Just as predicted, as soon as Emily walked into her house, her mom berated her with questions.

Emily answered with as much enthusiasm as a potato, but whatever. Her mom felt relieved her daughter had told her she already had friends.

The girl walked up to her room, and took off her clothes on the way to the restroom. A hot shower would fix how weirdly exhausted she felt. It was not like she had done much, but she just felt like too many new things had happened in one day, and her brain needed to shut up and relax.

Once, she'd got out, she made her way to bed, and played around with her phone. She didn't know whether or not she should text Hanna. What would she say?

She didn't want to sound clingy, or anything like that. Emily decided to just let it go, and text her tomorrow morning instead.

5 more minutes, no 10 more minutes of sleep was all Emily wanted. She hated mornings. It did not matter how early she went to sleep before, she always felt tired in the morning. The brunette was a night person, and there was nothing anyone could do about that.

Once Emily changed, she texted Hanna.

'Hey, I'm ready for school. Are you?'

Less than five minutes later Hanna responded.

'I'll be ready in 15.'

When she walked down the stairs, her mother had already prepared breakfast. "Emily! Sit down, and eat properly."

The tall girl, didn't have time. It takes her five minutes to get to Hanna's. That only leaves her 10 minutes to eat, so she has to eat in a hurry. "Mom I have to pick up Hanna. I have to eat quickly."

"Oh." Her mother smiled. "Well in that case, just this once," she pointed a threatening finger, "I'll let you eat like that, but after this you tell your friends you'll pick them up later or you can wake up earlier."

"Yes ma." Emily kissed her mother's cheek as she walked out the door, a chocolate chip pancake in her hand. Her mom had been married to a military man, what else could she expect?

Emily arrived at Hanna's driveway, and texted her to see if she'd be out yet. Minutes passed, and she still got no response. The brunette decided to go knock.

As soon as she was going to do so, the door opened and a very attractive woman with auburn hair greeted her. "Oh." She held up her hand to her chest, faintly scared. "I'm sorry, I'm in such a rush."

The woman extended her hand and Emily took it. "Sorry." Emily apologized sheepishly. "I'm…"

"Emily." Hanna called to her, appearing from behind the woman and stepping outside, closing the front door.

"Oh, you're the new girl." The woman had still not let go of her hand, or maybe Emily had still not let go…who knew.

"Yes."

Hanna decided to be the one to introduce the woman. "Emily, this is my mom." At that Emily dropped the woman hand, politely.

"Ashley Marin. Please don't call me Mrs. Marin, just Ashley." She turned to Hanna, "Well I have to go. See you for dinner, sweetie."

"Mom," Hanna whined at her mom's use of her endearment.

Emily only stood there smiling, slightly amused at Hanna's embarrassment.

"Nice to meet you Emily, and welcome to Rosewood."

"Nice to meet you too Mrs. M-," Emily corrected herself. "Ashley."

Hanna's mom walked away, and not until she got into her Benz did Emily turn around to greet Hanna. "Your mom is very uh," Emily was about to say hot, but once again she corrected herself. "Nice looking."

Hanna made a face, "Nice looking?" The blonde made her way to the brunette's car while talking louder so Emily heard her. "You better explain to me what you really meant."

The tall girl jogged to the car, since Hanna had already made her way there, strutting like a diva. She unlocked the car, and opened the door for her, closing it after Hanna settled in her seat. "Such a gentlelady." Hanna smiled cutely.

However, as soon as the brunette got to her side of the car and sat down, the blonde began reprimanding her again. "Emily, were you checking out my mom?"

Emily's eyes widened. She got nervous, which she hardly ever did. But this was her new friend, and this was a new town. She didn't want to weird out this girl that had so far been good to her. "No! Of course not." She shook her head vehemently. "That would be weird."

Silence fell over her, and she turned to see Hanna's reaction. She was met with Hanna's disapproving eyes, but she could swear she also saw amusement.

Emily started driving to school, and after a few minutes of silence Hanna spoke up, "She's pretty, I know." From the corner of her eye, Emily saw Hanna shrug. "She gets that reaction from guys all the time, but coming from a teenage girl…it's kind of weird."

All the brunette could do was nod, to show how sorry she was, and how wrong she had been. "I know. I'm sorry. I didn't know she was your mom."

She felt a sting on her arm. Hanna had slapped her arm hard. "So you were checking her out, you liar."

Emily grasped her right arm with her left hand and tried massaging it. "Ow. You psycho! Ok, I'm sorry. I didn't know she was your mom. Now that I know that, it's really weird. The moment you told me, I felt weird. Ok, so I'm sorry."

"Apology accepted." Emily looked at Hanna who was now looking sorry. "Besides it looks like that slap I gave you really hurt." The blonde put a soothing hand on Emily's arm, trying to massage away the pain.

"It did." Emily raised an accusing eyebrow towards Hanna, and then they both randomly started laughing loudly. It felt good to laugh, and most of all it felt natural.

"So..." Hanna started but didn't finish.

"So what Hanna? Let it out." Emily encouraged.

"Are you…you know." She tried to coolly shrug.

Emily still didn't follow Hanna's drift. "What?" Emily was beginning to get impatient. She had always been the most impatient when people were telling her something but didn't finish. Her curiosity would peak, and it drove her insane to not have that fulfilled.

"Into girls?"

"You mean gay, Hanna? You're asking me, if I'm gay? Because if that's the case, then yes I am." It taken the blonde long enough to ask, so Emily didn't want to leave doubt.

After a few seconds of silence, Hanna spoke up. "Oh okay," she nodded. Her tone, however, was awkward.

Emily was beginning to feel uncomfortable. She had not known Hanna long, but she had already made the assumption that she was a good person; she could be wrong. Maybe Hanna was a homophobe. Maybe she would be so uncomfortable that it would drive Emily away. The Californian could find other friends, no biggie, but she had already started liking Hanna and her friends. She had felt comfortable with them from the start. It would be a shame.

"Do you have a problem with that? Because if you're one of those girls that once they find out some girl friend of theirs is gay start saying 'As long as you don't stare' or" Emily began imitating what she considered to be a bimbo girls' voice, whenever she portrayed the straight girl. "'Just don't fall in love with me okay', or my favorite 'Have you ever wanted to fuck me?', then maybe we should break whatever friendship we've started. I don't have patience for that shit." Emily told Hanna straight up. She didn't want to jump to conclusions, but she didn't want to leave any wiggle room either.

Hanna started shaking her head furiously. "No. No, I never want you to think that's how I am. It's just you're like the first gay friend we'll have, and there aren't a lot of out gay people here. But please don't think I would be like those girls. I was just a bit shocked, because you're like a shiny Pokémon around here."

Emily furrowed her eyebrows in skepticism. "You watch Pokémon?"

"No! And that's not the point. It was a figure of speech."

"I think saying it was metaphorical would be more appropriate." Emily corrected.

A slap was heard when Hanna's hand made contact with Emily's arm again. "Could you shut up? That's not the point. The point is I am totally cool with you being gay, and I am positive that Spencer and Aria will have no problem either."

Emily started massaging her arm again. "You are very aggressive. You should work on that. Yoga?"

Hanna had been right. People stared at them both when getting out the car and heading to the school's entrance. Some looks were out of envy, and other's even friendly. Most, were just curious.

The girls met up briefly before heading to class. Spencer had asked her for her schedule, and it turned out she actually had Aria and Spencer for two classes. She had Spencer for history, and both of the girls, for English.

Yesterday, Emily had been so caught up on trying to not get anyone's attention by sitting in the last rows and avoiding eye contact, that she hadn't noticed the girls.

She didn't have Hanna for any class, but at least she had the others.

Every class had gone smoothly, she had just gotten out of History with Spencer and the girls where now making their way to English.

Aria was already there waiting for the girls, and unlike yesterday, Emily did not take the seat in the back and instead sat behind Aria while Spencer sat beside the petite girl.

Yesterday, the class had a substitute and today the teacher would be coming back. Not a minute later after Emily finished that thought did a 5 foot 6 gorgeous brunette walk in. "Who's that?" Emily asked to no one in particular.

"Ms. Zapata. Our teacher." Spencer raised an eyebrow.

"She looks young." Emily continued to stare at her.

"Not really. I mean she is young, but not too young. She's 32." Aria added.

"32?!" Emily raised her voice a little too much, and Ms. Zapata turned around. The two made eye contact and oh my God, she's stunning. Breath-taking. Which reminded Emily to breathe.

"Any louder?" Spencer raised her eyebrow. Again. The Hastings thought Emily was behaving a little too peculiar at that moment, and it intrigued her.

"She looks like… I don't know…21?" Emily tried to shrug off, and dropped the eye contact with her teacher.

"She's really pretty." Aria nodded in agreement, even though Emily never even said she was pretty, so why would Aria agree to that? The tall brunette wondered if the shorter girl was onto her.

"I wonder if the Queen will demand you kneel before her." Spencer said teasingly.

Emily was still too distracted, now enjoying the backside of her teacher, to see who had just walked through the door.

"Queen? What Queen?" Emily asked back, without out taking her eyes off the Latin beauty. That was, until Spencer lightly hit her forearm and made a motion towards the door with her head.

Emily followed, and saw none other than Alison DiLaurentis strutting in her expensive heels.

"Oh God." Emily let her head fall back in exasperation. "She's in this class?"

"What? Didn't you see her yesterday?" Aria asked.

Emily rolled her head forward to look at the shorter girl and shrugged. "I was too busy sitting in the back, and not trying to make eye contact with anyone. My blank notebook had never so interesting."

"Emily Fields?" Emily looked in the direction of the voice to find that it belonged to the body of her, already favorite, teacher of the year.

Emily stood up, and tried to play it cool, which she was really good at. Her Docs made a heavy sound on the floor, and she made sure to fix her leather jacket a bit while getting to the front desk. "Yea?" She asked nonchalantly, when on the inside she was trying not to act like a total fangirl. If hooking up with an extremely sexy teacher wasn't one of her top fantasies, she did not know what was.

"Hi." The woman smiled at her with straight, pearly teeth. Emily could feel warm already. "I'm Ms. Zapata." She extended her hand and Emily calmly took it. Oh my God, her skin is so soft. Emily tried to get her head together. Get a grip for fuck's sake. You're acting like a tween girl with a school-crush.

Emily let go of her hand the moment she realized she had been holding it for a second too long, and her teacher would start thinking she was creepy. "Hi." She smiled like a dork.

"Hi." Her teacher replied and cutely chuckled at Emily's awkwardness. Way to play it cool, Emily. Why did older women always make her so nervous?

"I suggest you come to my office later so I can give you all the assignments you can manage, and whatever is too much I can arrange in the form of some extra credit, or whatever may benefit you." Ms. Zapata's demeanor changed to a professional, but still friendly one. Now that Emily heard her speak more she could hear her vague Spanish accent, and damn she could not get any hotter.

"Yea sounds good. What room is it in?"

"41. What time are you free?"

Emily raised her shoulders. "Anytime."

"Okay. Is 3 o'clock fine?" Ms. Zapata gave her another dashing smile.

"Yes. I'll be there." Finally Emily managed to pull off a charming smile. She did not wait for her teacher's response and immediately walked toward her seat, but first she had to throw a glance at Queen DiLaurentis.

She found Alison to already be staring at her with neither a look of animosity nor curiosity, it was a blank look. Somehow that bothered Emily just a tiny bit.

It would be a lie to say she did not like getting a rise out of the Queen of Blondes.

Emily smiled to herself as she looked away from Alison's gaze, and missed the 'what the fuck' look Alison threw her way after the blonde thought the brunette might have found something about her to be amused about.

All the youngest DiLaurentis could think about was that this new girl needed to be turned down a peg. Nobody made fun of Alison DiLaurentis. And further more, nobody looked so smug about it afterwards. No, Alison let this girl get away with it yesterday, but if she didn't stop her now, the Californian would make herself at home. This wasn't her home; this was Alison's.

And she'll be dammed if she did not have this girl crying mercy before the week ended.