Falling for you

Chapter 7

The dormant volcano could no longer keep everything bottled up inside; it exploded with a spectacular display of bubbling, hot lava and a fine spattering of ash. And that is how everything went down and my life changed forever. I'm kidding. Nothing happened. Absolutely nothing. Austin didn't confront me nor was the whole school waiting to pounce on me, when I walked through the doors the next day. I waited anxiously for something to happen but a week passed by without any incident; nothing out of the ordinary. That's when I finally let my guard down. We had even settled into a new routine; we flashed our pearly whites when we passed each other in the corridors, cafeteria and in AP Lit. Basically, whenever I was lucky enough to gaze upon his enthralling person. He will never know the way my pulse leapt at each encounter. He was a threat to my poor, frail heart and one that I had no intention of eliminating. Wow, I'm in a mood today. Maybe I should write a poem about him. I guess my Pisces moon makes me sappy sometimes. Most of the time.

Our interactions didn't go unnoticed. I caught Heather and her posse giving me the stink eye in gym class. Our school was a firm believer in the proverb 'the more the merrier’. That's why the gym was filled to its capacity by combining the sophomores and seniors. I could always be sure to have an audience when I made a fool out of myself. Gee, lovely isn't it? Today, it was particularly nasty. We had rope climbing. I so badly wanted to fake a tummy ache and be sent to the nurse but, alas, I had already used that excuse last week to get out of dodgeball. I'm going to have to learn to use my excuses wisely. Shaking my head at my predicament, I made my way to the end of the line with the the hope that the class would end before my turn came up. There I was, minding my business, when Heather left her friends and came over to join me at the end of the line. She gave a fake  smile and stood behind me.

“ It's Emily, isn't it?”. I was expecting something of this sort when she came over but it was still surprising. We had never spoken before and never had a reason to.

“ Yeah.” I turn around and smile at her.

“ I saw you at Blake's this weekend. It was a cool party, right? Austin and Blake are pretty tight so I have to attend every party he throws. God knows what those two would get upto if I wasn't around,” she curls a stand of hair around her finger and looks straight ahead.

I frown slightly at this. As far as I knew Blake threw parties occasionally and while they were supposed to be fun, it had never gotten so wild that cops had to be called.

“ Yeah, it was pretty cool. What do you mean? Is it usually wild?”.

Her shrill peal of laughter was grating. “ Oh, no. I was talking about the horde of desperate girls who throw themselves at the boys. You would not believe the number of times I caught girls trying to cozy up to Austin at some party or the other. Sure, he likes to flirt sometimes but I'm the one he comes back to. I mean, any guy would find it hard to turn down an easy lay.”

I tried to look impassive and unbothered by her words. Before I could come up with a fitting reply, she had smirked and walked off with a 'see you around’ carelessly flung over her shoulder.

I tried not to think too much and give much weightage to her words. She probably wanted to mess with me because she felt threatened, which was ridiculous! I felt uneasy for the remainder of the class and just wanted to get out of school and away from these people.

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“What a bitch! To just come up to you like that and say such things. I guess all that bleach got into her head and made her so fucking evil. I don't understand how people can even stand to be around her. I wish everyone would know what a bitch she is. Em, hon you gotta retort if she says something again. If I'm around I'll definitely knock her out,” Abby said vehemently as she stuffed fries into her mouth.