Shutter [Jonathan Byers] Stranger Things I

VIII: Prey

prey

noun

an animal that is hunted and killed by another for food.

Carol stepped into the small hall space that led to the door; back into the halls where Emilia was easily invisible. Blocking her exit, Carol now made Emilia the star of her bullying. No longer invisible, Emilia shrunk away from the student like prey did to predator. Carol wore a bright smile underneath those pink lips, and made its way to her eyes; it was anything but friendly. In the fluorescent tubing light above, it made her skin look paler than normal, it did not suit her. When her pink lips parted, breaking that smile that caressed her lips, her words were not kind. "I heard you were failing English, of all courses."

Emilia did not make eye contact with Carol, instead she looked at a broken tile on the wall behind her. She said nothing in reply; what could she say?

Oh yes, Carol, I am! Are you thinking of tutoring me? How wonderful!

"You know that they'll make you drop photography, right?" Then her face lit up, "Oh! Maybe you should get on your knees and beg Krasinski to raise your marks. We both know there is only one thing you're good for on your knees -Oh wait... She'd be disgusted by the look of you. Those hideous scars..."

Emilia stared dead-pan at the wall. Her hands curled over her stomach, hiding the scars upon her body even though her clothes did that for her. She had no visible scarring fully dressed, but if she were intimate enough with someone, they would see. If she were in the locker rooms after gym class, they would see. Instead of retorting viciously at Carol, which she'd day dreamed of many times, she dropped her head in defeat. It was the quickest way to get Carol to leave her alone. She felt the smug look on Carol's face and winced when she brought her hand up to grab Emilia's jaw to force her to look her in the eyes.

"Haven't you realized nobody wants you here?" She shook her head, "Not a single person."

You're wrong.

"You'd be better off just leaving Hawkins now." She let go of Emilia and left the washroom, muttering "Slut" under her breath.

When Emilia looked at herself in the mirror, after a few moment of shaking, she noticed the red marks upon her chin. Stepping out into the public eye now would expose her, and so she leaned against the wall with the cracked tile, and slid down into a crouch. Clinging her bag of wet clothes to her chest, she told herself over and over that there was no sense in crying. It would only make her less invisible, something that she was not okay with. She'd been visible before, and this was where it got her. Bullied and wishing more than anything she could take that night back.

But you can't.

Her nerves had hardly subsided by the time lunch rolled around, and Emilia forgot that she had planned to meet Jonathan. Her head spun as she walked to her locker and crammed her textbooks in there. Twice she had to shove them further towards the back because they fell back out and made her shake inside with anger. Why can't anything work out? She grabbed her lunch and shoved it into her backpack, which she slid over her shoulders, and sought out a bench where she would be alone. It was tucked away, close to the teachers lounge, but far enough away that none would notice her. With her back against the wall and her feet firmly pressed upon the slippery, dirty floor, she slowly began to eat her lunch.

Jonathan stood at the door of the photography room; it was always open during lunch for students to work on developing their photos. Anxiously awaiting Emilia, it took Jonathan a few minutes to realize that she was not going to come. A part of him instinctively withered; it was not rare that people would stand him up, set something up like this to laugh at, but he had not expected it from Emilia. She was too much like him; neither of them came from a nuclear family, neither of them had an abundance of friends, neither of them had much of anything.

After waiting on her for ten minutes, Jonathan admitted defeat. Walking into the room, he threw his bag down on a table with a little more force than intended, and went into the red room to develop his photos. She didn't need to be there for him to go through with this, but when the images of her began to form, he felt something constrict within him. Ignoring the feeling, a dangerous feeling that he knew could lead to bad decisions and a lot of hurt, he clipped the pictures up and let them dry. He hadn't gotten any of the sunset, and he realized that he hadn't gotten any aside from images of Emilia. With a strong want to leave the room filled him, looking at those pictures, but he couldn't leave them up there for anyone else to see. He was already frequently referred to as a creep, weird. He didn't need rumours that he was stalking someone. Because he knew how these things went, and that rumour would spread like wildfire.

He leaned back against the table and waited, letting the disappointment fill his veins like a fluid.

He should have seen this coming.

When lunch had almost ended, his pictures were finally done developing, and he quickly put them away. Leaving the photography room, Jonathan took off to be near his second to last class of the day. As he walked, he wondered if he would see Emilia in photography when their last class began. Would she show up, or had something happened to her? Suddenly a guilt filled him for assuming that she just simply stood him up; seeing her walking to school that morning reminded him that some people had it harder than he did, and he should not have jumped to conclusions like he had. He told himself that something must have come up, and then he began to worry about her.

Emilia finished her lunch in the early part of the hour, and sat there for the remainder of it. She processed her day, although her thoughts were consistently brought back to Carol. Her reason for bullying Emilia was warranted, Emilia believed that to the core, and yet it left a bad taste in her mouth. No, something else was doing that; something wasn't sitting right with her as she waited for that long hour of lunch to finish, to end. Sitting in silence, she retraced her steps to find out what had gone wrong, why she felt out of sorts. She'd left before her father woke up hungover and that was a good thing. It had been raining, but that was nothing entirely new, she was used to the rain.

Jonathan.

You idiot.

"Oh sh-" Emilia grabbed her bag and ran down the hall towards the photography lab; there was a whopping seven minutes left of lunch when her distracted mind remembered. She rushed towards the lab, but she already knew he would be gone. Why would he wait an hour for her?

Idiot. Idiot. Idiot.

He was not there when she entered the lab, nor was he in the red room.

She cursed under her breath, and the harsh noise of the bell signalling the end of lunch rang in her ears. Defeated, Emilia made her way to her English class, the one she was failing, and began trying to explain to Jonathan in her head why she hadn't been there. She had eighty minutes to explain without lying, and without fully admitting how pathetic she was. She was prey, and she knew it. Like a rabbit, she hid among the edges trying to survive without being attacked by the blood thirty predators. She bowed her head in defeat throughout the entire English class, worrying that she'd lost the only potential friend she'd had in years.