Hanna Marin's eyes popped as she stared in a somewhat beserk fashion at her best friend, mouth gaping. "That's so not true!" She exclaimed.
"Do you want proof?" Aria Montgomery retorted, pulling a newspaper out of her backpack. "Look. Front page, Han. Now the whole world knows."
"Whole of Rosewood, anyway." Hanna grumbled, before skimming her eyes over the headline. "Well, we always knew he was a little bit nuts."
"Yeah, but not that nuts!" Aria said, shaking her head. "The school didn't, at least, for them to employ him."
"This is Rosewood High we go to, Aria. They would employ a beaver to teach science if it was willing to look to one side when Vice Principal Tamborelli takes his bribes."
"Too true, too true." Aria agreed. "Hey, there's Jane Bond. Let's go tell her the news!"
They were of course, referring to Spencer as she stepped in the school doors, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. It had been yet another long night for her. She was beginning to suffer from insomnia now, though it was nothing new. She'd mainly suffered from it in the days when A ruled her life with an iron fist. Lying awake, frustrated and worried, was not exactly a novel concept.
Hanna and Aria practically skipped to her side. "Did you hear about Mr. Hodge?" Aria gushed, flapping a paper in Spencer's face.
"Coffee." Spencer grunted firmly.
She pulled a warm flask out of her seemingly bottomless satchel, took a long swig from it, and gasped. "Right. Now I can begin the day. What was that?"
"Mr Hodge." Hanna reminded. "Did you read the newspaper this morning?"
"No." Spencer replied, and squinted at the newspaper which was thrust at her. The article blared "Runaway Teacher Fakes Qualifications." Her eyes widened in surprise.
"Turns out, like any reliable source in the town can now tell you," Hanna said in a business tone, scrunching the paper away, "Mr Hodge, the Science teacher, was actually a fake who was pretending to be a teacher to get cash."
"The psychopathic one who the guys nicknamed 'ScoobyBot'?" Spencer asked.
"That's the one." Aria smiled. "And you remember why they called him that, right?"
"Cause he liked to shut people in his closet until they could recite the periodic table?"
"Not only that-"
"Because he taught us how to say in French 'That man is touching me and I don't like it'?"
"I remember that, but no-"
"Oh! Because when all the teachers cups went missing, and we found them hidden beneath the sinks in his lab?"
"Yes, but the reason they called him it is because Noel Kahn and his buddies went rifling through his drawers one time and found one drawer completely filled to the brim with dog biscuits, and the other stuffed with broken CDs."
"Oh, yeah." Spencer nodded, remembering. "I need more coffee." She added, and wandered off towards the cafeteria.
Hanna and Aria dashed after her. "I want to conduct an experiment." Hanna said thoughtfully. "Spencer, would you mind volunteering?"
"Depends what it is." she replied.
"I want to see if, when I cut you, if your blood is brown or contains unnatural amounts of caffeine."
"Har-de-har-har." Spencer said wearily.
"Good one." Aria gave an appreciative grin to Hanna.
"I mean it." Hanna continued. "You drink about seven cups per day."
"It's a good amount. Keeps me awake."
Hanna sighed, so ending today's battle in the never ending "Trying To Stop Spencer Drinking So Much Coffee War". "You know what we haven't talked about lately? Boyfriends!" She giggled in a high-pitched voice.
Aria rolled her eyes with a smirk, whereas Spencer grumpily replied "If you do that Barbie impression one more time, I'm going to mash this flask against your head."
"No, seriously, we actually haven't talked about boyfriends in ages. Aria?"
"Ezra's great." Aria grinned. "Do you know, yesterday, I asked him how long I would last in the Hunger Games, and he said I was certainly final three material!"
"Awww!" Hanna cooed.
"He couldn't exactly say you'd die within the first minutes, Aria, you might have dumped him." Spencer remarked dryly.
"Well, Spencer, how long do you think I would have lasted?"
"Two minutes tops."
Aria scowled at her. "And why is that?"
"Because you'd panic. And when you panic, you tend to flail everywhere. And when that happens, on a highly explosive platform, you'd trip over and die instantly."
Hanna began laughing. Spencer turned to her. "However, you, Hanna, would get so preoccupied in choosing the bag of weapons which goes most with your outfit, in the initial bloodbath, that I doubt you would notice when a Career stabbed you through the back."
Aria began laughing this time as it was Hanna's turn to frown. "So true, so true." Aria muttered.
"You wouldn't last too long either, Spencer. Without your coffee you'd fall asleep in the middle of the killing field."
"And that, dear Hanna, is my tactic." Spencer replied with a characteristic crooked smirk. "Because everyone will think I'm dead. I'll wake up a couple of days later, find out where the last victor is, kill him or her and then be crowned champion. Therefore, Spencer is the victor."
"Can we get back to the conversation topic of boyfriends?" Hanna demanded. "Talked to Toby much lately?"
Spencer shook her head. "No, I've been busy."
"Every day?" Aria questioned, disbelieving.
"Pretty much."
It was the truth. She had been busy every day over the past three weeks. Because she had spent every day round at Emily's. As soon as lacrosse training finished, on Mondays and Thursdays, she'd changed, showered, made herself presentable, then hurried over to the Fields house. Even on Saturdays and Sundays, she found herself trekking up the stairs into Emily's room. Emily was never grateful to see her. She was either asleep or scowling. Yet Spencer felt so happy every time she opened the door and saw Emily's head on the pillow that she forgot the bouts of anger and violence Emily was now prone to.
Sometimes, now, she didn't understand it. Why she felt so compelled to go rushing for Emily's house as soon as she had spare time. Emily didn't need her, most of the time. Emily simply sat and watched or slept while Spencer talked about her day, did her homework, or scrolled through Facebook. And yet, Spencer found her quiet, if sometimes bursting out in anger, presence comforting. Thinking of that, she opened up her phone and began composing a new message. She was aware now that Emily had her phone beside her on the bedroom table at most times.
Hey, I'll be in late today because of more lacrosse. Mr. Hodge has left school. That's all of Hanna's gossip for now. See you soon- Spencer xx
She closed the phone and nearly jumped back, startled by Hanna's expectant looming face. "You were just texting him right then, weren't you?"
"No." Spencer said quietly, beginning to brew her coffee.
"Yes you were, admit it." Aria butted in. "We're your friends. We know when you're lying."
Spencer shook her head. "No, I was texting Emily."
She watched the pair's faces with intrigue. Aria's eyes immediately fell to the ground, and her shoulders rose and fell with a heavy sigh. A bolt seemed to slide shut behind Hanna's eyes, and she pursed her lips. "How is she?"
"No better." Spencer admitted.
"That's where you've been, hasn't it?" Aria said with a touch of desolation in her voice. "You've been going around to Emily's house, rather than seeing or talking to Toby."
Spencer knew exactly where this conversation was going, and so turned back to her coffee worldlessly. Aria and Hanna crowded around her. Hanna sighed, before beginning the usual lecture. "Spence, there's nothing you can do. The therapists know how to handle it better than you do."
"Mmm."
"You being there isn't going to help her, you know that, right? It might feel like you are but you're not. She just needs her Mom and the therapist at the moment."
"And who told you that little nugget of information, Aria?" Spencer fired.
Aria and Hanna exchanged a glance before Aria replied: "The therapist, course, he said we need to be there but not smother her."
Spencer could have laughed. The very same therapist who had decided that beautiful Emily, smiling Emily, the Emily who was always quick to defend everyone, who was confident and energetic and always sweet, needed happy pills to maintain herself. The pills that had caused Emily so much pain through their very presence. She breathed a sigh, twisted her mouth, and moved on. The conversation floated back to Mr Hodge's dismissal.
Spencer sat, watching Hanna and Aria make jokes about him, with a deep pang within her chest. She was constantly checking her phone, something she reprimanded herself on doing, because Emily never replied. "Craaaazy Mr Hodge!" Hanna remarked, and Aria smiled, yet Spencer couldn't bring herself to.
She never laughed now, whenever anyone mentioned crazy people. And that was most teenager's subject of choice for humour. She sat through their jokes, their taunts, their mockery. Hanna got asked so often if she was off her meds, due to her hyper, happy nature, that she brushed past the comments with a smile and a comeback. Spencer watched with a scowl, a clenched fist, and an image of a skinny, haunted Emily in her head, that would not fade for at least half an hour.
It was funny, because depression was said to be a sole disease. It sucked the happiness and the energy out of one person, and one alone. Spencer called that bullshit. Watching Emily twist from a sunny, smiling, wonderful friend into a dark, violent and listless individual had not only ripped her heart out, it had torn it to shreds and roasted it over a slow fire. She'd watched the one girl who had always brightened her darkest days, fade into the dark herself.
And it was ironic, how possibly the darkest one of their little posse, the leader, the detective, the determined, arrogant, overachiever, competitive one, had plunged into the dark to save the good, kind, sweet, sensitive one. Spencer could have laughed at it. Except she didn't do that much anymore.
And why was that? Because she was tired, tired of the pain, of seeing her best friend like this. And yet she kept returning to Emily's side, every day, just to check on her and talk to her. She wanted to ease Emily's pain. But, by doing that, she was transferring some of it into herself inadverdently. The bell interrupted her angry thoughts about insanity and irony, and she downed the rest of her coffee, and ambled into class.
Hanna and Aria didn't like to visit Emily. Aria was so emotional, as soon as she saw the admittedly troubling sight of a much skinnier and less healthy looking Emily lying in bed, she burst into sobs, and left the room. Hanna tried to cheer her up fruitlessly. She made her usual jokes and wisecracks, and seeing Emily being unresponsive threw her into a deep funk, where she tried and tried again to make her laugh, and failed, until she was too embrassed to even do anything.
It made sense that Spencer could stand seeing Emily, and helped her in the way she did. Because Spencer had what the others didn't- determination, an iron will, and the ideology of having to do her best in whatever she did. Sure, she could be empthatic when she wanted to be. That had accounted for the two times she'd broken down in front of Emily. Yet she wouldn't let those two times faze her. And that was what marked her apart from Hanna and Aria. That she wouldn't tell herself she could do nothing for Emily. That she wouldn't let herself give up.
Because to give up, would be to give up on Emily, to let her go and let her flounder in the darkness alone. Hanna and Aria had brushed the guilt off with the therapist "knowing what's best" and left it at that. Yet Spencer refused to do that, because she had the sole belief that Emily would get better. No matter what any therapists, friends, or family said, they couldn't change that belief. No one could.
The rest of school passed in a blur. Lacrosse was barely even noteworthy, it was so fast. Spencer found herself knocking on the Fields door once again. Yet this time, it was opened with a relieved smile from Mrs Fields. "Hello Spencer." She greeted this time, and for once, actually looked honestly glad to see her.
"Hello." Spencer replied, with an equal yet fake smile.
Mrs Fields invited her inside once again, and allowed her smile to split her face. "She took her pills!" She blurted, in a hushed voice.
Spencer had to take a step back. Emily had finally decided to swallow the pills she so detested? "Really?" She said, incredulously.
Mrs Fields nodded. "She finally let herself. I think she was just too tired to continue."
Spencer had no idea what to do or say. "That's great." She managed, and Mrs Fields looked ecstatic. "I'll go and s-see her now."
As she climbed the stairs once again, she almost felt excited, if apprehensive. It was all she could do to stop herself from running to the room and flinging the door open. She took a deep breath in and splayed her hands, closing her eyes in silent prayer, then opened Emily's door.
It was a sunny day. Light was filtering through the open windows into Emily's now-neat room. And she was awake. As Spencer entered the room with wide eyes, Emily put down the book she was reading, and smiled for the first time.
Yes, smiled. Smiled in a way which made Spencer go weak at the knees in the biggest cliché possibly. Smiled in a way which lit up her whole face into a radiant ball. Smiled in a way that brought gushing onslaughts of memory into Spencer's head, of better times, when Emily had smiled at Spencer's witty retorts and sarcastic comments. "Emily." Spencer choked.
"Hello, Spencer." Emily greeted, and tears came flooding into Spencer's eyes for the third time. She broke the eye contact and looked away, scrubbing her hand across her face.
"Spencer." Emily said again, demand in her voice now. Spencer held a finger up. "Spencer!" Emily said urgently.
Spencer shook herself and stood up, facing Emily now. Emily looked hugely concerned. "Spencer!" She shouted.
"Yeah, Em, I'm right-"
"Spencer, wake up!"
"What?"
And with a jolting rush, Spencer's eyes flicked open as Noel Kahn, in his typical boorish fashion, decided to wake her up by entangling his hands in her wavy hair and pulling it, hard. She yelled in pain, enough to startle him to let it go, but the damage was done. As his friends exploded in gales of laughter, reality came crashing back down to her. She'd fallen asleep in Maths.
Aria stared at her, both shocked and worried. "Spencer, are you-"
"Fine." Spencer spat, stood up, and worldlessly excused herself to the bathroom.
It felt so real.
Next chapter I'm thinking of doing sort of a song fic. No, not like you know it, more a song I believe describes how Emily is feeling, and the lyrics intermingled with her actions. It may be quite like a diary entry, and I'm excited to start working on it. Please keep reviewing, I've read everyone's reviews and the sweet ones make my day. Seriously. I LOVE YOU ALL! Can't believe this has 21 reviews already, it's nuts. Please feel free to tell me if you don't like something as well, and I will do my best to tidy it up or get rid of it in the next chapters!
PLEASE REVIEW. I LOVE READING YOUR REVIEWS. xx