Don't Save My Life

Chapter 16

Wiila

"You understand right?"

Felicia asked, after reciting an entire monologue on why she'd been so distant for the last year. Her excuses ranged everywhere from her mother’s newfound success in the skincare business to her ever-so-busy schedule now that she had too many friends and not enough time. What with her new signing career and all.

Any chance I’d had to call someone to save me from the hell that was Felicia’s blabbering mouth was all but temporarily nonexistent. Emmett, being his charming self, had decided to steal my cell phone. He’d slid it right from my pocket when I’d embarked on mission, escape the rich and stupid. To be honest, any other time, I would have given anything to be a part of this. It felt like yesterday when Payton and I would sent in the tent we’d made in my backyard and talk about all the things we’d do if we ever got a chance to hang out with the popular kids.

At the time, The Crescent to us was like a distant fairytale land that had been told and retold by high-schoolers and their younger siblings. Only Lyle, and his best friends had ever been allowed there before and it was once for his twelfth birthday party.

We promised each other that if one of us ever became popular we’d always let the other tag along, and Payton had been true to his word. Over the summer, he’d been invited to numerous parties at Lyle’s beach mansion. He’d been the one helping hand out flyers for the exclusive parties that raged on when The Crescent was shut down from public use. Even when my mother told me I didn’t need to go to court with her, or babysit Theo while she dealt with another lawsuit, I still turned down his offers.

If any, one thing I appreciated about Felicia was her bluntness. According to her, now that I was “hanging around Emmett without a restraining order”, it was clear to everyone that I was cool. Not that she ever thought I wasn’t of course but she had “an image to maintain.”

That image consisted of leggings as pants in the fall with a cardigan that probably cost more than our station wagon. She held the laces of her champagne colored oxford flats at her side as we walked along the icy water.

My original plan had been to casually walk near the water and slide away from the beach once Emmett was no longer watching me. I’d felt his eyes on me as I’d joined the group of drunken party-goers. Part of me felt slightly self-conscious with him watching me. I wished I would have worn something flattering so that at least there’d be a good view from behind as I walked away. But then there was that never silencing part of me that hated the opposite and reminded me that though Emmett was probably the sweetest guy on Earth, the blood on my hands was far from innocent.

 About a quarter of a mile up there was beach grass and if I walked through it long enough I’d find myself back on the sidewalk and hopefully near a bus stop. Unfortunately, Felicia decided that she was obligated to catch me up on life in hopes to “unravel the cocoon of social outcast-ism I’d spun around myself.”

If I hadn’t been completely stunned by her use of a decent metaphor, I would have chuckled to myself at her made-up vocabulary word. Instead, I walked in silence, feeling sand creep into my sneakers.

“Wiila? Are you listening to me?”

“Willa!”

The sharp cracking of her fingers snapping in my face made me flinch, my heart immediately picking up its pace as a flashback of walls crashing down around me enveloped my vision. A year ago my doctor had diagnosed me with acute stress disorder. After a lot of therapy and some time I’d gotten ahold of it. But now, already unnerved by my surroundings and the people I had to remind myself out loud that I was alright.