It's A Deal

Chapter One

Chapter One 

2 YEARS LATER. 

I walked down the hallway with my group of friends surrounding me, celebrating the beginning of the last year of our high school lives. 

"WE'RE SENIORS BABY!" We cheered to ourselves. On both my sides stood my two best friends, Jamie and Chris. We were all holding hands, and I lifted them up and laughed, cheering again. After this year, our lives would be completely different. Chris and I were going to head off to New York next fall, and Jamie would be staying behind in California. 

"Oh my god, why do you have to scream so much? Shut the hell up!" Chris whined, but I knew he was joking. Jamie and I stuck our tongues out at him and I pulled them both forward, focused on going straight to our lockers. Unfortunetly, I didn't pay much attention to where everyone one else was and smacked straight into some guy. 

When I looked up his face was filled with irritation. He was definitely a familiar face. "Woah! Watch where you're- oh. Well hey Ricky." 

"Ericka. It's Ericka now." I corrected him, trying to keep my head held high. Memories of our old friendship flooded back to my mind and I struggled to look strong. Calm down, Ericka. Get over it. I chanted to myself. 

“But you used to love the name Ricky…” He mumbled, confused. 

I shook my head. “Used to. So can you move?” I tried to make my voice sound hostile, but it just came out as desperate. I tried hiding my neverending hope that he would come back to me, and flip all those people that hate me the bird. Yeah, it's been two years, that's not happening. 

“Oh um yeah. It was nice seeing you, I guess. Sorry about—“ 

“Yeah. It’s okay.” I tried cutting the conversation short, but he kept talking to me. Does he not remember what happened? He’s the one who chose not to be friends with me. He’s the one who stopped talking to me. He’s the one who completely abandoned me in my time of need. He’s the one who befriended the boy who had hurt me so much. He doesn’t deserve to converse with me. The kid doesn't even deserve to look at me, and he never deserved my trust. I'd forgotten about it for so long, but now I'm thinking back to it and the anger is building up again.

“So maybe we could catch up sometime?” He asked, hopefully. Before I could give him a shaky rejection, I felt Chris’s arm snake protectively around my waist and he pulled me closer. Most people would mistake this for a gesture of jealousy, but there was never a romance between Chris and I. He was simply protecting me from potential harm, like a brother would. 

“We’re hanging out that day.” He butt in. 

Jake raised his eyebrows. “But we didn’t even plan a date yet?” 

Chris scoffed, glaring right into his eyes. “Yeah, well whatever day it is, we’re busy. So fuck off.” 

Jake looked from me back to Chris. I could tell what he was thinking. He was thinking that this used to be him, protecting me. He was the one who was supposed to be bitter towards the ones that hurt me, he wasn’t supposed to be the cause of my pain. I hope he's jealous and upset. I hope he regrets everything he's done to hurt me. 

Jake

"Hey man, what's up?" My friend Drake greeted me, Conner and Josh. We exchanged our handshakes and stood there looking around, leaning against lockers and the other students scurrying around with the first-day-excitment.

"So there's a party tonight. Josh thought it would be fun to make everyone drunk and hungover for the second day of school. Yeah, I don't know what that's about, but it's going to be epic. You going?" Conner asked me. I almost rejected the offer because I was feeling so down about seeing Ricky today. I don't know why, the thought of her hadn't bothered me for two years. But then again, somehow we haven't had any classes together and I haven't seen her in the hallways. Seeing her again brought all the guilt back.