DISCLAIMER: Sadly, I am not fortunate enough to own Degrassi or any of its components.
Ellie's writer's block was getting to her today more than ever before. When Ashley knew about her cutting the first time around, she suggested writing to Ellie as a safe, constructive form of getting her feelings out and bringing order to all of the chaos. While she never showed anyone, Ellie had taken Ashley's advice and accumulated a more or less extensive collection of poetry or even just scribbles when she was feeling a deep emotional void, which was pretty often.
But today was different. Ellie nervously tapped her pen on her desk so many times that it wore in a small notch. Her head began to pound with the feelings that swarmed her brain. Living back with her mom, her break up with Sean, her feelings of distance from Marco and even Ashley, missing her dad while he was away – all of the usual things with an added pressure. Every time she thought of what she said to Paige, her stomach turned. She was partly angry at herself for opening up to someone she usually went to great lengths to avoid. She partly felt vulnerable at the amount of information she had shared with someone she barely knew. But she mostly felt uneasy, not having any idea what to expect. Paige probably didn't even hear her, too worried about what her asshole of an ex-boyfriend had done or said.
Ellie tugged at the rubber bands on her wrist, snapping them frantically until she couldn't take it anymore. She reached into her dresser drawer and found her exacto-knife.
Suddenly... the phone rang.
Maybe it was Ashley with that "best friend intuition." Or Marco maybe. Anyone she could talk to. When her Caller ID read "Michalchuk," Ellie rubbed her eyes. Maybe Marco was at Dylan's...? No... Dylan was at school. Before it was too late, Ellie answered the phone.
"Hello?"
"Um, hi, can I talk to Ellie, please?" Paige's voice asked, for once quiet and intimidated.
"Speaking, who is this?" Ellie inquired, as if she didn't already know.
"Oh, hi, El, this is Paige."
Ellie swallowed hard. "Hi," she said, making an already uncomfortable tone reach a new level of awkwardness. "Why are you – is there something I can do for you?"
"No, I was just – you know – calling to... see how you are," Paige said, Ellie still surprised at how meek the normally outgoing Paige sounded.
"I'm fine. You know, just the usual stuff. Getting settled in back at home after the break up," Ellie said, barely believing she actually just said that. It was such personal information, and deep down she wanted Paige to know.
Paige's breath became shallow and she sniffled a few times. Ellie listened carefully to realize that Paige was starting to cry, desperately trying to hold back her tears. She tried to get a positive sentence out, but instead she blurted out, "Why? Ellie, why?"
Ellie's mind trailed back to the first time she met Paige in Media Immersion class. She remembered how beneath her she felt, and how Paige carried an air of confidence that rivaled her own. But that was the thing – Paige's confidence was real while Ellie's was just a front so that no one could see how scared and insecure she really was; so that no one could look in her eyes and see under her sleeve. Survival was the key, regardless of who she had to battle to "stay alive." From that first day in the M.I. lab, she knew that she wasn't on Paige's good side, and while she never told anyone, if she could, she would have gone back in time and changed her behavior that day, mindlessly complying with Paige's request for Ellie to move – and she would have done it with a smile. But she didn't. Just the previous day, they were throwing their usual verbal punches. What was Paige trying to pull? Ellie wasn't going to allow herself to be hurt by someone who had a strange power to destroy her more than most.
"Do you really want to know, Paige? Huh? Where is this coming from? This sudden concern over my well-being. Do you expect me to sit here on the phone with you, which by the way is our first conversation since I met you in grade 9, and go into an in-depth explanation about why I cut and why my life sucks? Is that what you want?"
"No," Paige began, making Ellie feel as if she had been punched in the stomach. "I want you to meet me at Finale. It's a cafe down the street from Riverdale Rest Home. It's small, quiet, and no one from school goes there. If you're not going to talk about this, you at least have to listen to what I've got to say. Okay?"
Ellie was quiet for several moments. She first paused to picture the location in which Paige was talking about, but then realized what Paige had actually just asked. She cleared her throat. "Okay. Fine. But Paige, I swear – if this is some joke that you and Hazel are trying to pull..."
Ellie was interrupted with a choked up response from Paige. "Ellie – I would never do that."
Ellie felt her pale cheeks redden as Paige's emotional affirmation sent the blood flowing through her system again. "I'll meet you in an hour."
