A Million Pieces of Me

Chapter 9

"Where did you disappear to? I've sent you like a million texts.", Gage said as I approached our table at the Wong's Chinese Diner. 

"Yeah, I know you have. I saw them." I said rolling my eyes. I sat down at the table and grabbed a menu. A waiter walked by us with a tray of food for the next table and my stomach rumbled. I guess I hadn't realized how hungry I actually was.

" So where did you go? Is that new black nail polish I see?", Gage winked at me, and in return, he earned yet another eye roll. 

" I found some really cute bat earrings and some hair clips at that store by Freddie's Fish Shop. There's a new nail salon close to there and I went in and checked it out." I said, my eyes never leaving the words on the menu.

A waiter came to take our order, we ordered the same thing as always. A sesame chicken plate with two egg rolls and two fortune cookies. I really had hoped that Gage wouldn't see through me and ask me if everything was okay, but that thought was shot down real quick. 

"What's wrong?", I heard Gage say. I looked up from my menu thoughts ran through my head like crazy. Should I tell him about the moon that appeared on my leg? He would probably think I'm crazy and I don't even know if it's still there. It seemed like it was permanently stuck there.

"You're going to think I'm crazy...", I started but was interrupted. 

"I already do, just tell me", now he was the one giving me the eye roll.

I decided to tell him what had happened. Crazy or not I saw it appear there out of thin air, and the burning sensation, I'll never forget how that felt. 

"Something strange happened while I was shopping earlier.", Gage looked at me with a puzzled look when I said this. 

"What do you mean?", he said. 

"My leg started to have this awful burning feeling. It felt like it had been set on fire or something. So I ran to the dressing room and I looked and there was this moon shape starting to appear on  my leg." He was looking at me now, with a look that one would give a mentally insane person ready to be sent off to a psych ward. 

"Then," I ignored his look and continued on, " The moon kind of turned into a tattoo." I smiled in a way that I thought would make me seem like less of a psycho. 

Gage looked at me for a while. I could tell he was thinking about a few things. 

"Ok," he said slowly, " So this is deeply freaky. Is it still there?"

"I don't know. If it is ill show you when we get to my house." I said as a waiter appeared by my side bringing us our food.  

I looked down at the food and my stomach rumbled. Gage began rambling about some stuff that happened in his Science class earlier and I felt myself tuning out. I wasn't just tuning out of the conversation. The voices and the world around me blended together and became a blur as thoughts ran through my mind. I thought about the dream and the weird scar-like tattoo that appeared on my leg. All of this stuff was happening so fast that I didn't have time to really process things. I just know that somewhere deep in his mind Gage must think I'm crazy. What person in their right mind wouldn't. He's just being a good friend. 

" Hey, Earth to Emma, come in Emma", Gages voice pierced through my thoughts and brought me back to reality. 

"Yeah", I replied, still groggy from zoning out. 

"You like totally spaced out in the middle of my dead frog story." 

"Sorry I just have a lot on my- wait what happened with the dead frog?", I said as I gave him a confused look. 

"So we were dissecting frogs right? Then, I guess one wasn't dead or something and it completely jumped on Lana's head and got stuck in her hair. She was freaking the freak out. Mr. Mulligan had to chase it around the room. ", He started laughing causing me to laugh.

With all the stuff that had been going on it seemed like my mind was going to explode. It felt good to finally laugh this hard. Only Gage could make me laugh like this. 

We finished our food and paid. I walked outside of the restaurant and looked up at the sky over the sea. Sunset had came early it seemed. The pink and purple sky was filled with a million puffy clouds. If I wasn't so full from Chinese food, the sky would've made me want some cotton candy because that's exactly what it made me think of. We arrived at the car and started heading to my house. I asked Gage if he would stay over in case anything weird happened again and he said he would. I felt a lot safer knowing he would be there. I watched out the window as the trees and grass passed by me all becoming one big blur. I smiled to myself, this hadn't been the worst day ever. It was actually pretty good.