Acting Innocent

Chapter Twenty Five

Chapter Twenty Five

RECAP (Basically re-read chapter 24... Sorry!)

Alex was thinking this over and eventually nodded. “Yeah that makes sense but what I don’t get, it what Emma has to do with any of this. I never dated her so I don’t know why she would be in on this. Why wouldn’t he choose Jessica instead? He knows how much you two hate each other.”

“That’s true,” I replied. “She said something about someone being taken away but she was the one who left me those few years ago. I’m the one who lost her.” I thought for a moment. “Unless she lost someone I wasn’t supposed to know about.”

“Like who?” Alex asked, rather confused.

“My brother,” I stated.

***

FLASHBACK

I came home from school crying and burst through the doors. I had no idea why she left me for them. I thought we were inseperable. But why did she go to them? What did I do wrong?

Emma.

That girl I used to call my best friend. So close we were like sisters separated at birth. Nothing could tear us apart.

But that obviously changed as soon as we stepped foot in high school. She must have realised it was like the jungle. You want to stay on top you have to act fast like a lion and make sure people know who you are. After all, first impressions count.

“Kyra? Kyra! What happened?” My brother wrapped his solid frame around my small one stroking my head.

“Its- Its Emma!” I wailed, trying not to be too loud because I knew Izzy was having her nap.

“What’d she do?” He asked and I looked at his face, a mask of confusion and anger.

“I don’t know what happened, we were walking into school and then I turned around and she was gone. Just like that, disappeared.” I said, recounting the event that happened not only hours earlier.

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t see her at all until lunch. She was sitting with them,” I started to get angry, remembering the way they were looking at me. Like I was the weak little mouse in the jungle.

“Come on hon, be more specific. Who are they? What’d they say?”

“They were the ones at school who looked like they could eat you alive. The ones who look at you like you’re shit on the bottom of their shoes. They didn’t say anything at lunch, not even Emma,” I snapped, picturing them in my head.

“But why was Emma with them?” he asked. Sounding genuinely confused.

“I don’t know, but I think today is the day I lost my best friend,” I whispered before tears welled up in my eyes again.

FLASHBACK ENDS

“This is making more sense,” I said to Alex who was still sitting opposite me waiting for an explanation. “I couldn’t work out why Jason was so angry on the day that I came home crying. And then I heard him yelling at someone on the phone that night but I thought it might’ve been one of his friends so I ignored it.”

“What does this have to do with Emma?”

“That’s the thing, it has everything to do with Emma,” I told him before putting some money on the table and telling him that I would see him in English for the presentation, even though to the rest of the high school population we hated each other.