Emily's Secret

7. In my home

And then the feeling of being in love quickly passed and I came to my senses. Rob must be playing some sort of twisted bad-boy game. Or maybe he was sincere, but that would only be worse because it would mean he was a "chubby chaser," perhaps one with a weird fetish for blonde hair. A pervert like that isn't someone I'd want to be associated with!

"Who gave you permission to pick me up? Put me down NOW!" I demanded.

"Did that guy Squi give you permission to hold him against a locker earlier today?" he asked. Damn it, he'd have to bring that up.

"That's different."

"How's that different?" Rob asked, still holding me in the air.

"Squi's my friend so I can do whatever I want to him. Put me down!"

"Aren't we also friends?" Rob asked.

"No we're not. Put me down!"

Finally Rob relented and gently put me down. Briefly I missed the feel of his strong arms holding me, but then I remembered that he's a perverted chubby chaser with a blonde-hair fetish on top of that. "OK, is that better?" he asked.

"Yes it is. I'm going home now."

"Do you want me to walk you to the pickup area?" he asked.

"I've left the building hundreds of times before you showed up. I think I can handle it." I told him, sarcastically.

"It would be safer if I walked with you."

"Stay away from me!" I barked at him. I walked away. I was expecting him to follow me, but it seemed like he listened to my final order and he was staying away.

I thought to myself that maybe I had been a little bit too harsh. After all, he did save me from possibly getting beat up by Chuck and his football jock friends. And he did teach them a lesson that they deserved. I ought to be grateful for that. But then I remembered that he was a perverted chubby chaser who also had a blonde-hair fetish who has been creepily following me around all day. If he thinks he can get away with that behavior just because he's the best looking and hunkiest guy in the school, well he was wrong!

Luckily when I got to the pickup area, it was empty. I didn't feel like having to share a ride with anyone. I didn't want to deal with the usual dismay I see when there's some other kid who realizes they have to share a ride with the weird fat girl social outcast.

I placed my finger onto the ride-summoning kiosk, it verified my fingerprint, and just half a minute later, a car silently pulled up to the curb. Of course there was no driver in the car. As I've already told you, cars with human drivers were outlawed ten years ago.

It was nice of the school to provide us with this service, so that we could get home if we left school late and the regular school buses were gone. But there were two catches. The first is that it would only take you to your home address. And the other catch was that you'd have to carpool if there were other students going in the same general direction. But this wasn't a problem for me today, because no one else was around, and I never had anywhere to go but home anyway.

* * *

When I got home, my mom wasn't there. That wasn't unusual; she was often here and there, even though she didn't have a job and we lived off of welfare.

And my dad wasn't in our life. He was never even married to my mom, and according to the story my mother told me, he lost his job as a truck driver at the same time my mom was pregnant with me, and then she kicked him out because she didn't need an unemployed man around. I always thought it was kind of harsh of my mom. After all, it wasn't his fault that all the truck drivers were replaced by self-driving trucks. More than half the people in the country were unemployed and on welfare because robots were doing so many jobs that people used to do.