You're shaking still; more than a full day later, you can't stop shaking.
It just had to be a rat.
Most people don't know that your little brother left food in his bedroom constantly when you were 12. And most people don't know that you were the one to find the rat nest in his closet when you went looking for a board game, and that they were everywhere, with their long tails and claws and... ugh. Of course it was a rat.
The implication is obvious. You're a rat now.
But Emily asked you and you can't turn Emily down. Because she looks at you with her almond shaped eyes, eyes you could (and would, and did) get lost in. And even though you feel her pulling away, so willingly trapped in Ali's manipulative orbit again, you can't help but to hold on even tighter. To give her everything she asks for, to be there for her, a port in this turbulence she can't seem to escape.
So of course you tell her about Mona and Lucas and Melissa, and then you find a rat in your locker, and now you can't stop shaking.
You check your phone; fortunately you haven't gotten any texts from A, or any other unidentified numbers. But you have gotten a new missed call, and a voice mail. From Emily.
"Hey, Paige…it's me. I heard what happened to you in the locker room."
You wish her voice didn't make your breathing hitch every time. And you wish that the way she says your name didn't make your heart want to simultaneously stop beating and double its pace.
"I should have called you sooner. I'm sorry if this was because of what you told me about Mona, which I think it was. I'm sorry I put you in the middle of all this."
You can't begrudge her anything and somehow, although you try, you can't blame her for this. You'd like nothing more than to blame her; to say she put you in this position, took advantage of how you still feel for her, and then you could let it all go. At least it would hurt less. But you just can't.
You'd rather see Ali left to the wolves, but then, you'd tried that once. Hadn't worked out great for you or for Emily. But to hear Emily apologize, to hear her put you first, for the first tiny moment since Ali came back... you can't stop the feeling that your heart is swelling and ready to burst.
"If you need anything, please call me. Listen, even if you don't need anything, just call. Please."
You almost don't want to call her back. You're conditioned now to feel the hope, the way it uncoils right under your sternum and wraps around your heart every time you see her in the halls, every time you see her smile around the pool or she says your name. But too many times now, that hope has knotted back up, dropped to the pit of your stomach, and sat there like a weight holding you down to the planet. But there it stays. It never fully disappears. And as long as Emily is around, you have a funny feeling it never will. Calling her back might send that little twist of hope spiraling back to your stomach, tying you down to another day waiting to hear her voice.
But she asked you to call. If you need something, and even if you don't. And you won't pass up an opportunity to call Emily, to dial those familiar numbers on your phone, to hear her voice and know she's thinking of you.
"Okay. I love-"
Stop. Hold your breath.
"I- I'd love to hear from you. I hope you're alright. Bye."
Exhale.
The message ends. You save it, of course. The hope rises into in your chest and roars like a wave in a hurricane. There will be no coming back from this one; it will not be silenced.
You don't want to give words to this feeling; but you can't help it. At the best of times, your resistance to the kind of hope Emily can create in you is weak and halfhearted. And now, it might as well not exist at all. It takes only a second for your defenses to crumble and for you to feel the hope spread from your chest outward, filling you, and it's like you can breathe again for the first time in years. You're not shaking anymore.
It might not mean much, what Emily said on the phone. But the hope in your chest says something different. It might not mean much, but it might mean everything.