Capturing the Moments

7. emily's idea and the look on his face.

At first, when the idea had come to me, I hadn't thought much of it and just dismissed it as a plan that was sure to fail and get me no further than I was. Though throughout the week, with all the posters and leaflets circulating literally everywhere, I had found it very hard not to let it slip into mind every now and again. And then I guess while I was in the midst of one of those moments, Emily caught me off guard and quizzed me about my absent-minded and ‘somewhere-over-the-lala-land-rainbow-and-beyond’ behaviour lately.

I knew she was worried and that I was only being hot-seated because she loved and cared for me, her best friend – but I must say, her way of showing her compassion sure was a heck of a way to do it. And to be perfectly honest, I would say it was definitely one way to send me to an early grave.

Anyway, as I had been saying, the idea was nothing but a mere thought floating through my head at the most random of times. I had honestly at the time not expected to make anything of it. Or at least I had thought so until Emily had pressured me into spilling the beans...about everything.

From that point onwards, she had been bugging me nonstop and there was no way I could actually shake her off at school because we more or less had the same lessons, and then neither could I do that at home because of the whole ‘dating-your-brother’ fiasco. It escalated to a point where my shadow-of-a-best-friend had me hiding in bathrooms, closets and where ever else was big enough to fit me. However much to my dismay, she caught wind of that soon enough, and then before you knew it, she was freaking on point waiting for me with prepared snacks and everything. It was creepy to say the least – actually no, that would be a total understatement.

But at the end of the day, there was only so much psycho-stalker-best-friend behaviour one could endure. I guess I could say I was proud that I managed to last that long without throttling her with barbed wire – bestie or not. Rather unfortunately, my lucky streak had ended on a scary-slash-angry-slash-insane note.

It had been on one rather late night when I had returned from that small, isolated cornfield, which I usually went to for a bit of peace of mind. I had ended up accidentally staying there longer than intended as I had ended up getting a little carried away – though I didn’t mind at all. I had been very calm, serene maybe even, and quite deeply in thought.

So deep in fact, I hadn’t noticed her sleeping in my bed until I was literally sitting right on top of her. Of course at the time I hadn’t been any wiser as to who was snoring away in my bed, so I reckon all my actions had been quick reflexes which were the result of being scared shitless, and giving Emily a spare key to our front door.

Never in my seventeen years of existence had I ever – ever – jumped so high up in the air because I was so frightened. Seriously, with the height at which I jumped, I could have freaking made the Olympics. That was how high I went. Don’t even get me started on the head-splitting scream I had let out. I was pretty sure my neighbours – no, everybody within about five hundred mile radius heard me loud and clear.

My heart had been erratically slamming against my ribcage as if it were trying to fly out of my chest and away from who I hadn’t known at the time was Emily, napping in my bed. My formerly peaceful mind had been, in such sort notice, hurled into a pool of incoherent and frantic thoughts.

I’m going to die. Was the only out of all of them that actual made sense, and no doubt managed to scare me shitless. I’m all alone at home, with a stranger, who I’m pretty sure, isn’t here just for tea and biscuits. I’m going to freaking die.

It was safe to say that the terror I was feeling had completely clouded up my better judgement. If I had somewhat kept my head about my person, I would have realised that nobody – no matter how stupid – would actually have a nice little kip in the house they broke into. Maybe then I would have stopped screaming profanity and looking around frantically for some kind of weapon. However, knowing me, I was too far gone in fright to work that out.