Saving Emily

05

"Hey, Emily."

I looked over my shoulder to see one of my classmates from two of my classes walking behind me, looking like following me. Her name was Heather Powell and she was one of the most popular girls in school. She had long platinum blonde hair, baby blue eyes, and a perfect smile. From what I knew, she was one of the girls who wanted to wrap Noah around their fingers.

In all honesty, I felt myself in harm just by her seemingly innocent approach. She never even looked at me aside from the occasional glares she was giving me everytime she saw me with my best friend. I never expected she knew my name. My inner self screamed at me that the girl was trouble and I should ran away for my life but my feet were glued to their spot. I was never one to get used to talking with people so I didn't know what to do. Did she find me looking weird that day and had readied some mean comments about me? Or did she want me to finally stay away from Noah? Because I once heard her talking with her friend in the girls' room—I was inside one of the stalls and they came in—and she told her friend that Noah was hers. I asked Noah about it and he told me he never belonged to anyone except for Netflix. We laughed our asses off that time.

My eyes traveled around the hallway where we were, searching for anything odd, but aside from people's glances at our way, there was nothing unusual. Still, I felt extremely uncomfortable.

"Emily?" Heather called to get my attention again. When I turned my eyes back to her, she was smiling at me. I knew better than to trust that smile.

"I—I'm sorry?" I didn't know what else to say. I wanted to turn my back on her and just trot down the hall to get to lunch.

She gave me an angelic giggle. "Oh, my God. It's okay, Millie. Don't be so anxious. Come on."

I found myself fighting the urge while simultaneously finding the courage to frown and flip the finger in her face. Maybe the look on my face gave away what I was really feeling but still, how could she tell someone struggling with anxiety not to be anxious? Didn't her little brain know that it wasn't that easy? She was lucky she was functioning normally. And how could she call me by the nickname that Noah was only allowed to call me? How did she even know about it? Was she stalking us or what?

"Anyway," she smiled and I could tell she was just trying to keep her cool and not raise a brow at me. "I just wanted to invite you over at my house tomorrow night. There's gonna be a huge party and you and Noah should come along. It would be fun!"

Party? It's funny to think about but I never attended one before. Noah always wanted to tag me along when he was invited but I refused to come so he would just stay in our house and we would play Xbox. And I'd got a bad feeling about her strange invitation. I didn't want to be a jerk or anything but still.

"So? It's a yes, right?" Heather urged.

"I'm—I'm not so sure about it, Heather," as soon as I said it, I quickly looked around us again. I didn't want to be in the middle of anything like this.

"Why not?" Heather pouted her glossy pink lips. "You should cut yourself some slack sometimes. If you tell Noah to come along, I'm sure he will. And you won't be alone then. Besides, everyone in our year would be coming. It's like, umm, a pre-Homecoming party."

Homecoming. That was the last thing on my mind. I actually hadn't thought about it until the time Heather mentioned it. Our Homecoming dance would be on October 5th, next week on Saturday night. Thursday night would be the Homecoming game but neither of the two events appealed so much to me. The event should be one of the things junior high school students like me should be looking forward to but I wasn't really into it. The crisis of looking for the perfect dress, shoes, makeup, hair, and the ultimate date were not really in the list of my plans-to-make-junior-year-wonderful. Noah had been very excited about the game and he kept asking me to come watch it with him since last week but I told him I'd think about it.