Chapter 8

Bakersville Elementary, 1999

***

“Can I have lunch here, Miss Phoebe?” Emily said. Miss Phoebe looked sadly over at her and nodded.

She had gone to the teacher’s lounge during the lunch break, when everyone else was having lunch in the cafeteria. She had been going for the past week, because she couldn’t eat at the cafeteria anymore. And it was all because of Gabriel.

She settled into a seat next to the window and opened her lunchbox. Her mother had packed the green grapes again. She didn’t like them. She always gave them to Gabriel who gave her the red ones instead, the ones he didn’t like but she loved.

She wondered if they would ever be friends again.

It had all started when Gabriel decided to become one of the popular kids. Emily had supported him even when she knew that it was a bad idea. She knew it would end badly. She just didn’t know that it would end badly for her. The first and most obvious step for Gabriel to become popular was to stop hanging out with Emily. She was the one who suggested it.

It hurt her a bit when Gabriel agreed with it immediately. He went to Miss Phoebe and asked to switch seats. It worked like a charm because the other kids asked to play with him during recess. The next step was to stop reading during Reading Time, and he started shooting spitballs at Emily, who was now the only person in the whole class who read during Reading Time.

Gabriel became popular in a week. Emily was right. It came so easily for him. She was happy for him. She had to be, given that she was the one who encouraged him to do it. It wasn’t all that bad, though, because they hang out at home. she looked forward to evenings. They didn’t walk home together anymore, and she had to wait to hear him downstairs.

She couldn’t go to his house because he’d joined various clubs so she wasn’t sure if she could find him. More than that, she wasn’t sure when his friends were coming over and she didn’t want to spoil anything for him. They would hang out just like old times. They would read comics, do their homework together and play board games. She liked that he had decided to be popular but still stay on top of his school work.

The time felt short but she treasured it regardless.

It had been two weeks since Gabriel became popular. It was a school day but she couldn’t go because she was running a fever. Terry had already called the school and had given her some medicine and put her to bed. She slept through the day until she was woken up by a soft knock at her door.

“It’s me,” Gabriel whispered as he walked into her room, “your mum said I could come in for a little while but I’m not supposed to make you play.” Emily sat up in her bed and smiled at him. He laughed and she looked at him quizzically.

“I didn’t know I had retainers,” he said, pointing to her mouth.

She was immediately embarrassed. She hadn’t realized she had her retainers in, but of course she did, given that she had slept in the whole day. She removed them quickly. They spent the rest of the evening reading and he caught her up on what had happened in school that day, and as she walked him to the door, she couldn’t help but feel uneasy. She just didn’t know why.

Her unease made sense when a day later she got to school and realized that the other kids whispered in each other’s ears when she walked past. She wasn’t sure what was going on but she didn’t need to wait too long to find out. She was sitting alone at a table during the lunch break, having her lunch when she felt a crowd of kids surround her.

“We heard you sleep in retainers,” one of the kids said and the rest of them laughed.

Emily was shattered. She looked through the crowd to see if she could spot Gabriel but he was nowhere to be found.

She sat through a full half hour of being taunted and teased, being called an Ugly Duckling and other mean things that only mean kids could say. By the time the lunch break was over she had cried herself into a fit of hiccups. She went to the nurse’s office and asked if she could be allowed to go home early. Her mother was called and came to school immediately. On the ride home, she cried even more. She cried to her heart’s content.

“Is everything okay?” Terry asked when she had driven into their garage and given her some time to calm down.

“Gabriel told the other kids in school that I use a retainer. They’ve made fun of me the whole day,” Emily said as she broke down into another fit of tears. Terry sighed deeply. She didn’t know what to say to her daughter.

“Should I tell Gabriel he can’t come over anymore?” she asked, hoping that it was at least something.

“I don’t think he will. Our friendship is over now,” Emily said as she jumped out of the car and ran into the house. She refused to come out for dinner even when her Dad tried to coax her with her favorite brownies.

She spent the whole night crying, but when the next day came, she was out of tears.

She decided that she wasn’t going to cry over Gabriel and the rest anymore. She decided that she had been doing well before him, and she would do even better now that they were no longer friends.

She went to school and held her head high as she walked to her seat, and she ignored all the whispers. She knew she couldn’t eat at the cafeteria for a while so she asked Miss Phoebe if she could eat at the teacher’s lounge for a few days. Things would go back to normal, she knew.

And when they did, she would never think about Gabriel again. He was dead to her.