The Words I Never Said

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty

Karma was a female dog that always bit the people it needed to. Emily grinned as she and Alex slipped away just as Grandma Night started whacking Jack on his head for calling out to her for nothing. “Karma is such a wonderful thing,” Emily said with a grin. Alex nodded in agreement.

“I’d say ‘poor Jack’, but then I’d be lying to myself,” he said.

Emily laughed just as she leaned against the door of the guest room. “See you tomorrow then,” she said as she slipped inside, Alex smiled.

“See ‘ya,” he replied.

Grandma Night’s sermon went for about ten more minutes before she finally set Jack free. Emily could hear his huffs as he entered Alex’s room just across the one she was staying in. Emily laughed a bit and shook her head as she stared at the vanity mirror in front of her.

She pulled her hair down and let it fall into place. She was different now. Not face wise, no. But person wise. Back at high school, back when Alex, Jack, Adrian, and Dylan were a bunch of people she didn’t quite care about and losers to everyone else, she was everything. Boys wanted her, and girls wanted to be her. But that didn’t matter, especially now.

Everything was different.

                Thinking back on what kind of person she was, Emily felt sick feeling in her stomach. To be friends with Hannah and Jessica meant that you had to somehow be like them in a way. Neither of them wanted to intentionally change Emily, but it was Emily’s choice.

                                                                                It was her fault.

                She chose to be friends with them. She chose to ignore the persons like Alex, Dylan, Adrian, and Jack. She chose and allowed her friends to change her. Standing there alone in the Night’s guest room somehow triggered a nostalgia button in her and she wanted so badly to switch it back off.

                Maybe it was the guilt. The guilt that had sprang up whenever memories of their high school days flooded into her thoughts. The times when she didn’t bother to try and listen to Against Gravity playing during the school fairs and let other things busy her, the times when she tolerated Jessica’s snippy comments about Jack, that time when Adrian tried out for the football team and her then boyfriend almost beat him up, or even that simple memory when Hannah made Jessica bully Dylan into helping the latter with her Physics homework.

                They were all simple and petty memories, but Emily knew she could have done something.

It was only now that she realized it.

Beep, beep.

                The tiny beeping sound of her phone made her snap out of her thoughts. Emily shifted her eyes over to her phone which lay just next to her hairbrush. It was from Jessica.

                                You came home? Han and I did too. We all should’ve gone together. Where you at?

Emily sighed, but replied anyway.

                                Yeah, I did. Sorry. I’m staying over at the Nights’. Alex’s sister is gonna get married in a few days.

                As Emily had expected, Ashley’s second reply came in before a minute was even up. She ignored it though. She wasn’t in the mood to explain things. She hadn’t even informed her parents of her whereabouts yet, which added to her guilt list.