Almond Boy

Almond Boy - 13

Emma hasn't shown up to the bench yet. It's been twenty minutes into gym class. She can't bring herself to leave the locker room. If she goes out there, she'll lose it for sure. 

So she paces about the locker room, staying in the same little alley of lockers for that's as long as her oxygen cord will let her go. 

I'm chained, I'm chained by the thing that is saving me. The ball and chain of life. It's killing me, and it's saving me, and I want to throw it at a wall - but I don't want to die. 

Emma can't stop thinking, her mind on auto as she speeds through thought after thought. The more she paces, the more she coughs, and the more she coughs, the more she sinks. 

I need to go out there, they're probably wondering where I am. I'm "skipping". I need to go out there. But if I do, they'll see, they'll see and they'll watch and it's driving me insane. I can't take anymore stares, I can't take anymore agitated looks, more pitiful ones, more skeptical ones. I am so sick of people looking at me. 

"So this is where you've been hiding," someone says. Emma stops and her knees buckle a little. She drops against the lockers and leans her back against the wall of them to keep herself up. 

Emma looks over and sees Sarah, dressed for gym, her hair up in a ponytail and no makeup. 

"Sarah?"

"You look like hell," Sarah says, walking past Emma and stopping in front of a locker - presumably hers - and begins messing with the combination lock. 

"Thanks."

"No problem, sunshine. You know, your boyfriend's really worried. It's cute, he's trying not to look at it, but you can see his pencil shaking as he sketches." 

"Boyfriend?"

"Elliot, duh."

"We're not - "

"It was a joke, sunshine, try to keep up," Sarah says. She pops open the lock and opens her locker. She grabs a box from the corner and Emma can see the "Skittles" brandmark on the box. 

"Is that what you're in here for?" Emma asks with a laugh, watching Sarah with quirked eyebrows. 

"Damn right that's what I'm in here for. I'm supposed to be on some sort of strict diet, but I can't take it anymore. I have to smuggle candy," Sarah says this with rolled eyes and eats a handful of skittles at the same time. Emma's eyebrows furrow as she takes in Sarah. Sarah's fairly thin, certainly a healthy weight, so it makes Emma shiver a little at the thought of her needing a "strict diet". 

"Why?"

Sarah sighs and shuts her locker, "long story. Not just for weight, promise. Now, the question is, why are you in here? You don't even need to be in here ever if you don't want to. Miss the aroma of a locker room?" 

Sarah smiles at her own joke and Emma smiles along with her. "Something like that," she mutters. Sarah claps her hands together and has a sheepish look on her face for a moment. 

"That's right, you can't smell the aroma 'cause of the tube thingers. That's good, it smells like shit in here, some girls have worse B.O than the boys," Sarah says with a grin on her face. She ties the shoes of her converse - not really gym shoes but Emma doesn't judge - and looks back at Emma with a smirk on her face. "Care to explain why you're in here?"

"I can't go out there," Emma says, her voice coming out like a sputter. She sinks further and further to the ground until she's sitting on the tile floor, staring at the door like it's going to get her.