A Selfie to Die For

2)Online Dating

"Tell me that really didn't happen." Emily said a half hour later. She and Vinessa didn't say much on the ten minute drive from school to the in-town Dairy Queen. It was as though Vinessa knew just how to make Emily feel better about the ugly disaster of Jake inviting the bubbly yet dimwitted Lauren to prom. Ice cream.


It was a disaster that seemed to happen in slow motion. Jake ran down the length of the hallway and popped the magical question to Lauren. She of course said yes. Emily held no doubt the bubble girl would - she'd only been throwing googly eyes at Jake the entire semester. Even still, Emily felt as though it was too horrible to have possibly been real. The boy she loves compared their relationship to that of which siblings hold before asking someone else out.
It was her worse nightmare played out in the course of one minute and forty-five seconds.





Emily's pick-me-up came in the form of a brownie-batter blizzard. Even after she received the large blizzard and began taking in the mouthfuls, the chewy goodness  of the warm brownie bites wasn't making her feel any better.
Vinessa grimaced, slowly taking sips from her smoothie. "Girl, you're damn lucky you're so thin - I'd be terrified that stuff would go right to my hips."






"I don't have hips" Emily sighed gloomily, moving her blizzard away and allowing her head to fall into her arms. It was true.
Even though she had a decent chest size that fell into the C-cup category, Emily didn't have any hips or butt to go along with it. Many girls were blessed with an hourglass form, or even a little extra junk in their trunk - not Emily. She was as flat as cardboard back there.
"I was like....this-close to him asking me..." She shrugged, staring at Vinessa in exasperation. "This close!" She said, using her pointer finger and thumb to exaggerate how close.






"I really thought he was going to ask you for a moment." Vinessa confessed, shaking her head in dismay. "I didn't think he'd invite the straw-headed Barbie."





"He's right...I'm a total nerd." Emily shrugged, taking another mouthful of ice-cream. "I mean, I have held unrequited feelings for that adorable idiot the last five years now" she groaned. "All this time, he just looks at me like a sister?  What's Lauren got that I don't?"

Emily didn't know why she even bothered asking such a question. Lauren had everything she didn't have. Lauren was the sun in contrast to Emily's night. Lauren was popular, Emily was not. Lauren was the gorgeous cheerleader all the guys adored, Emily was the shy chick who paired long-sleeved flannel shirts with tank tops and ripped jean shorts. Lauren has always styled golden blonde hair that shined in the sun, Emily held a strange hair color that looked to be the love child of mouse brown and dishwater blonde.

"Well, when she's angry I'm betting she doesn't sound like a pissed off chick from Joi-sey" Vinessa joked, giggling at Emily's accent that exclusively came out when she's mad. "Seriously, you just used the word got in a sentence."





"My vocabulary goes down the toilet when I'm crabby" Emily muttered gloomily, stirring her spoon in her melting blizzard.



Vinessa frowned. "Well, maybe he just asked Lauren because he thought you'd say no....?"





Emily groaned, shaking her head. She could tell Vinessa was just offering that to make her feel better.
 "How many hints did the guy need? You weren't with us earlier....There's a project for the school paper where we need an inside person to befriend someone with special info. Jake says the girl's quiet and nerdy, so you wanna know who he thought would be perfect for the job?"




"No!" Vinessa gasped, wincing heavily as she figured out where Emily was going with this.





"Yeah....Yours truly." Emily grimaced.



Vinessa sighed, taking in a few drinks of her smoothie. "Well, at least you said no." She shrugged.
It was only as Vinessa took slowly notice of Emily's heavy wince did her mouth fall open. "Oh God, you didn't say no?!"
Emily hung her head, guilt slipping in. She knew she should've put her foot down, but there was a strong part of her that wanted the coach/student story from Miranda Carter. She wanted it just as bad if not more than Jake did. She loved journalism.





Vinessa sighed. "Emmy, maybe you've made yourself a little too available all these years."





Emily frowned, providing a shrug. She had no idea what that comment was supposed to mean.






"Look..." Vinessa started, leaning in. "-From what you've told me, all this time you and Jake have known each other, you're always the person to be there for him. You're his sounding board, his voice of reason, and like the girl he goes to in times of everything."





"Yeah, because we're best friends." Emily said, frowning.





"Em, he uses you as a girlfriend figure." Vinessa explained with a grimace. "Having you around means he never has to get serious with any other girl cause' he gets to enjoy the girlfriend experience without keeping one - why do you think Jake's such a player?"





"He's not a..." Emily started to defend before frowning. Her bestie did happen to go out on a lot of dates but never actually go steady with someone. If Emily thought about it, she couldn't recall a time where any relationship Jake's had has lasted more than a month.






"Yeah" Vinessa laughs, knowing already why Emily  trailed off. "He goes through girls faster than toilet paper because you're the one he gets to go home to" she sighed. "You've made yourself too available, so Jake's always going to assume you'll be there for him to  pick up the pieces whenever he needs a friend."





In a strange way, that actually made sense to Emily. The thought slowly started to horrify her. She loved Jake. There was so much to love about him in Emily's eyes, she knows she truly does love him, irrational or not. The thought of Jake forever having other girlfriends and one day a wife while having Emily along as his little sidekick felt like a kick to the gut.
 "So what do I do??"




Vinessa shrugged. "Unless you want to grow up being Taylor Swift and documenting all your tragedies based on the guy who doesn't love your butt back, you're going to let me help you."






Emily took another mouthful of blizzard, chewing through the chunky brownie pieces carefully. "Don't tell me you're going to do the cliché Cinderella movement of changing my wardrobe into more revealing clothes and taking away my glasses. Because honestly, that's just lame." Emily snorted. She could choose to dress herself up a little more. All she would need to do was ditch her contacts, splash on some makeup and dress like a proverbial doll. She'd never really been interested in scoring dates with her immature fellow high school classmates, so she's never really bothered spicing up her appearance.





Vinessa started giggling with laughter, shaking her dark head. "Hell no, girl! We're going to shake what your momma gave you and then snag you a date to prom."




_______________________________________




"Dang....Even James Dawson already has a date, and that guy's been crushing on you for awhile." Vinessa sighed, throwing herself down on Emily's large canopy bed. She'd spent the last half hour since arriving at Emily's house texting multiple individuals asking questions.
Vinessa was trying to get a better feel of who still did or didn't have dates to prom.
It proved to be pretty useless - all guys Emily knew for the most part were already taken, or Emily already knew they wouldn't be interested in her. She was more of an intellectual, while the boys Vinessa had in mind were mostly junior varsity jocks. Emily knew from sharing classes with some of those boys that trained monkey's could carry on better conversation than the Lacrosse players of John Addams high.





Vinessa stuck her tongue in cheek, mentally trying to calculate what worthwhile guy could possibly still be dateless with less than three weeks to go before prom.





"I could ask Peter" Emily said, bringing her knees to her chest from where she sat. "I don't think anyone's asked him yet."
Peter Mccarri was a boy with heavy autism along with a couple other problems at her school who often enjoyed talking to Emily about anything and everything. His most passionate topics were the French revolution and Greek mythology. Peter often got mesmerized by something or the other in classes due to his mental setbacks, and then he would often obsess over the topics. He often shared his obsessions with Emily, mostly because she was the only one who expressed interest or enthusiasm in what he had to say.
This week Peter was currently hung up on the conspiracy theory over Area 51. It didn't matter to Emily that Peter was a tad odd, he was a very nice boy who often volunteered at the same soup kitchen down town that Emily did.





Vinessa just stared at Emily with a dumbfounded expression upon this idea. "Peter - the creeper in art class with that bitchy older sister?"




Emily winced. "He's not a creeper-"





"-He mumbles to himself while watching you with that freaky gaze of his, Em. Dude's a creeper." Vinessa shot back, rolling her dark eyes. "Besides that, would you ever want to jump on Peter and attack him with  kisses?"




"What! No-"




"-You don't go to your senior prom with a guy you don't want to attack in kisses!" Vinessa scolds. "How do you not already know that?? You're not going to prom with a boy because he's nice...you want to go so you can share the most spectacular kiss alive with a boy you like."





Emily's mind automatically jumped to Jake and Lauren upon hearing that. "But I don't like anyone but Jake..." she trailed off stupidly.