Safe // (Zach LaFrenière Fan Fic)

THREE: Pirates or Spiderman

Once Art was over, Emma wandered off to French after Zach showed her where to find the classroom; before running off to his English class.

French went pretty smoothly, apart from the fact that Mrs. Garcia made Emma introduce herself in four points to the class entirely in french, so all she could think to say was,

"Salut, mon nom Emma Freeman , je suis 17 ans, je suis originaire du Michigan et je planche à roulettes." Which literally just means, "Hi, my name's Emma Freeman, I'm 17, I'm originally from Michigan and I skateboard."

Other than that, the class was basically uneventful as they were simply working on speaking and listening for the day. Emma made friends with a blue haired girl called Paisley McCoy , who was her partner for any french conversations that they had to engage in; she also discovered that Paisley skateboarded as well. After French had been dismissed, Emma and Paisley strolled to each other's lockers. "So why the move to Malibu?"

"Err... I'm living with my cousins for a while," Emma answered skeptically as even her cousins didn't really know why she was in California. "Let's just say I needed a change of scenery,"

"Fair enough, so who are your cousins? Anyone I'd know?" Paisley asked as she dialed the combination on her locker and pulled it open,

"Jason and Dani Freeman? He's a senior like us but Dani's a junior." Emma smiled, although she let it slide as Paisley gaped at her, "Is something wrong?"

"Your cousin is Jason Freeman?" Emma nodded but raised her eyebrows in confusion as she wasn't aware of why that was so spectacular, "He's like one of the most popular guys in senior year! Oh my god, wait. So does that mean that you're friends with the it-crowd as well?"

"The 'it' crowd? Sorry, you've lost me," Emma chuckled at the blue haired girl who was practically bouncing on the balls of her feet. Paisley went on to explain that Jason's friends, Sienna, Brad, Van Dyke, Belle, Maggie, Erin and Zach were the most popular people in the entire school, everyone knew them and pretty much everyone either liked them or wanted to be them. Emma wasn't quite sure why this was so exciting but she played along for the sake of Paisley's excitement. "Well if that's the case, then yea... I guess I am friends with the 'it' crowd; although they're fairly normal people to get along with. Nothing out of the ordinary if you ask me, they were all at Jason's house when I first arrived and so they all just introduced themselves; pretty much welcomed me into the group."

"Well of course they did, they would of been stupid not to," Paisley grinned as she slammed her locker shut and started to make her way out of the school with Emma. "You're lovely, plus since you're related to Jason, they couldn't just turn you away. You two are very similar by the way, if I saw you two together I would've thought that you were his sister rather than his cousin."

"Yea, we got told that all the freaking time back in Michigan," Emma mused with short laugh, "It makes a lot of sense though, because as well as the fact that we look alike, we also share similar interests; probably because we hung out more than we did with friends before he moved."

"It's refreshing having you around to be honest," Paisley chuckled with a sigh as Emma raised an eyebrow urging her to elaborate. "Like, I love my friends and all but it's really nice to find a girl who prefers skateboarding to shopping and piercings instead of pedicures or who would rather listen to State Champs than Meghan Trainor."

"Well, I'm glad I moved then." Emma beamed at the leafy eyed girl, once in the parking lot the girls said goodbye and went in opposite directions as Emma headed off on her skateboard to the gated community that was DeVere Heights.

Remembering the route from earlier when Jason drove them to the school, Emma skated for about 20 minutes before she reached the gates and started into the quieter yet much grander streets of Malibu. Since she knew the way around the Heights already, Emma decided to take a small detour around the house; simply wanting to stay on her board for a little longer. Taking another left turn took Emma down a street where the houses sitting behind lavish stainless steel gates, were bigger than anything she had ever seen. Some of them followed the traditional Spanish/Romantic style, whereas others were more contemporary with glass and sleek black and white walls which made them look exceptionally classy.
As Emma skated passed one of the more traditional houses, a hooded person rode by her, shoving her out of the way as hard as they could; before racing off without even looking back. Emma flew off of her skateboard as it slipped from underneath her feet and into the road, Emma herself fell hard against the house's gate; causing the metal to rattle on impact. She tumbled to the floor, bracing herself with her hands as she landed with one of her knees bent, shuffling to move her leg; she discovered that her leg was infact bleeding.

The noise must of been louder than she first thought as she heard a front door open and someone started to make their way down the gravelled driveway. Whilst cradling her knee, Emma glanced up to see Zach stood in front of the tall, black iron gate.

"You alright?" He strode towards her, crouched down and moved Emma's hand slightly so that he could examine her knee. "That's a pretty nasty cut, what happened?"

"I was just skating around the neighbourhood but some kid rode passed me and shoved me off my board," Emma gestured towards the board that had now stopped rolling and had hit the sidewalk curb on the other side of the road. Zach stood up and went to grab the board, the jet haired boy ran back towards Emma and handed her skateboard before looping a muscular arm around her back and hooking the other under her knees; causing Emma to chuckle a little at the friend she barely even knew. "Zach, I can walk,"

"I don't mind," Zach continued to carry her up the path and into his house. As he made his way into the massive marble countered kitchen, Emma couldn't help but marvel at the extravagant yet extremely elegant and classy building that Zach called home. He placed her down on the countertop, before wandering off to what she was assumed was a bathroom to grab a first-aid kit. Leaning the board against the side of the counter - wheels facing upwards as she didn't want to risk dirtying the practically glistening, black and white tiled kitchen flooring. Emma also took her bag off, simply placing it beside the board as Zach returned with the kit.

"You have a lovely home," Zach glanced up from the medical supplies to give Emma a thankful smile, he sat on a breakfast stool to right of her so that he could tend to her bleeding knee. Pulling out a couple of antibacterial wipes, his eyes flickered up to meet Emma's,

"This might sting a little," he ripped open one of the wipes and started to clean the dried blood trails and grit off of the wounded knee. Emma hissed slightly as Zach cleaned the actual cut, "Sorry, nearly done,"

"It's okay," Emma winced again as some more of the dirty came out of the small gash. "To be honest, it's probably better that you're cleaning it for me, I'm such a wimp when it comes to cuts and stuff; which is kind of weird because my pain tolerance is fairly high considering I skate and all."

Zach chuckled at this, yet continued to work in mostly silence. Emma smiled as she watched Zach concentrate on cleaning her grazed knee, "You're not much of a talker are you?"

This caused Zach to look up with an eyebrow raised, thinking she had offended him, Emma quickly backtracked.

"Oh God, no please don't think that I'm being rude! I think it's nice that you can communicate without constantly talking like me for example, if I'm nervous or feeling awkward, I either won't talk at all or will talk way too much and just start rambling about anything and everything that I'm thinking. Which I'm probably going to start doing in a minute, so just bare with me a second." Emma paused for a breath not even noticing that Zach had stopped to watch her with an amused expression painted on his face. "From what I have observed over the two short days that I have known you is that you are a guy of very few words, and that doesn't mean that I think you're outspoken or anything because I know for a fact that you're a very popular guy. However it does give me the impression that you take time to decide whether you like someone or trust someone which by the way you can totally trust me, brownies honour and all that. Now I just sound like I'm trying to get you to talk to me which isn't the case at all because that only point I was actually trying to say was that you don't seem like much of a talker and I'm going to stop talking now..."

Emma trailed off as she watched Zach's eyes glowing with amusement as he had to stop himself from laughing at her completely awkwardness-induced rambling, holding up two boxes of band-aids, Zach let out a small chuckle before asking.

"Pirates or Spiderman?"