Ex-Friend Spreading Rumors.., Please help... what do i do? Options

[bad_girl]

There was this boy i met at summer camp... We became really good friends almost instantly and spent most of the break after camp together with a couple of friends. Then i had to go to Portland for a month with my family, but we still continued emailing eachother. When i got back from Portland, everything changed. Before that, we used to chat on the phone everynight and hang out together with a bunch of friends almost everyday, but now it seemed like he was avoiding us. He also made up some lame excuse .. he said that he was banned from the phone because of radiation and that he was grounded & unable to hang out anymore because he had strict parents who told him he had to get a certain academic award (that's almost impossible to get) before he could go out again. However, none of us believed him because we wondered why his parents would "suddenly" change their minds and think differently after letting him talk on the phone and hang out with us for almost the entire summer. Then came school, and our summer vacation ended, leaving us communicating less and less. I felt like i didnt kno him anymore, and whenever me or my friends tried to talk to him on msn, we felt like we were being cut off, because he always seems to have an excuse about how his mom is waking up & he'd get into serious trouble using the computer or saying "BRB" and never actually coming back. A few months ago, I was chatting with a few of his friends/ ppl from his school using MSN and one of them told me that he was saying bad things about me behind my back. Of course, I was raging with anger and really really really pissed.. So i confronted him about it, but he straight-out denied it. So i thought, okay.. leave him be, maybe he's telling the truth, I can't think of a reason why he'd lie about it. That was until yesterday, when another one of his friends were IM-ing me and telling me about the same things he'd said about me. Then suddenly out-of-the-blue, his friend said "Do you still like him?" I said "Like him.. you mean as in more than a friend?" because i didnt & never did, i asked his friend why & what gave him the idea that I liked the boy. His friend said "well, because hes been telling all of us at school that you were in love with him!" (we are in different schools).

I was so shocked.. I didnt kno what to do because i knew that if i confronted him about it again, he would just deny it like he did before. On one hand, i want to know why he's acting this way when we could've stayed real good friends, and on the other hand, i dont want to break our friendship. What do you think i should do?? One thing you have to know, he isnt the type of person that would do this.. when we made friends, he was terribly shy, and that's why we became friends, because his shyness was cute and because i wanted to help him gain more courage, also because of his awesome personality deep inside. But now.. it's either he's changed or i'm beginning to see the real him. I have no idea what i should do.. i really dont want to lose friends because of this, and yet i dont feel so good about someone talking behind my back and telling people that im in love with them when it isnt true.. PLEASE HELP!