The Diamond Case

CHAPTER THREE: The Cafeteria Turned Into the Underworld...

 LUNCH!!! I take out my lunchbox from the basket in front of the cafeteria door, which is plain sky blue, and sits at me and Em's usual spot, the last table on the right, closest to the trash cans and doors to the playground. Dad packed us sandwiches for me today. Yum. Em sits next to me and opens her lunchbox, which is the same as mine, but pink and purple. She also got sandwiches from dad! Emily's friends sit in front of us. I think her friends are Maddie (Mad for short), Liz, and Alyssa (Alice for short). Yup, got that right.

"Em, I need to talk to you in private, OK?"

"Sure."

"Guys, can you sit somewhere else today? Rose and I have unfinished business to do." asked Em, and her friends grumbled about not being able to talk about the "Seth Talk" while going to the table across from us.

"Em. What was Seth doing to you? Brainwashing you again?"

"No. He was talking to me, and he knew my name! HE. KNEW. MY. NAME!!!"

"Fine. You know how much I disapprove of him. NO DATING. Please. And if you can, try to get over the crush. Oh, and he knowing your name is normal. You guys are in the same class, also the teacher always calls you: 'Emily, the F girl'. Oh, and you'll make Chloe very jealous and mean to you if you and Seth go dating, because she is STILL sulking about the breakup. Apparently, Seth dumped her because she was too bossy."

"Aw, man! But if we were dating....... Oh, that'd be a miracle come true!!!! And I don't care about Chloe, but since she's in most of your classes, please tell her that I thank her for being so mean and bossy to Seth."

"What? You want to thank her? Ugh, fine. I'll tell her tomorrow."

"Yay!! You're so nice!"

"But Em, I'm just warning you, popular kids don't stay popular forever. And if you start dating him, that'd be the only thing you'd be thinking about, and then you would be distracted while searching for our necklaces."

"Oki, I know now." We hear giggling, so we turn our heads to see that Mad, Liz, and Alice are giggling and talking to Seth 6 feet away!! Em runs over and pulls them away. "Hey! What in the world were you doing!" I overhear Emily snap.

"Just telling SOMEONE that SOMEONE liked him," Mad giggles. "And he even said that SOMEONE was very pretty!!!!"

"Who?" I heard Emily asking quietly.

"Who else could it be? YOU, of course!" Alice says grinning. At this point, Emily suddenly falls to the ground (Sorry I couldn't make it more graceful, Em, but that is the truth!).

UGH!!!! I canNOT believe Emily. One little true comment, and SHE FAINTS!!! SOOOOOO unbelievable!!! I pull Em away from her group of friends, who ignored Emily and just kept on laughing.

"EMILY EMERALD POTTER!" I shout in her ear. "COME ON THIS INSTANT." After what seemed like the billionth time (actually it was the 4th, but can't I exaggerate?) Emily FINALLY stirred.

"Wha...? What happened? All I remember is Mad and Alice laughing and everything turning pitch black..."

"EMILY! You. Fainted. Do. Not. Do. That. AGAIN!" I say loudly, but then I add softly in her ear. "You and I are going to have a serious talk about this, Em."

"Oh, great. I look forward to it." answered Emily, her voice dripping with sarcasm. She opened her mouth to say more, but I gave her The Look, and she effectively shut up (I looooove The Look!).

"Come on." I say as I pull Em up to her feet. I look at the crowd of other 6th graders that gathered around us and say "Seriously? Isn't it time to dump your trays and get rid of the trash? Or are you just going to stand there looking like dumb, sitting ducks?" I also gave in a little glare, and the crowd disappeared. FINALLY!!!

Emily and I threw away our trash and ran outside. I pulled Em under the big willow tree and sat on the bench. Em sat on the bench and groaned.

"Rose, just pleaaaase let me have a chance with Se–..."

"Emily," I interrupted. "Just let me talk."

"Okie dokie."

I rolled my eyes. "Em, I'll let you do anything you want with your love life if you just focus on getting our necklaces back, please. Patricia is our target an–"

"What did ya say about me???" asked Patricia, who seemingly appeared in front of the twins. Patricia always seems to appear in front of us right when we are talking about her. Like, that's so ANNOYING!!!!!! I answer first, "Oh! Hey Patricia! We were just talking about inviting you to our birthday party! You do know it's next week, right?" I know that Rose is just pretending to be nice, and we're not really going to invite her to our birthday party, but it is really next week. I love how my nifty brain is sooo good at talking with Patricia, and the best thing is, my brain cooperates (totally unlike Emily... HAHAHAHAHAHA, sorry Em, but you should have seen your own face).

"Oh. I thought you guys were talking about something else. Never mind," Patricia huffed. I knew she wanted us to be talking bad about her, because that way she could've got us in trouble. But luckily, I have very answers to the weirdest questions (Em says I have a smart mouth, but you decide for me). When Patricia is gone, I continue my very important and INTERESTING lecture (just please let me exaggerate, OK?). "As I was saying. Patricia is our target, and we need to be focusing on capturing her. She has our necklaces, and we need to rescue them! If they fall in other people's hands, who KNOWS what could happen! Especially if that person is bad like Patricia..." Then the bell rings. I look over to Emily, and SHE FELL ASLEEP! I am literally going to kill her. "Ugh, you fell asleep while I was talking? Seems like I'll need to tell you at home. Well, we need to get to class, otherwise we'll be late. Let's go," I sighed as I shook her awake.

By the look on Emily's face, she didn't want to go to class, AND she was SUPER annoyed at ME. ME. ME!!! For waking her up. Seriously? I just did her a favor and woke her up before she got detention for skipping class. She's off my hook NOW, but she is really going to die and regret it on her deathbed.