Emma

by Carol Robi

  Emma

  A novelette by Carol Robi

  All right reserved

  Copyright © 2014 by Carol Robi

  First Edition

  The story of a sixteen year old’s unexpected journey of self-discovery..

  Summary

  Emma is a sixteen year old high school student living with her brother and mother. Having shunned herself into the background from an early age and written herself off as plain and unalluring, a crush on a boy sends her into an unexpected journey of self-discovery that re-defines the person she always thought she was.

  Cover: "Sfilata di Lorenzo Riva" by Marketing LR - Own work. Licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sfilata_di_Lorenzo_Riva.jpg#mediaviewer/File:Sfilata_di_Lorenzo_Riva.jpg

  Table of Contents

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 1

  It sucks to be born average. And that is what I am, average.

  I am an average girl, of average height and average looks. I get average grades, and have no particular talent to speak of. Simply said, I am very forgettable.

  One of my earliest dreams had been that one day I would find something I am good at. Now here I am, sixteen years old, and still average.

  “Hurry up, Emma!” My brother shouts from the living room. He is getting impatient, for he fears that we shall miss the school bus.

  “Coming!” I shout back. I throw my books into my bag, and rush towards the door.

  “Have a good day mom!” A sleepy grunt answers me as I stick my feet into a pair of sneakers. My brother is already halfway down the stairs, as I close the door behind me.

  Lachey is twelve years old, but goes to high school too with me. He is the youngest in his class, and has always been a genius. That of course means he gets bullied a lot in school. I feel sorry for him, as he is a very sweet kid. However, I do not know what I ought to do to make it easier for him. I am a nobody in school, but the only reason I am not at the bottom rung and constantly getting bullied, is because I make sure to steer clear of the attention of others more popular, or those seeking attention.

  The bus drives up just as we make it to the bustop, and Lachey and I slip onto seats somewhere in the middle of the bus. We are not particularly close, but Lachey and I spend a lot of time together. I think it comforts us to know that we will always have each other. We often bicker at home. Out here though, on foreign territory, we are each other’s back up.

  I have taught Lachey my brilliant plan of avoiding bullies. Which is- avoid the bullies! That’s it. It’s just that simple. Steer clear of them at all times. If one is coming from the opposite direction, duck or hide. Never find yourself in their path.

  He always got picked on a lot due to his young age, and the fact that he knows a lot. Especially over lunch. That’s why we never eat lunch at the cafeteria anymore. We meet at the back stairs at the school, and eat our lunch there together. We have been doing that for the past three months, and in that time, Lachey has come home roughed up only once. I would say my strategy is working.

  Once at school, we get off the bus the last, bend our heads and attempt to get lost in the swarm of teenagers talking excitedly around us as we walk towards the school building. I note the other not nobodies in the school from the corner of my eye as they jump out of their cars with their friends talking at the top of their voices about this or that.

  There is Melanie, Kate, Sherry and Enuka with their perfect hairs, makeup and clothes jumping out of Melanie’s car. There are their boyfriends; Drew is Melanie’s boyfriend, and he drives his BMW, with him are some of his basketball teammates. There is Ike’s truck crawling into the driveway, with Trevor, the new exchange student from England. The two had quickly become good friends and are now hanging out all the time. It just seems unfair to team up the hottest boy in school, with the new hot guy with a British accent. They have gone through the list of girls in our school fast!

  And then there is Shane! I almost stumble on the steps, as I watch his motorbike drive into the driveway and park next to Ike’s truck.

  My brother looks at me questioningly from my side, but I barely see him, as I am watching Shane take off his helmet. He shakes his loose dark hair to rearrange it, hooks his helmet, and proceeds to get off his bike. I continue craning my neck to watch him, even as my schoolmates press against me more urgently as we approach the main doors.

  I keep watching as the group of friends meet and start talking cheerfully, until I am pushed through the doors by the crowd.

  Chapter 2

  Tuesday is my favourite day. It is my favourite day, because the last lesson before lunch is english Lit. English Lit is my favourite class this year, because it is the only class I share with Shane.

  Each and every time I have to go to the toilet and calm my nerves before the class. That is how much he affects me. I literally sit for ten or so minutes and force myself to breathe in and out slowly. Evenly. I then get out and splash cold water on to my face, so as to cool it. And even then, I still have trouble breathing when I walk into class.

  He always sits at the same place- at the left corner with Drew to his right, and Melanie in front of him. Always. I pay so much attention trying to listen in to their whispered conversation, that I have no clue what Mr. Clarke says half the time.

  Today they talk about a party they are planning, I think. I do not hear much, just mostly what Melanie says, as she is seated right behind me. There is a party though, that much I gather. A party at the beach next Saturday. Melanie mentions that the normal crew would be attending. I do not know who the normal crew is, but I know I am not in it. I have never once been invited to a party. Most of my classmates do not even know my name. Heck, the teachers sometimes have to confirm with their cards before calling my name out.

  “Ike and Trevor will be handling the music..” Drew is saying. His voice is normally hard to catch, but I him clearly this time. Then Shane says something, and my breath catches. I do not know what he says. He could cough, and I’d still have difficulty with my breathing. That is just what he does to mean.

  “Mr. Peters, would you rather I keep quiet and you handle the rest of this lesson?” Mr Clarke asks, calling out Shane.

  “Actually, yes,” Shane answers, and the rest of the class roars into laughter. I chuckle under my breath too, lowering my head so that nobody notices me.

  Mr. Clarke is pissed off at Shane’s answer, his cheeks reddening fast.

  “That’s detention for you, young man,” Mr. Clarke says.

  “Thank you, sir,” Shane mocks with his lazy drawl. My toes curl at its sound. “You are too kind.”

  Mr. Clarke is now so pissed, I am actually surprised that he does not lose it. The rest of the class laughs even harder. A tiny chuckle escapes me this time.

  “Do you find it funny, Ms. van Balken?” Oh no! Trouble! I sink even lower in my seat.

  Mr. Clarke looks pissed though, and he is going to take it out on someone. Why couldn’t I just hold my laugh as always? He walks over and stops beside me. I feel his stare, but I do not look up.

  “Well, do you?” He asks again.

  “No sir,” I whisper.

  “What?” He asks loudly. I cringe even lower in my seat.

  “Leave her alone,” Shane’s voice now speaks up.

  I am quite surprised, a mixture of pleasure and dread that he is coming to my rescue. A good thing, because he has noticed me. A bad thing, because he has noticed me. Now bullies will also notice me. And his friends, including Melanie, ar
e the worst of all bullies.

  “Unless you want detention for the rest of the week, I advise you to remain quiet, Mr. peters,” Mr. Clarke says, not moving from where he stands beside me. I watch his feet, praying for them to walk away. They do not.

  “No sir,” I choose to finally speak up. “I do not find it funny,” I add.

  He hovers over me for a few seconds more, and my dread increases.

  “You shall join mr. Peters for detention after school today.” My heart quadruples at this.

  My goofy smile never leaves my face even as I meet up with my brother for lunch at our normal place.

  “What’s with you?” He questions, when I sit down beside him on one of the steps at the back stairs.

  “I got detention,” I say shrugging.

  “What?” Lachey asks astounded. I shrug again. “And why would you be beaming cheerfully at having gotten detention?” He puzzles. I smile secretly, passing him his lunch pack.

  We eat the rest of our lunch in silence. Lachey takes out a thick book about ancient empires or something like that and reads it while he eats, while I place a pair of headphones to my ears and listen to my favourite band as I read Hosseini’s new ebook on my phone.

  Like I said before, we spend a lot of time together, but it does not necessarily mean that we are close. It is a good feeling though, to know that he is here with me. He will always be there for me.

  “Should I wait for you after school?” He asks, as we are clearing away our things as the bell will be going off soon.

  “No, you do not have to..” I start.

  “I’ll wait,” he says. “I wanted to go into the main library for a couple of hours this week anyway. I’ll just do it today, and then I could meet you up outside school and we’ll walk home together.”

  It is nice that he wants to walk home with me, a half an hour walk, rather than take the bus. But I know that he is also scared of taking the bus alone. We always do it together. Help each other through the daily fear that one day one of the kids will decide to pick on us.

  “Okay,” I say, right before I open the door and head out to the main corridor first.

  Chapter 3

  Classes could not end fast enough. My heart beats so fast as the clock runs down, that I fear I might just set off the heart monitor strapped around my chest under my shirt. Now wouldn’t that be something!

  My hands are sweaty and my stomach is in turmoils as I make my way to Mr. Clarke’s classroom. Shane has not arrived yet. Mr. Clarke is sitting alone at the front of the class. He nods at me to walk in, and I find my place at the back of the classroom. It is the first time in my high school life to sit at the back of a class. I was never cool enough to do that before.

  Shane then walks in, and I have to burry my head behind my textbooks because my cheeks are flaming red with awareness. He slings his bag over his shoulders with measured disinterest, places a card on Mr. Clarke’s desk with an arrogance only he can command, and walks to the opposite corner. He barely spares a glance at me. I would not have expected him to.

  I am not the worst at Trig, but suddenly none of it makes the remotest sense. A whole jumble of meaningless letters, diagrams and numbers stare back at me.

  All my mind is aware of right now is that the object of my affection since I was seven years old, when he picked up the apple that had dropped from my bag and handed it to me, is in the same room as me. I remember his eyes most of all. Green. They had been so green, I thought I’d lose myself in them. Are they still green, or did they darken with age? Or maybe they lightened. I wouldn’t know. Never again have I gotten close enough to him to find out.

  At some point in that jumbled hour, between my quickened heart rate, and Shane’s impatient shuffling, Mr. Clarke gets a phone call, and is forced to step out of class to receive it.

  Shane and I are now left alone in class. I do not know what I expected would happen. It only gets even harder to breath. My throat feels so constricted, and my body burns so hot, that I fear he will notice my discomfort.

  “Catch!” Shane calls suddenly, and I turn just in time as he sends a book flying my way. I surprise myself when I am able to grab it midair before it slams onto my face.

  “Good reflexes!” He calls, and I flush deeply as I turn the book around. Merchant of venice. It is not on our reading list this year.

  “Do you think Mr. Clarke’s reflexes are just as good?” He aks. I start to laugh at this. I regret it the moment I turn and meet his eyes, as my smile freezes on my lips at the sight of him.

  He is leaning back with his chair, swinging on its hind legs, a cocky smile on his face. He is even more handsome than I remember him being this morning. Is that even possible? I turn away, and take a couple quick breaths, before throwing the book back at him. He catches it quickly from the air, and the front legs of his chair smack soundly against the ground as he swings back forward.

  “And a good hand too,” he says with a wink. My heart does its thing again. I wonder how much more it can take before the annoying monitor starts beeping.

  Mr. Clarke steps back in right then, and I know the moment is gone. That is all I ever had. That moment, that chance to make a lasting impression on him, as this coincidence will never repeat itself. I will never again find myself in such proximities with him alone. He will never know my name, as this was the moment to tell him. Around my classmates, and other schoolmates, he will not see me.

  Once again, I am back to being a wallflower.

  Chapter 4

  I have to go to that party! I am thinking as I lie on my bed and face the blank ceiling.

  I have to. I just have to. It was no coincidence that I overheard them planning it.. Ok it was a coincidence! But it is also one of those coincidences that something ought to be done about them. It is.

  I keep staring at the ceiling, my heart doing its dance again. It is dangerous, having my case of arrhythmia. I do need to be careful- to avoid too much excitement or worry that could lead to an episode. But I am a teenager, and excitement and worry are the emotions sure to describe any teenager.

  I need to go to that party. I will go to that party.

  I sneak out of my room, and walk to the next one. Mom’s room. Lachey’s is opposite hers. This is a two bedroomed apartment, and my room is actually the end of the corridor, to which mom had added a plaster wall with a small door.

  I had insisted on having my own room, as the only other option had been to share mom’s or my brother’s room. Either rooms were too small to be divided into two, and I wanted my own space. My industrious mother had therefore made me my own closet of a room. A very narrow bed fits into it. I always just do my homework on the bed. I have no room for a closet, so most of my clothes are in mom’s room.

  Mom’s at work. She works at night. You could call it a night shift, though I doubt they call it that in her line of work.

  I open the first closet door, which holds my clothes. My eyes skim quickly through the drab clothes I have in there- the clothes of a nobody desperate to disappear into oblivion.

  Suddenly I cannot stand them anymore. I do not want to wear them. I do not want to be a nobody tonight. I want to be a somebody. I want to be noticed, and I want my name to be remembered. Just for one night, I want to know what that feels like.

  I shut that door, and walk to the next closet. I pass the first two doors, which hold mom’s ‘home’ clothes. The everyday clothes. Instead, I walk up to the third closet, and open the doors to reveal mom’s work clothes.

  The gold, shimmery blue, red dresses, and silky and fur scarves and jackets glitter at me. These are not clothes for a nobody. I stroke them lightly, letting the cool caress of silk flow through my fingers. I take my time parting each hanger, as I assess the dresses.

  In the end I opt for a cream dress. A short well cut dress that falls just midway to my knees. It has a single black stripe along its hemlines. I brush my hips after putting it on, as I stare at my image in the mirror. It fits well. Not perfectly, but well e
nough. The body that stares back at me surprises me. I never thought my lanky body could look like that. Sexy and curvaceous. It almost looks like my mother’s.

  I remember the day she bought it. We had walked into Per Laurids, the high end clothes store downtown. I felt like a stray dog in there, ugly and ill fitting, in the middle of so much beauty and grandeur. Mom had looked ravishing though, as she always does. She had on a beautiful short cashmere dress, and her tanned legs had looked amazing in it, plunged into beautiful black and white pumps.

  She knew exactly what she wanted when we walked in. She went straight up to the dress. I remember gasping when I saw it, hanging there on the mannequin behind a glass encasing.

  “Isn’t it beautiful?” Mother had whispered.

  “It is,” I had confirmed, but I doubt she had meant it as a question.

  “This dress shall pay for your college, honey,” I remember her saying as she cat-walked in it before me. I had flushed slightly, looking around to see if she had been overheard. Luckily there was no one around us.

  I never try on mom’s things. They are too beautiful. Or maybe I just do not do it because I know why she has them, and I fear that I too will go down that road.

  My mom is an escort, and not just the kind that goes on dates with rich businessmen. The kind that makes enough money to support her family, which means she does the other more frowned upon part of escorting too. She has never hidden it from us- not after we turned seven.

  “It is the only thing I am good at, sweetheart,” she had told me once when I asked her for the hundredth time how she could do it.

  “I was never a bright girl. All I ever had were my looks and my body. Modelling is a tough business to break into, and I was never talented enough to go into show business or into the stripping business. This is what I do, and I am good at it. It will not last, because let’s face it, I am aging. But as long as I can, I will do it and save up enough money to support my babies.”