.

“What was that?” I questioned.

“I don’t know.” Danielle said, and kept on biking.

I didn’t think much of it, maybe a rock flung up on something. Then soon after that, Danielle’s bike completely locked up. We both got off our bikes to see what it was causing the blockage. After and inspection, we saw that there was something stuck in the wheel. We didn’t know what it was. So Danielle went in for a closer look. There was some sort of clothing bundled up in the wheel. We were taking turns tugging at it when some guys must have seen that we were struggling.

“Hey what’s the problem ladies?” questioned a teenage boy.

“Something stuck in my bike.” Danielle stated.

“I’ll get it for you, I’m an expert on everything.” laughed another boy.

We were waiting for these two boys that we didn’t know to fix Danielle’s bike. We didn’t really know what to do, so we decided to go to the bathroom, so Danielle could change from her suit into her clothes. Then Danielle realized that she didn’t have her underwear with her. She assumed that she left it in the other bathroom. We came out, we saw that the boys had gotten whatever was stuck in the bike out. They were standing there with huge grins on their faces. We thought that it was really strange that they were smiling so big at getting a bike fixed, but we didn’t think much of it.

“Oh hey, you fixed the bike.” I said.

“Yeah thank-you!” Danielle exclaimed.

“Yeah, um, I think these are yours.” one of the boys said, as he was handing Danielle a balled up piece of clothing.

“What?” Danielle said as she took the clothing and opened it up.

It was the underwear that she thought she lost in the bathroom. Danielle started laughing really hard and couldn’t stop. Then I joined in and the boys did too.

“Oh God, this is so embarrassing.” Danielle said through laughter.

We ended up hanging out with the two boys the rest of the time we were there. One was named Jack, and he had shaggy black hair and the other one was named Blake and he had a short buzz cut. Weird things are always happening to us, who would have thought that it was possible to make friends over underwear being caught in a bike wheel. To this day we talk to them, and they always bring up the story that brought us together. If Danielle wouldn’t have been her klutzy self, we would have never met them, and missed out on a friendship.

Danielle and I have always been know to do random things together. We are never just sitting doing nothing. We always find people to talk to or things to do. For an example on our way to Six Flags, we were playing with a walkie-talkie and talking to some random people. Danielle was talking in these crazy voices, and getting the people on the other line all confused, thinking they were the people they were trying to talk to.

“Oh yeah, we’re meeting in five.” Danielle chanted into the walkie-talkie.

“What? What’s going on?” the voice on the other line stated, sounding confused.

“Yeah.” Danielle whispered back.

Conversations like these went on until we got to Six Flags. We had a fifteen minute conversations with a man, talking to him about how our grandparents owned Six Flags. It was quite strange. Our moms were sitting in the front taking pictures of us talking to the people on the walkie talkies, most of them looked like we were dying. Our matching aviator sunglasses falling off our faces, pushing eachother, and talking the whole time.

Situations like these always happen when I’m with Danielle. Whether she’s in the hospital, getting her underwear back, or talking to random people on the walkie-talkie I know whenever I’m with Danielle I’m going to have fun. I don’t know what I’d do without her. She’s my favorite cousin and she means the world to me. Ever since we were little, we planned on living right next door to each other. And one day it will happen.