Ocean Blue & You

the blackmail

There was a few moments silence where I continued to stare at Emma in shock, and she continued her cold exchange back. I was speechless. I always knew she had been cunning, but this was something else. Flashing through my head were thousands of worries for what she could be planning, anything that would rip me away from Jack, making my heart pulse in fear. Finally, Emma spoke.

"What did I tell you Posy? You never listen..." I stood staring up at her on the balcony, still not saying a word, completely dumbstruck.

"I told you if you don't stay away from Jack, bad things will happen. Like me telling his parents. But you chose to ignore me. Did you even comprehend how serious the consequences could be?"

I said nothing.

"Did you even think for one moment, that I would keep my word?" her voice was rising now in anger, like a sky rumbling and growing darker before the shower.

"You better be worrying right now Posy. Because I will send this video viral. And there's nothing you can to do stop me!"

Finally, I found my voice.

"You're so cruel!" I shouted back, my heart skipping a beat as you might sometimes feel when you've expressed a deep feel of hatred to someone. "How can you send that video of me kissing Jack viral? How can you be so horrible?"

"I HATE MY COUSIN!" Emma shouted, and as she shouted down the balcony at me one of the girls popped her head around the French door, her eyes widened and she popped back in again. "AND I TOLD YOU TO STAY AWAY FROM THAT SON OF A BITCH!"

"What did he ever do to you to make you so blinded by hatred?"

"He ridiculed me!" she screamed, and her voice cracked. For the first time, I saw tears well up in her eyes.

"What did he do? Please, just tell me. I promise to not be biased," I said softly, trying to sympathize with a woman I hated so much. I knew it was the right thing to do.

"It doesn't matter! You will!" she croaked, her voice volume dropping immensely, but still audible enough for me to hear her.

"Please, just tell me," I almost whispered.

"It was my eighth birthday. Everyone was singing happy birthday, and we had birthday cake and then opened my presents. Everyone I knew, including many people in our school and my friends from America were watching. I had a lot to open, but one of them dropped on the floor, so I bent over to pick it up. I was wearing a pretty party dress, and all the petticoats lifted up when I bent over. Everyone could see my spotty underwear. I was trying to reach it under the table, whilst everyone could see and were trying to keep in their laughs in, but then I slipped on a bit of icing from the cake that had been spilt. I fell over on my front with my hands out and my bottom in the air for the whole party to see. And then I heard a giggle. It was Jack. He let out a laugh at me. And then everyone followed suit, and burst out their laughs they had been keeping in. The whole room was full of laughter at me, and I felt the most humiliated I have ever felt in my life. It was all Jack's fault. And now everyone still remembers my eighth birthday to this day."

She finished, tears streaming down her cheeks, and me, expecting her story to be a little more serious than this, scoffed and stopped looking sympathetically up at her.

"Did he say sorry?"

"Yes, but I couldn't forgive him, "she sniffed, "It was too horrible. The damage to my reputation had been done."

"Oh, PER-LEASE!" I groaned, "If that's the worst thing that's happened to you, you must have a VERY nice life!"

"You don't understand!" she shouted.