The Ordinary Life of Emily P. Bates

by Anna Cackler

  “We’re waiting on our food!” Shannon said, annoyed.

  He pushed a pair of shoes into my arms. “Well it’s Emily’s turn, then yours. And oh look! Your food’s done. Let’s go. Your boyfriend is driving me up the wall.”

  “You too?” I asked, and then laughed at my own bad joke as I grabbed the plastic basket containing my burger and fries.

  But Finn didn’t laugh. “What?” His eyes raked my face suspiciously.

  “Nothing, it’s a joke,” Shannon said. She pushed him towards our lane with her one free hand where Margo and Ethan were hunched over the scoring controls, trying to set up our games. She glared at me behind his back. I supposed she was right. The fewer people who knew I was going to be breaking ties with Ethan in a few days, the easier it would be tonight to pretend that I wasn’t.

  Suddenly, Shannon skidded to a stop. “Oh my God.”

  “What?” Finn and I looked at Shannon, and then followed her horrified gaze across the bowling alley. There, four lanes down, was Charlie. The blond was with him, and so were a couple of other preppy looking girls. Charlie was laughing and joking around while one of the girls stepped up to the lane.

  “Charlie,” Shannon whispered accusingly.

  Charlie looked up the instant that she’d said his name. It was as if she’d shouted it across the room, though her whisper was almost too quiet even for Finn and me to hear.

  The look on his face was one of absolute shame. Bless him for having the decency to be sorry. Shannon, on the other hand, looked like she was about to cry.

  “It’s okay,” I said, taking her arm and turning her toward our own game. We both sat down with our backs to Charlie “It doesn’t matter. You don’t have to talk to--hey!” Finn had abruptly dumped his shoes into my arms, nearly knocking my shake out of my hand, and took off.

  “Where’s he going?” Margo asked, stepping over to us. All four of us followed Finn with our eyes and saw that Charlie had left his group. He’d already closed half of the distance between his group and ours by the time Finn had intercepted him.

  “Oh no,” Shannon moaned. She started to get up, but Margo and I both held her down.

  “It’ll be okay,” I said again. “Let Finn deal with him.”

  Ethan had gotten up now so that he could see over our heads and we all watched Charlie and Finn. We couldn’t hear what they were saying, but the tension was obvious in the set of Finn’s shoulders and the fury in Charlie’s blue eyes.

  I willed Finn not to hit him. Charlie may be a bore, but he was a bore with very thick arms. There was no way that lanky old Finn could ever win a fight with Charlie Hamilton.

  After a couple of very tense moments, Charlie turned and walked back to his group. None of the girls had even noticed he’d left. Finn came back over to us and slipped his arm around Margo’s waist. She smiled up at him.

  “What just happened?” I asked.

  Finn looked at Shannon. “He won’t bother us tonight.”

  Shannon nodded.

  “What did you say to him?” I asked again.

  “I told him what he needed to hear.” Finn kissed Margo on the side of her head, and then turned to pick out a bowling ball. “Let’s play, shall we?”

  His sister sniffed and stood. “Yeah, okay.” She followed him to the ball rack. I turned to glare at Charlie, but he was sitting with his back to us and didn’t see me.

  Ethan went back to the controls to finish setting up the game. “Okay, Em, you’re first,” He glanced up at the screen to be sure that my name had appeared there. “Then Shannon, then Finn, Margo, and me.”

  “Finn has two Ns,” I said, taking a long draw on my milkshake before stepping over to the ball rack, glaring at the back of Charlie’s head the whole time. Whatever Finn had said to him, it worked. Charlie was no longer laughing with his little girlfriends. He sat stone still in the chair and stayed there the rest of the night.

  I chose my ball quickly and carried it balanced on my cast and pressed against my gut with my one good hand to keep it from rolling off.

  “Can you manage?” Finn asked.

  “Sure,” I said. “I can manage anything.”

  “Anything but a footstool.”

  “Bite me.” I managed to knock down three pins my first try and two the next. When I stepped back to the table to finally eat my dinner, Ethan and Finn were both snickering behind their hands.

  “Hey! Leave me alone! I said I could manage, not that I was any good.”

  “Sorry,” Ethan said, but Finn just rolled his eyes and turned to watch his twin take her turn.

  The evening went by in a blur of laughter and terrible scores. By eight o’clock, our table was covered in drink cups and discarded plastic baskets. Finn had long since retired to the table to read his book, and even I had gotten tired of wrestling with my bulky cast. I sat at the table, picking at some cold fries and sipping absentmindedly on a watered down Coke.

  Charlie left about an hour after we’d arrived. He didn’t try to talk to Shannon again, but he did cast one final glance at her as he stepped out of the door. Thankfully she wasn’t paying attention and didn’t see him leave.

  I took the opportunity to glare at him again, though. This time he saw me and he winced. I smiled, satisfied, and turned back to our game.

  Shannon and Margo were having their own game now. They were trying to see which one of them could come up with the most creative way to get the ball down the lane without getting a gutter ball. Ethan was their judge. He was sitting at the table with us, but he had his back turned and he was completely absorbed in the girls’ antics. He frequently called out something like, “That’s ten points!” or “Nice one, Shannon!” or “No, no, no. That doesn’t count!” making me jump every time.

  My mind began to wander. At first I was watching Margo try to nudge the ball down the lane with the toe of her bowling shoe, and then my eyes began to drift. I stared at the back of Ethan’s head resentfully. Sure, I had lost almost all interest in him so far as dating went, but it still kind of stung that he didn’t seem to notice or care that I was sitting alone with nothing to do while he paid attention to my two girlfriends. What a jerk. He was almost as bad as Charlie! Not even his perfect dark skin or his hair that was always so carefully styled could change my mind. Nor could his stupid grin. Suddenly it seemed like that was all he ever did was grin. Had he ever had a serious thought pass through his head?

  A movement across my field of vision drew my glare away from the back of Ethan’s head. Finn, his full attention still on his book, was reaching blindly across the table for his drink. His big hand made a couple of half-hearted grasps at nothing before finally closing around the ketchup bottle right next to his cup. He didn’t even look up as he lifted the bottle to his mouth, but jumped when the cold metal lid touched his lips.

  I forced myself not to laugh as he replaced the ketchup bottle on the table and grabbed his drink this time. He took a long draw, and instead of placing it back on the table, he held it resting on his thigh--probably so he wouldn’t make the same mistake again the next time he was thirsty.

  The whole time, the whole damn time, he did not look up. Not once. He never noticed that I was watching him. He never realized that anyone might be laughing at him (I noticed a couple of younger guys walking by smirk when he tried to drink the ketchup bottle). He was so incredibly focused. So intense. In that moment I realized that, though I’d seen Finnegan O’Malley about a thousand times since I’d met him, I don’t think I’d ever really seen him. Not really.

  “No! Shannon’s was better!”

  I jumped when Ethan shouted.

  “Come on! Why?” Margo whined. Shannon was gloating next to her.

  “Because she got three pins and you only got one! Besides, I’d like to see you try getting that kind of speed bent over like she was!” He whirled around in his seat, that grin still plastered across his face. “Am I right?” he asked me.

  Right. Now he remembers I’m there.

 
I hadn’t even seen the stunts that were called into question, but I answered a confident, “No,” anyway. Ethan turned back to his spectators looking put-out.

  “What?” Shannon exclaimed. “Not fair! She’s not even looking!”

  She was right. I wasn’t looking. My eyes never left Finn’s face. When Shannon yelled, though, it broke his concentration. His eyes darted up from the page to meet my gaze and I instantly looked away, flushing. Finn had seen me staring at him. There was no way he couldn’t have.

  After a few seconds, I dared to glance back at him, and to my relief his eyes were back on his book. There was a funny look on his face, though, and after a few minutes of paranoid but cautious observation, I could swear that he was just staring at a single spot on the page.

  “They fired me,” Ethan said, making me jump again. “Now you’ll have to entertain me.” He was suddenly sitting next to me and before I knew it, his arm was resting on the back of my chair. I leaned forward subconsciously. Just a measly two months ago, being this close to Ethan would have sent sparks of electricity down my spine. Now I just wanted him to go away. What had changed? Was it just that one month of no interest that did the trick?

  Shannon and Margo were still bickering over their game, so Finn was the only one left to save me. “Sorry,” I said, thinking fast, “but Finn promised me a game of pool.”

  “He did?” Ethan asked, sounding unconvinced.

  Finn looked up. “I did?”

  “Yes, you did. Earlier.” I turned in my seat and to my immense relief saw that one of the tables was free. “You promised.” I kicked him in the shin under the table and he jumped.

  “But you don’t play pool,” he said through gritted teeth, obviously irritated that I’d kicked him.

  I glared at him. “So teach me.” I reached over and grabbed his hand so that I could drag him over to the pool tables, but he tugged it away from me.

  He got up anyway. “Fine.” I knew Ethan was watching us walk away, but I couldn’t make myself turn back and smile reassuringly at him.

  As soon as we were safely out of earshot of the others, Finn rounded on me. “What’s going on?” he asked.

  “What? Nothing!” I said. I grabbed a stick and the cube of blue chalk. If I knew anything about pool, it was how to use the chalk.

  “Emily Prudence Bates!” he hissed at me, ripping the chalk out of my hand and making me jump. “What is your issue?”

  “I don’t have a freaking issue, Finnegan! Now tell me what I’m supposed to do with this!” I held the stick in front of his face, and he jerked it away from me.

  “Fine, keep your secrets.” He brandished the end of the stick in my face like a weapon. “But I will find out what’s going on.” He turned to rack the balls, but stopped and turned back. “And don’t kick me like that again!”

  Thirteen

  “So when are you going to do it?” Shannon whispered to me Monday morning in Chemistry. It was lab day again, and our experiment was so incredibly lame that we weren’t even pretending to do it. I’d just jotted down a few numbers in the worksheet that seemed plausible and now we were just playing with the equipment.

  “I don’t know.”

  Mr. Lankford had just spotted us and crossed the room with a determined stride.

  “And how are you two doing?” he asked, picking up the worksheet and studying it over the rims of his glasses. “Done already?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “These numbers don’t seem right,” he said. “Try it again, and this time measure twice before adding the catalyst.”

  “’Kay,” I said, erasing the paper that he handed back to me. I quickly wrote in new numbers as soon as his back was turned and turned back to Shannon, who was adjusting her goggles. “Finn knows something’s up.”

  “Of course Finn knows. He’s Finn.” She finally gave up and took her goggles off altogether. A red ring around her eyes and across the bridge of her nose stood out painfully against her fair skin. “I hate these stupid things.”

  “Yeah.” I started doodling on the worksheet, idly swiveling back and forth in my lab stool.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. I just don’t want to do it.” I pulled off my own goggles, feeling stupid now that she’d removed hers. “I wish he’d say something first, you know? So that I wouldn’t have to.”

  “Maybe he will,” she said. “You never know.”

  “No he won’t.” I groaned and rested my head in my hands. I rubbed my cool fingers over the sore line that the goggles had left on my face. “And what’s worse, we’re not even really together, so how can I break up with him?”

  “Okay, here’s what you do,” she said, sounding a little bossy. “Just kind of avoid him, you know? Don’t sit by him. Don’t flirt with him. And if he asks you out, that’s your opportunity to just say no.”

  “But that could take months!”

  “It won’t take months.”

  “He hasn’t asked me out in months, Shannon!”

  “A month. One measly little month. And you were grounded the whole time. Of course he didn’t ask you out.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I think I need to just buck up and call him or something.”

  “Don’t you dare break up with someone over the phone!” she said. “That’s terrible!”

  “I’m not breaking up with him because he’s not my boyfriend!”

  “Then I don’t see the issue!”

  “The issue is that Ethan and I are in a situation where anyone might assume we’re together and he might assume that he has some sort of claim on me at social functions because I’ve gone on a few dates with him and have not yet made it clear that I don’t want to date him anymore!”

  “So tell him that.”

  “I can’t tell him that!”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it’s ridiculous!”

  “But it’s the truth!”

  “And I’ll sound stupid saying it.”

  “I still think you should just wait until he asks you out again.”

  “Which will be never.”

  “Again, I don’t see the issue.” She cocked her head to one side smugly.

  Suddenly, there was a pronounced pop! from across the room, effectively silencing our irritated whispers. Everyone in the room turned to stare at Jeff Sweeny and Tom Noll, whose beaker had just exploded into a small puff of foul smelling white smoke. We all glared at them in shock and covered our noses. Those two had never once in our entire high school careers ever called attention to themselves. Not once. I think that might have been the first time that about half of the class had ever even noticed that they were in the room.

  “Weird,” I said.

  “Yeah.” She was staring at the pair of them, an odd expression on her face. Tom glanced up at us, waving his hands absently to clear the white smoke away. For just a few seconds, they looked at each other. Each seemed mildly surprised to be noticed by the other.

  “Shannon?” I asked.

  She shook her head and faced me once more. “Huh? What were we talking about?”

  “My situation with Ethan.”

  “Right.” She shook her head again, clearing her throat. “So let me get this straight. You obviously think that he will ask you out because you seem determined to make it clear to him that you don’t want him to.”

  “What?”

  “Just don’t worry about it!” she cried in an undertone. I’d never heard anyone pull off exasperation in a whisper before.

  “Fine!”

  Mr. Lankford was watching us from across the room and when he saw me look, he tapped his own goggles sternly with his index finger. I pulled my goggles back on and elbowed Shannon.

  “Okay, okay,” she said, snapping her own torture device back onto her face. “But I hate these things.”

  “Speaking of hating things, the cast comes off tomorrow,” I said.

  “Good. When?”

  “In the morn
ing. I’ll be out until after lunch.”

  “Great,” she said. “Just in time for calculus.”

  “That’s what I said.”

  The bell rang then, and we began gathering up our things and putting away the equipment. Tom knocked into me on his way by, making me spill the contents of the beaker in my hand all over my front. I glared after them, wishing I’d had the guts to say something. He and Jeff had left all of their equipment out on their counter, which wasn’t in their nature any more than standing out in a crowd. Nobody would notice it until much later because we were the only class that used the lab on Mondays.

  “What jerks,” Shannon grumbled, tossing me a roll of paper towels.

  “Seriously.” I dabbed at my shirt as we shuffled out of the room with everyone else. “I can’t believe I was nice to them at your stupid party.”

  I stalked off to my locker alone, keeping close to the wall to avoid hitting anyone in the crowded hall and frowning down at the stain across the front of my shirt. It wasn’t a great shirt or anything, but it was completely ruined now. If only I didn’t have to wear it the rest of the day.

  “Hey! Watch it!” someone shouted, ramming right into me. I looked up, startled to see Charlie glaring down at me. His expression cleared as soon as he realized who I was. “Emily! Sorry!” he said.

  “No, I’m sorry,” I said. “I wasn’t watching where I was going.” I smiled as politely as I could and tried to step around him into the rush of other students.

  “No hold on.” He took my arm and pulled me over to the wall so that we weren’t blocking traffic. “I’m glad I ran into you. I wanted to talk to you.”

  I looked up at him, confused. Since when did Charlie ever want to talk to me? “Uh, okay.”

  “Listen, I’m really sorry about what happened between me and Shannon. She doesn’t hate me does she?”

  “Uh, yeah Charlie. She pretty well hates you.” I tried to sidestep him again, but he was too quick for me.

  “I was afraid of that.”

  “Well what did you expect? You stuck your tongue down some cheerleader’s throat!”