The Innocent Can Never Last

Do You Remember Me?

Emma's POV

"Anastasia, darling, I'm home!" I called, as I pushed my way through the front door of my dinky apartment.
"Staj?" I yelled again, when there was no answer.
With a long sigh, I took off my sweaty running shoes and threw them on the doormat, before heading deeper into the apartment to try and see what had become of my roommate, Anastasia.

After doing a quick check of the apartment, and deciding that Anastasia must have gone out, I walked into the kitchen and found a note on the counter from none other than Anastasia herself. It read:

Emma,
If you haven't noticed, the cupboards are bare, so I ran to the store to pick up some groceries. I should be back soon.

-Staj

So that's where she went. I walked over to the refrigerator and opened it. Wow. It was pretty bare. I laughed a bit, and grabbed a bottle of water from inside the door. Seeing as how I had just got done running a mile and a half, I was pretty thirsty, so I settled myself against the counter and began sipping my water slowly, as I gazed around the rest of my messy apartment. Since Anastasia and I had only moved in together about two weeks earlier, our apartment was only half put together. There were still cardboard boxes piled up in various corners, and our TV was sitting on top of a folding chair; we were still waiting for Anastasia's dad to drop off the entertainment center.

None of the furniture matched, and we had used some of my old bedsheets as makeshift blinds until we could get some real ones. No matter. Campus life was suiting me quite well. In the short time that I had been living on campus at Berkeley, it had become just as much of a home to me as my house in Rodeo ever had been.

When I was finished with my bottle of water, I decided to go take a quick shower before Anastasia got home. I headed back to the bathroom, stripped off my clothes, and hopped into the pleasantly steaming shower with a contented sigh.

Some twenty minutes later, I emerged from the bathroom, wrapped in a thick towel, my newly-dried hair falling gracefully down my back. I walked slowly into my bedroom that I shared with Anastasia, and I was about to throw some clothes on, when suddenly, I heard a sharp, almost hesitant knock on the front door.
I giggled to myself, figuring that Anastasia had probably locked herself out or something stupid like that. Not bothering to cover up in anything more decent than my bath towel, I bounded into the other room and flung open the front door. To my dismay, and slight embarrassment, the person that was standing on the step outside the door was not Anastasia at all, but somebody else.

It was a boy. He appeared to be about my age, and he looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn't remember where I had seen him before. He was fairly short and thin, and he reminded me strongly of someone that I had seen on 'America's Most Wanted' a few weeks earlier.

I frowned, and said, "Uh, sorry, but you've got the wrong place."

I started to slam the door in his face, but then suddenly, he spoke. "God, Emma, if four months apart long enough for you to forget who I am?" he said, in a harsh, snotty voice.

A voice that sounded all too familiar. I re-opened the door, and stared deeply into his eyes. Those eyes...they were familiar, too.
Realization hit me like a two-ton dump truck going two hundred miles an hour down a sloping racetrack.

I put my hand to my heart, and gasped, "Billie Joe?"

"That's my name, don't wear it out," he replied, with an evil, twisted smile.

***

A/N : Sorry its a short chapter.