There was something I’d always thought was sort of nice about walking around the school alone, before the buses arrived, when no one was really around and everything was quiet. When the classrooms and hallways were empty, and you got to wander through and just kind of exist in this space, without the crowds of people surrounding you, if only for a little while. Maybe it was just my brain trying to conjure up a plus side to being at school so early for no reason, but I still thought it felt a little special.

Still, I did wish my friends would hurry up and get here soon. My brother had already left me behind to go loiter in the library, and so I was alone as I meandered through the quiet maze of hallways that was Eckhart High. Which I didn’t mind that much, being alone, but I sort of just didn’t want to be all in my own head right now, like I had been the past couple days.

I wasn’t even really sure what I had going on today, or really at all. I hadn’t been paying that much of my attention in class lately. I didn’t think I had any tests, at least. Probably.

Fuck, I really had to get my shit together soon. It might be fine to take some time to think about everything going on for now, but if I didn’t get back on top of my school stuff soon, it was going to get super annoying. AP testing was in a month from now. And I didn’t know about Emily, but I for one would not be thrilled if I arrived back from a trans-dimensional… whatever this was, only to get saddled with a billion tests I hadn’t prepared for.

I had… a calc assignment I had to do for this Friday. It wasn’t that long though, and we got time to work on it in class, so it probably wouldn’t be too bad. I was pretty sure I had stuff too for bio and Chinese, but they weren’t due till Monday either. And there was that group project coming up for lit…

Oh. I had a thing I had to read for history tomorrow. Shit, I hadn’t actually even looked at it yet. It’d better not be that long.

Guess I can try to do that now. I thought for a moment about what the quickest route to the commons was from where I was, somewhere in the second-floor English wing, then turned around to head down the nearest staircase. A couple minutes later, I had reached the usual set of benches where I usually killed time with my friends, though I seemed to be the first one there.

Taking a seat, I set my backpack down on the ground before me and began rifling through it for my history folder. I fished it out and opened it up to see our assigned reading right there in the front, some heavily photocopied printout of a journal article, untouched since I’d gotten it Monday morning. I took it out. “Okay, let’s see what we have here,” I whispered to myself.

I flipped through the packet. There were like twenty pages, and the text was super dense on top of that. “Damn it.” I really should have started this earlier. Though… I supposed I had a good excuse.

I reached forwards to get a highlighter from my backpack’s front pocket and then sat back, crossing one leg over the other and setting the packet on my thigh with my folder underneath. Making some low grumble of displeasure, I uncapped my highlighter and set myself to getting through this fricking reading.

Some minutes later and a couple pages in, I noticed someone walking in my direction from across the commons. I looked up to see Ryan, giving him a quick nod of acknowledgement as he approached. “Hey, Ry.”

“Morning, Em.” He took a seat on an adjacent bench, haphazardly dumping his stuff next to him. “What’s that? Euro?”

I looked down at the reading in my lap. “Yeah. I forgot we had it until like, right now.”

“Oof.”

“Oof indeed,” I concurred.

Ryan sighed, crossing his arms. “Well, in other oof news, as of like five minutes ago, my turn signals aren’t working.”

“Oh, damn, what happened?”

“No idea. It’s like, I press the thing and then it blinks a few times and then just does nothing.”

“Hm.”

“It’s not like, that big a deal, I guess, but it’s just kinda a pain, you know? And until I get it fixed I’m gonna have to be that asshole who doesn’t use his turn signals,” Ryan said with a wry grin.

“You could use like, biking hand signals. Like, uh, this is turning left—” I tried to point outwards with my left hand, except the wall was in the way. “And then to go right you do this.” I kept my arm sticking out, but raised my hand.

He smirked. “Yeah, nice idea, Emily. I’m just gonna stick my arm out the frickin window while I’m hurtling down the freeway at sixty miles per hour; I’m sure that’ll end well.”

I shrugged. “Hey, you came to me with a problem and I offered a solution. Why do you need your turn signal on the freeway, anyway? It’s like, a straight line.”

“Uh, changing lanes?”

“Oh. Yeah. Well. I dunno then.” I paused. “I guess we should’ve seen this coming; I mean, your name is Ryan Turn-er, after all,” I remarked, receiving what was clearly a very reluctant snicker in response.

“I—mm, yeah, I mean. Honestly, I was expecting that first, like. I was in the middle of saying that my turn signal was broken and I was just thinking to myself, she’s going to make a stupid joke about my name, isn’t she,” Ryan said. I laughed again.

“Well, it’s your fault for breaking the one part of your car that happens to be your name. Isn’t there a part in a movie like that?”

“About what, your bad puns?”

“No, you know, that—I swear to God, I remember it; what’s it called? Like, the woman falls in love with this traffic cop guy who keeps pulling her over because her—or not her turn signal, it’s like, her brake lights are broken or something. Uh. God, what’s it called?”

“What?”

“It’s, um. Fuck, what is it? It’s like, a comedy. Uh, fuck, it’s—oh, Bridesmaids! That’s it, that’s the one.”

“Oh. I’m not familiar.”

“I haven’t actually seen like, the whole thing,” I lied. “But like, her brake lights—or no, maybe her tail lights or something? Her tail lights break and this guy keeps pulling her over and I dunno, that’s their meet-cute. And like, they get together and shit in the end.”

“Okay. Yeah, I’ll think I’ll just go get mine fixed?” Ryan said. “Think I’ll pass on the whole traffic cop romance.”

“Aww, come on, Ryan. Where’s your sense of, uh, adventure?” I shook my head at him, and he shrugged faux-apologetically. “Okay, okay. Let’s see, if Bridesmaids isn’t doing it for you, how about, uh. Shit, uh. What’s another movie?”

“What, another movie for me to like, live out the plot of or something?”

I stared into the middle distance, wracking my brain trying to sift through my internal database of Bridesmaids-adjacent movies. “Uhhh. How about… Legally Blonde?”

“Yeah, I don’t know that movie either.”

“You don’t know Legally Blonde, Ryan? For shame,” someone interjected from just behind me. I whipped around, eyes widening at this sudden presence, before I saw that it was just Brie, just having taken a seat next to me.

“Oh my god, I was just about to like, scream,” I wheezed. I gathered up my history stuff, which had almost fallen from my lap, and slipped it back safely into my backpack. “Hi, Brie.”

Brie smiled and casually took my hand in hers. “Sorry, I thought you heard me. Hi, Emmy,” she said, then looked past me to give Ryan a wave. “Hey, Ryan!”

“Howdy.”

“Sorry, didn’t mean to interrupt. What were you saying?” she said to me.

“Uh, nothing important. I was just saying that like, uh. Cuz Ryan’s turn signals are broken, and in the movie Bridesmaids, that’s like, a plot point—y’know, like her brake lights are broken. And that kinda led into Legally Blonde cuz like, I dunno. They’re both sorta in that realm of movie?”

“Mm, okay,” Brie said, nodding along. “Yeah, if you haven’t seen it, you definitely should, Ryan. The main character’s like, blonde. And a law student. Oh! And she has a dog.”

“Wow, that’s all three of my character traits,” Ryan said. “What’s it even about?”

“Uh, it’s basically about—so there’s this girl Elle Woods, who’s a sorority sister,” I began. “And she like, she applies to Harvard Law School to follow this guy she likes, except he turns out to be an ass and now she’s like, a law student and really out of place and everyone just thinks she’s like, a dumb blonde. But eventually she wins this case she’s working on because of her unique perspectives and destroys the stereotypes and proves herself and gains their respect, and, uh, yeah. That’s the movie. I thought it was pretty good.”

“Yeah, it’s a lot of fun! It’s been like, a while since I watched it but I do remember liking it,” Brie agreed. She stopped to push a stray lock of hair back behind her ear before continuing, “…though, there is this bit where they—where they like, uh, forcibly out a gay guy in front of everyone during this trial? Which is… not great?”

“Ah, yikes,” Ryan said.

“Oh… yeah.” I’d forgotten about that. Shit, was that a sensitive topic? Like, with our situation and all…

I looked over at Brie, in the middle of trying to find something to say, when she spoke again. “But yeah, I mean, I do like a lot of the rest of the movie. It has like, a lot of cool themes about like, femininity and being yourself and all? Like everyone looks down on her for being like, super feminine, and in the end when she proves herself and gains everyone’s respect, she never sacrifices that part of herself? Which I think is cool.”

“Yeah,” I agreed a bit uselessly.

“Huh, yeah, alright,” Ryan said. “I’ll add it to my list.”

“You have to know this stuff, Ryan,” Brie admonished him. “How is it possible that you’ve made it a whole seventeen years without seeing a critical cultural touchstone film like Legally Blonde?”

He shrugged. “It was pretty easy, actually. I just, y’know, didn’t watch it.”

Brie shook her head in disappointment. “Smh.”

“You should watch it with your debate girlfriend,” I suggested.

“Oh, yeah!” Brie said. “That’d be really sweet! Bond over your mutual love of law and dogs.”

“Wait, h—you mean Taylor?” Ryan said. “She’s not my girlfriend.”

“…she’s not?”

“No? We’re just going to prom together; we’re not actually like, a thing.”

“I thought you were cuz of how much you were bragging at lunch last week that you were going to prom with SD’s cool debate team captain,” I said, to which Ryan responded with a glare.

“No, we’re just friends.” Ryan sat back, crossing his arms again. “For your information, we agreed that we’re not interested in putting in the effort into having a serious relationship. Like, y’know, with her going to college next year and everything.”

“Wow, how adult of you,” I said.

“Where’s she going to college?” Brie asked.

“Northwestern. For sociology.”

She let out an impressed whistle. “Fancy.”

“Yeah, she’s pretty cool,” he said with a slight smile. He sat there not saying anything, just smiling to himself for a bit longer before beginning again. “But anyway, yeah. Taylor’s cool, we’re just going to prom. Looking forward to prom.”

I laughed at Ryan’s unsubtle wrenching of the conversation away from his personal feelings. With nothing else really coming to mind to say, the conversation fell into an awkward lull, and Ryan pulled out his phone. Slowly, my gaze drifted away to stare vaguely across the commons. Prom… was coming up too, wasn’t it. Another thing for me to worry about, on top of AP exams and everything.

What was it Emily had said, in that text conversation I’d read? She was planning to dye her hair reddish purple or something. And get a dress to match.

…god, please let me not have to do that. I was already pushing myself enough trying to sort out and manage the rest of Emily’s shit; there was no way I was fucking doing that. I didn’t even know how to do that.

God, this is so annoying. This was like, the worst time to be dealing with all this Emily stuff. Even just trying to keep things on the rails like I was doing now… it was so much.

“Everything okay, Emmy?” Brie said, shaking me from my thoughts.

I blinked. “Huh? Uh, yeah, why?”

“You seemed, uh, lost in thought. Something on your mind?”

“Oh, uh, nothing important,” I said. “Just thinking about some stuff I have to get done.”

“Yeah?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“Mm.” I felt her squeeze my hand, running her thumb across the back of mine. I smiled, returning the squeeze. Her hand was really warm, and soft. And my hand was softer too. It felt different. But nice, I supposed.

Then without a word, she leaned over, placed her free hand on my cheek, and kissed me, quickly but sweetly, and I fucking melted.

Aaaaa—

“Pretty girl,” she whispered.

Aaaaaaahh.

She drew back, letting her hand fall gently down from my face. I opened my eyes, which I hadn’t realized I’d shut, and averted my eyes. Fuck, I hoped I wasn’t blushing too hard. Though judging from the heat in my ears, I probably was.

“You okay, Emmy?” she asked with a giggle. Yeah, I was definitely blushing like fucking hell right now.

Aaaaah. “…your hand smells like ginger,” I said finally.

“Wh—oh, well, excuse me, Emily!” Brie said with a peal of indignant laughter. “It does fucking not!”

“It kinda does.”

“No, it—how could you even have smelled my hand just then? 

“You said it yourself, that your hands smelled like ginger.”

“Last night! That was last night; they—” She quickly took a sniff of her palm. “Okay, yeah. I took a shower, I have normal human-smelling—bleh, normal-smelling human hands now.”

“What the hell are you two doing?” Ryan asked, not looking up from his phone, in a way that sounded like he didn’t actually particularly care to know the answer.

“Brie’s hands smell like ginger,” I said.

“Don’t listen to her, Ryan! She speaks only lies!”

“…if you say so.”

The minutes passed by, and I watched distractedly as the commons gradually filled up with their usual crowd. The buses were coming now, probably. Adrian and Natalie would be here soon. I couldn’t see the clock from here, but I could guess we had something like ten minutes or so more until class started. Then… seven and a half more hours of classes.

Oh. My history reading for tomorrow. I still needed to do that. And that calc assignment for Friday… the stuff for next week… and then fuck, I really needed to study for APs. And I didn’t even know where to begin with getting ready for prom. I’d have to figure that out…

I let my head fall onto Brie’s shoulder. So much frickin stuff to do.