POPULAR: An Emma Teen Fan Fiction (Sunrise High #3)

POPULAR: chapter nineteen (My Friend, Myself)

Chapter Nineteen

My Friend, Myself

   I felt so belittled when we got back to school. Bad news travels fast, especially via the internet. Everyone had seen my stupid social gaffe. Peeps stared at me. They whispered behind their hands. Supposedly Flynn had embellished the story, adding that I was ‘keeping private notes’ about all the ‘social disasters’ of other people.

    I wasn’t used to being the object of social derision. From the looks on their faces, you could tell they weren’t saying anything nice. I even heard a much meaner girl than me say, “just because she has perfectly straight glossy blonde hair and blue eyes and wears too much lip gloss, she thinks she’s better then everyone. Even Ms Dash, who’s the nicest and best teacher in the world, won’t want anything to do with her now.”

   And another girl, her friend, agreed with her.

  Loads of kids even turned their backs on me. Ms Dash might be a frump, but she’s way popular, far more popular than me at the moment.

   I trudged to the school exit after leaving study hall early (I felt like a pariah) and walked all the way home alone. I was a total wreck. I flicked on the afternoon entertainment news. I threw myself on my bed with a box of cookies and vowed to make amends in every way possible.

   Starting with Ms Dash: I’d take her a gift of her fave candy and apologize. I’d offer to do all the cleaning up after every claymation class. Then, I’d go on to apologize to Hilary, Rafe and maybe even Ethan.    

   Let’s face it, Ethan Knightly has used all of my digressions as an excuse to set me straight. It’s pretty clear what he thinks of me. Maybe an apology would be pointless. I should make him wait – perhaps forever. I fluffed my pillow and bit the top off a salted caramel; it helped me feel less miserable.

    For some reason, the thought of never talking to Ethan again bothered me immensely. I had this pretty film montage playing in my head like the end of those fabtastic Twilight films: Ethan and me throwing food at each other as toddlers, splashing each other in the wading pool, moving onto the ocean when Phoebe and Mark took us swimming with Wednesday and her Daddy coming along. It was like my whole life – days and days spent growing up with Ethan – spun a golden filmic montage through my mind and the thought that Ethan didn’t want to know me, well, frankly? It was more than I could bear.