"You're going to be proud of me."
That's the first thing Hope says as she enters Ms. Tig's office for her mid-morning session on Friday.
"Good morning to you too, Hope," Emma says amusedly. "I'm sure I will be, even if I already am."
Hope represses the urge to roll her eyes at that last part. She's always telling her things like that but it's always hard to accept so she just brushes them off with a sarcastic comment but today, today she has news and she's actually a little excited to share.
"Good morning," she says remembering her manners and then, "You're going to be proud of me," she repeats.
Emma chuckles and finally asks, "Why am I going to be proud of you, Hope?"
"I...” she starts slowly, dragging it out just to be dramatic.”...made a friend," she finishes proudly herself.
"That's wonderful news Hope!" Emma says immediately and Hope smiles, pleased with herself. "You were right, I am proud of you. I've been telling you to make a friend for ages now, what changed?"
This time, Hope felt herself blushing a little because, "Well they approached me first but that's beside the point. We're going for milkshakes later."
"Well, that's still wonderful and I'm still proud. That just means you had the choice and you decided to let this person in, that is quite the big step from your usual isolation from your peers," Emma says. "And it just proves to you that not everyone is scared of you or hates you like you think."
"I wouldn't go that far," Hope immediately corrects. "Just because one person is not an ass—" she just barely stops herself from cursing, clears her throat and continues. "...an idiot, doesn't mean there are a lot more out there, Josie is just an exception."
"Josie?" Emma asks.
Hope realizes she let her name slip. It's not that she didn't want to tell Emma it was Josie, it's just that she wanted to keep her identity to herself while everything was so new in case something came along to mess it up.
"Yeah," she finally says after a pause. "She told me that after going to the same school for so long it was about time we got to know each other better." She definitely was keeping the note and everything else to herself; no one had to know about anything else.
"And she certainly has a point, she's a smart girl," says Emma when she finishes.
"Yeah, she is," Hope agrees smiling.
The rest of the session goes by quickly, Emma asks how her spring break was and they talked a bit more about how she was feeling about making a friend, letting a new person in. Hope told her that she was gonna take the opening up bit slowly and Emma understood that the trusting process takes time, she told her that the key to any kind of relationship, friend or otherwise, is communication. As long as they were honest and talked to one another everything would turn out alright.
After that, the rest of the school day goes by quickly and before she knows it, she's on her way from her last class of the day to her room. Admittedly she's been half waiting all day for Josie to tell her that something came up and they would have to postpone their milkshake day again.
Fortunately that hadn't happened so far, she'd seen her in between classes and had waved at her and Josie had smiled and waved back. She hadn't mentioned any kind of problem and Lizzie seemed to be in better spirits, at the very least she hadn't cornered her and demanded she stay away from her sister so things appeared to be fine.
Once inside her room she changed out of her school uniform and put on some jeans and a Henley t-shirt, it was getting warmer so she forgoes a jacket and decides to keep her boots. She doesn't know how they're going to get into town but she guesses they can figure it out together. Given that it's the headmaster's daughter Hope doesn't think permission to go out is something to worry about.
