Living High School to the Fullest (Completed)

Chapter 31: Clean-up Crew

This chapter is dedicated to SarahRockNROLL! That girl rocks - not only because of her name. She only joined wattpad because of my story and made the awesome, awesome book trailer on the right! Yay! You're a star. Thank you so much for it!


WARNING: This hasn't been edited! Read at your own risk. Feel free to point out all the nasty.

Chapter 31

After waking up the next day, a glance at the digital clock on my dad’s nightstand let me know that it was almost noon. I turned around to see Dinah’s curls spread all over her pillow; one of her leg was resting above the covers. Mouth slightly open and eyes closed, she was breathing evenly.

Carefully, I got up and suppressed a groan. My whole body was aching. If this was owed to endless hours of dancing the night before, sitting outside in the cold or simply my parents’ very hard mattress, I wasn’t able to tell. From experience I knew that only a nice hot shower and some coffee could help me now.

Unlike Emma Dinah was a heavy sleeper, no need for me to tiptoe out of the room. The door to my own room was already ajar and I could make out the sound of my shower running. When I stepped inside, my best friend was still in bed. Her back was propped up against the headboard and she was holding a steamy mug of what suspiciously smelled like coffee.

“Morning.” I plopped down right next to her on my bed, making it bounce a little.

“Uh, stop yelling,” Emma groaned. Yep, she was in hangover land. Not only her mood testified it: her hair was disheveled and she had huge bags underneath her eyes.  With a sigh, she said in a hoarse voice: “Remind me to never drink again. Never.” She took one more sip. “Never ever.”

“I will,” I promised, squeezing her arm a little. “How do you feel?”

“Ugh. Don’t even ask.”

By the sound of it, her stay in hangover land would last a while longer. Poor Emma.

“Who’s in the shower?” I wanted to know.

“Brian,” my best friend informed me. I should have guessed it; the coffee was a huge hint. Aaron was probably still asleep. Biting her lower lip, Em’s somewhat unfocused eyes met mine. “Um… why exactly was he mad at you last night?”

“I don’t know,” I said, shrugging a little. Bad idea. My upper body objected to this kind of movement. Remembering the events of our party, I decided to get the most important topic out of the way first. “So… you and Todd, huh? Something serious or purely for Lizzy purposes?”

“Todd?” Emma frowned. “Oh. Yeah. Him.” Sip. “Only Lizzy. Definitely.”

Ah, verbless speech. Her conversational skills weren’t quite back to normal just yet.

“Hey, no matter what happened last night, at least we can check off throwing a party now, too,” I said. “I think we really might be able to get everything done till Christmas break.”

Em nodded and took a drink of her coffee.

After a little pause, I decided to ask her the one thing I was really curious about. “By the way, what did Josh give to you?”

“A movie gift card.”

A gift card? Hm. Not quite something screaming that he was interested in her. Then again, it was very thoughtful. Perfect for my movie freak of a friend. Picking out a movie for her is an extremely complicated endeavor. Not even I would dare to undertake it without explicit instructions from her side.

“That was really nice of him,” Emma stated.

“It was,” I agreed. “He gave me a knotted spoon. It’s really cool; I’ll show you later.”

Oh my. I hoped the spoon was still outside near the bench. Because of Will showing up, I had forgotten all about it. Way to go, Sarah. Josh was probably thinking I didn’t like it and just had been polite to him.

My friend looked at me thoughtfully. “Josh looked really good last night, don’t you think?”

Full sentence. This was important to hangover Emma.

A flashback of Josh sitting outside on the bench hit me. Great. I really didn’t need to see that mental picture right now, as nice as it may be. Especially since this question was an indication that the running back had shown up on Emma’s radar.

I had to be careful. In her semi-conscious state, I shouldn’t deepen this conversation. I would have to find out very subtly some other time if she was aware that he was on her radar or if these were the very early stages of Emma liking someone. She always has to admit it to herself first before she can openly talk about her crushes.

“Sarah?”

“Hm?” Oh right, her question. “Yeah, he did.”