Dance Like Juilliard's Watching

8.) Starting Over

Lilie's words are like a gunshot to my heart. I stand silent for a few minutes, digesting her news.

"Jess?" I hear Lilie say. "Are you okay?"

Suddenly, anger floods my veins. I slam my locker shut and I march - more or less - down the hall towards Emerson's locker.

"Okay, I guess we're taking the party on the road," Lilie mumbles to herself. "Jess, where are you going?"

As I turn down the hallway, I see Emerson and a girl at his locker. Luckily, neither of them see me yet because they are too attached at the moment, if you know what I mean.

I near Emerson's locker and I finally recognize the girl he's attached to.

Kelsie Chapmen, captain of the cheerleading squad, and the most annoying girl in school. Everyone - and I mean everyone - wants to be her friend, even though she's a snob. She thinks she's all that and a bag of chips. That type of girl.

"Emerson!" I yell in his face. Well, at the back of his head. The front of his face was occupied at the moment. He whips his head around and separates himself from Kelsie.

"Oh, hey, babe," he says, trying to kiss me, even though he knows just as well as I do that I just saw him and Kelsie sucking each other's faces off. I shove him away. "Jess, what's your problem?"

"You're my problem, Em! How could you do this to me?" I say, tears beginning to glisten in my eyes, even though I don't want them to. I want to be mad at him.

"Do what?" Emerson asks. "Kelsie and I were just...um...talking about a project we got paired up for."

"Yeah, sure," I say. "With your faces attached and her cheap-ass lipstick all over your face."

"Hey!" yells Kelsie, offended. I ignore her.

"I saw you Emerson. Don't lie to me. Is this why you didn't answer me that night?" I ask. "Were you with her?"

Emerson looks at me and doesn't say anything.

"Oh my God," I say. "You didn't."

He bows his head, embarrassed. "Emerson, you screwed? That's your idea of busy?"

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Kelsie smile and bite her lip looking at Emerson. I want to kill her.

Emerson answers me finally: "Well..." That's all he has to say about all this. That's all he has to say to me.

"So it's true," I say, backing up. "What the hell has gotten into you Emerson?"

It's a good thing he responded before Kelsie had. I can't imagine what dirty things she would've come up with, true or not. I'm so done at this point.

"Don't act like you didn't do anything either, Jess," he says, defending himself.

"What?"

"You were out with that freak and he crashed the car!" He sounds madder than I've ever heard him, even when he was fighting with his parents about the move. And he was pretty damn mad then.

It takes me a minute, but I realize he's talking about Chase. Is Emerson seriously jealous of Chase? I wonder.

"Okay, first of all, Chase is not a freak," I say, trying to calm myself down so we can have a civilized talk and not a screaming match. It doesn't work very well.

"Oh, so you're on a first-name basis now," Emerson sneers. "How suspicious."

"Oh what, so I can't have friends? That's beside the point!" I scream. "We didn't screw, like you two did! Chase is my friend, and the crash wasn't his fault! He took me for ice cream after I was talking about my mother, Emerson! My dead mother!"

Emerson backs off and looks stricken. He knows he hit home with that part. I take a deep breath, steeling myself.

"We are done, Emerson. Done. I am so through with all of this shit," I say, crying now. I whirl around to find Lilie.

"Come on Jess," she says, taking my arm and flashing Kelsie and Emerson a dirty look. "You don't need that jerk and his ugly new girlfriend."

Out of the corner of my eye I see Kelsie lunge at Lilie and me, but Emerson stops her and calms her down. Them, together. It's so sickening, I can't even think about it.

The rest of the day I'm so upset I barely pay attention in any of my classes and I don't talk to anyone. It's so unlike me, but hey, a lot has changed over the past week. I'm not the same, physically or mentally. At least, not right now.

When I finally get home, my dad is making cookies. Thank God. I could really use a cheer-up chocolate chip right about now. "Hey Jessie!" he says brightly. "How was your day?" Then he notices my face.

I start bawling. I can't keep it together anymore. I just can't.

"Jessie...what happened?" Dad asks, hugging me. I tell him everything that happened with Emerson. I can tell he wants to punch him or kill him or something, but hopefully he doesn't.

Actually, wait.

I have mixed feelings about that.

"I'm so sorry Jess," Dad says.

I've been hearing that a lot lately.

Looks like I'm starting over with a lot in my life.

~