Emma in Exile

Four

Later that evening Emma, Anne and Katie went to the football field to watch the practice of the recently formed team. Oliver waved at them as they took seats on the bleachers, finishing his last lap around the field before joining the rest of the males in the center. Reed followed the direction of Oliver's wave and his gaze fell upon her briefly, before he jogged alongside Matthew to where the coach was standing with a whistle in hand.

"What's wrong?" Katie asked her, a curious expression filling her round face and wide brown eyes.

"Nothing." Emma shrugged, shaking her head as if it would wipe the flush from her face and pulling her scarf more closely around her neck. "Just cold."

Anne elbowed her in the side, "Look at how fit Arun looks in his gear."

Arun was laughing with his arm slung around one of the twins' shoulders--she couldn't tell which one from the distance. Their coach, Mr. Renforth, was dividing the team into groups that set about performing drills across the field.

"Oliver's quite good," Katie observed, looking up from the novel she was reading in time to see Oliver headbutt the ball into the net.

"He's been playing since he was four or something," Anne said offhandedly, craning her head to follow Arun's progress. "I wish he would just ask me out, I've been dropping hints for ages."

This was news to Emma, who hadn't seen Anne speak directly to Arun even once in the two weeks she'd been at Wellington--one of which she'd spent under the impression that Anne and Oliver were dating. She found her eyes drifting from her brother, who was in the cluster of boys doing lunges across the field, back to Reed, who was in Oliver's group. Shaking her head firmly she set about pulling notebooks out of her bag to find her review for English Lit.

"Do you think Bentley will make one of the essays a comparison? Or just themes from within Hamlet?" Kate was squinting into her notebook. "I wrote down comparisons with a question mark."

"I have that too, but I think it's supposed to be Act specific. Like, in class he said you could analyze the play as connected, but theme specific, acts. So that's-"

"Good God will you two stop? The whole point of offering to provide first-practice moral support to Oliver, under the guise of fresh air for studying, was to come and unashamedly watch the lads of our year running about in their football kits. Not ruining everything with all this." Anne waved her hand in the direction of their open books, a grimace of disgust on her face.

Emma dutifully closed her book and returned it to her bag, but Katie merely shrugged and continued to read through her notes. They sat in silence for a bit, and then Emma said, "So, I know you all secretly love but openly disdain the Britishness of Harry Potter, but what about Bridget Jones's Diary?"

"Don't even get me started on the travesty that is that trilogy." Anne said, resting her elbows on her knees and chin in her hands.

"Trilogy? Aren't there only two?"

"Oh, you didn't hear? She kills off Mark Darcy." Anne tore her eyes away from the field, presumably to get the full effect of Emma's horror at the news. "It made front page news here."

"But--but Mark is perfect!" Emma sat up, scandalized. "How does he die? How long are they together for before it happens?"

"Doing human rights work in Syria or something," Anne started to braid her hair, quick fingers weaving strands of hair into a neat row. "I didn't read it. In fact I boycotted the whole franchise. It's all well and good to like someone just as they are, but it doesn't matter if you're dead."