The external conflict of the protagonist

The external conflict of the protagonist is dealing with her social life in high school. She has no friends at all at first because everyone hates her for calling the cops at the party. Then she meets a girl named heather and they become friends for a while until heather confronts her on page 105, paragraph two and says that she thinks Melinda is the most depressing person she has ever met and that she doesn't like anything. Melinda doesn't realize how much of a friend heather is until she is breaking up her friendship with her. Now Melinda is really without friends. In the last paragraph, Melinda says how she never really thought seriously of heather as one of her true friends but now that they broke up she desperately wants to be her friend and giggle,gossip, and even paint toenails. The significance of the passage is that Melinda didn't know she actually had a friend until she was gone. She was so caught up in being depressed that she never really took advantage and tried to be a good friend to heather, instead she is always depressed. The author's purpose is to show how what happened to Melinda has messed her up and now she can't even try to gain new friends while her old ones hate her. I know this is the author's purpose because while heather and Melinda were friends on page 34, Heather is all excited about joining the school play and is talking to Melinda about it who has a negative attitude. She tells Heather they can't join the play because they are nobody instead of supporting heather. So this is what heather must mean by Melinda not wanting to do anything. The effect it has on the reader is show them how Melinda ruined her chance to have at least one friend in high school and not always be alone because she just didn't want to do anything and it as obvious to heather she's depressed. So now the reader can see how her depression and rape is really affecting her life now. And maybe it's not that no one wants to be her friend it's probably just that how she is always depressed and not motivated drives them away from her.