FADED

One

Emerson's POV

"This year has been one hell of a ride. I'm glad that I got to spend it with all of you..." Our class president Sam Morris, who also happens to be one of my best friends, spoke to our whole senior class. Graduation ceremonies are the worst part of graduating. This is the most boring thing I've ever been to and it just started. I'm not looking forward to going up on the stage just to get handed a piece of paper that's pretty much useless to me.

"Alice you talked to your parents about the trip, right?" I asked my friend who's sitting next to me.

"I'm so excited to go! I'm a little nervous about camping for the first time but I think it'll be ok." She said avoiding my eyes the entire time.

"Yeah same but you did ask, right?" By her avoiding the question I already had a pretty good idea of what the answer was.

"The thing is, my parents have been getting home really late because the case they're working on is really stressful and they're always in bad moods when they get home. I don't want them to think I'm completely abandoning the idea of going to college because then they'll be even more angry and then-"

"Alice, Alice, Alice! Just shhh for five seconds. Make sure you ask tonight or the whole plan could fall apart. We all really want you to come so please ask." I can't blame her for being so afraid to ask. Her parents are scary as hell but we need her on the road with us to keep us out of jail. My group of friends and I can get pretty wild and Alice is the only innocent one out of all of us.

"I know I know I'm sorry. I will tonight, I promise."

Our principal had already started calling up rows and ours was next.

"Ariana Fitzpatrick, Tom Freeman, Johnny Gibbons, Alice Goode..." I was next and I was dreading it. I already watched one guy trip on these stupid gowns on the way up and I was not going to be the next one.

"Emerson Grey." I walked up with a half ass smile and shook my principals hand. "Congratulations Mr. Grey. You were a pleasure to have as a student." His smile was big and extremely fake. I know he's always hated me and all my friends but he's never had any reason to...except that time we photo shopped his head onto a swimsuit models body and set it as the wallpaper for every computer in the school. And that time we put laxatives in the football teams water bottles...they lost that game. Oh and when we bought two pigs and wrote the numbers 1 and 3 on them and let them run around the school. Everyone in the building was looking for number two all day. So never mind, he has a pretty valid reason to hate us.

I got handed my diploma and started making my way around the field so photographers could get pictures of us. Alice was already sitting when I got back to my seat and she was overwhelmed with happiness. They called Sam's name and everyone cheered for him. He has always been #1 in the class, he's class president, never been in trouble, but he's also the biggest fuckboy in school. He parties all the time and has never been in a relationship, always playing with girls hearts. Coming on this trip as he would say,'will help him get more girls across the country'.

A few names later and they call my closest friend, Veronica Sanders. Nobody calls her Veronica though, so instead we call her Ronnie. She moved here the summer going into freshman year and didn't know anybody. She didn't talk or laugh until I did something super embarrassing in class and she was the only one who saw it. That was the first time I had talked to her and the first time anybody  talked to her. She was really depressed and  hurt herself but as we got closer she started opening up to me and told me about why her family moved to Manhattan. When she was 14 she was followed home from school by some creep who had stalked her for while. Long story short, she went missing for 2 days and was raped. She doesn't talk about it with me anymore and I'm the only one who knows.