It started with her

Chapter 4

The closer we got to our lockers, the louder became Ashley's squealing voice as she noticed us. She was almost sprinting, almost stumbling towards us. She looked like a toddler learning how to run.

The sound she emitted as she flung around Emily like a scarf was indescribable. "Oh my God! You're back!" She shrieked, it sounded like a dying eagle. "Where were you?! You just left me last week, what the hell?"

"Too... tight." Emily squeaked as she tried to get Ashley off her. She let go and backed a bit, but somehow, she was still in her personal space.

"Why didn't you answer my calls? I thought you were dead! How can you not care how worried I was? You just left me!" She kept squawking like a crow as Emily turned her back and opened her locker.

"I was with Mike for a couple of days, I needed time to think. What I do with my free time shouldn't matter to you." She said as she put her bag in her locker and closed it.

"What?! Him?! You were with him?" What Emily had said counted as a sin in her friend's eyes. Ashely gave me a contempt side-eye from where she stood. She turned to glare at me, she was angry for little to no reason. It looked like she was trying to kill me with just her eyes. I didn't give her much attention; I didn't want to be part of the discussion. It wasn't between me and Ashley anyway. "What about him is better than me? Even his dad gave up on him!"

Ouch.

I didn't have any time to come up with a response before Emily butted in, she was furious. "What the hell is wrong with you? It hasn't even been ten minutes and you're already fighting with him. And you weren't worried, you wanted me to forgive you! Why the hell would I forgive you for what you said?"

"What do you mean? I was worried to death about you! I called you like twenty times!"

"The voicem—"

"I even called your dad!"

Emily went silent, she looked at her friend, staggered by her words. "You..." She couldn't decide whether she should've yelled at her or just cried. But she did neither, I watched as Emily turned to hurry down the corridor. Ashley tried to grab her arm but she wriggled out of her grip and continued through the hall.

"H-hey! Where are you going?!"

Ashley was almost frothing at the mouth when she turned to me. Emily had kept walking while her friend tried to both plead for her to come back and explode me with her eyes. She turned to look at me, furious over not being the first and foremost choice.

"This is your fault!" Ashley squeaked as she stormed off in the other direction, ignoring her other friends trying to calm her down.

I hesitated to go after Emily, it didn't feel like the right thing to do, but it felt wrong to leave her. My phone buzzed to announce a text, I was surprised to see that it was from her.

E: Is she gone?

M: Yeah. Where are you though?

E: Corridor, like last week. Come here.

I started walking through the same corridor Emily had gone through. After turning the corner, I saw her sitting by one of the tables. She was hunched over her phone looking at something on her screen. I sat down beside on the bench and waited, she put her phone down and sighed. But in a split moment her face changed, at first I couldn't tell what was happening. She was laughing.

"Did you see the look on her face?" Emily said in-between chortling, I didn't understand a thing.

"Why are you laughing?" Her laughing stopped, she exhaled sharply and looked over at her phone.