Spencer's POV
Next Day
"When's Robbie supposed to get here?" Hanna whined leaning up against my locker.
"Soon, it's just barely 7:30 Han." I snapped before realizing, "Sorry, I didn't get much sleep last night."
"I don't think any of us did." Emily said before putting her hand on my shoulder, but her eyes disclosed just how tired she was too.
We had been standing at my locker for what seemed like forever, just waiting to see the present that Robbie would bestow upon us. I still thought that it was fishy how she gets here and on day one A is already messing up around her. A had always been so careful, so why would they mess up now?
Robbie has got to be a part of A.
"There she is." Aria stated pointing out the tall body in the crowd.
"Finally." Hanna rolled her eyes.
"Hey, Robbie, over here." Emily said before taking a drink from her water bottle.
Is Emily nervous?
"Hey Emily, Aria." Robbie smiled at both of them before turning to me and Hanna.
Wow, she's got a nice smile.
"Hi, I'm Robbie, I'm pretty sure that I have both of y'all in English, and I think I have you in my honors Russian History class, right?" She remarked reaching out her hand.
"Indeed you do, I'm Spencer, and this is Hanna." I smiled before shaking her hand briefly.
"So I believe you have something for us?" Hanna slurred slightly putting her hand out.
"For y'all? I thought it was just Paige's phone." Robbie asked with a quizzical look on her face.
"Yes, it is. It's Paige's phone." Emily cut in giving Hanna a stern look.
"Alright, alright. I'll get it." Robbie said before rummaging in her pockets.
I watched as she lifted her shirt up just enough that I could see some of her toned muscles and I could feel my heart starting to beat fast.
What was I staring at?
Before I knew it Robbie was handing the phone over to Emily.
"Thanks, I appreciate it." Emily smiled as her hand brushed against Robbie's.
"No problem. I'll you ladies in class then." Robbie stated before winking at Emily and turning to walk to her locker.
At the exchange I could feel my cheeks getting warmer. I turned to look into my locker, pretending to be searching for a notebook. What was coming over me?
"So who wants to keep it for now?" Aria questioned, sounding a bit far from me.
I could see it now. Robbie liked Emily. I mean, why wouldn't she? She's beautiful and openly gay. I'd like her too if we hadn't been friends for forever. I don't blame Robbie. But my god, she was attractive, and she seemed nice enough. How could I have said that Robbie was a part of the A team.
"Spence?" Emily said before shaking my shoulder slightly.
"Hm? Yeah? Sorry, I just got lost in thought." I stuttered closing my locker and turning to the girls.
"Well, do you still think Robbie is a part of the A team?" She questioned crossing her arms over her chest.
"You thought Robbie was a part of A?" Aria asked a bit harsh.
"Well, I just thought it was odd that on her first night here she just happened to get something from A, without even knowing who A is." I muttered, "But no, I don't think so anymore."
"Well, good. Because I don't think she is either." Emily said before relaxing.
Right then we heard the bell ring and made our way to class. Hanna was staggering behind me, clinging to the wall. Emily and Aria walked slightly in front of me talking with each other about the phone silently. And then there was me, thinking about Robbie. Tall, fit, hot Robbie.
This will be a long day.
—
Hanna's POV
After Class
The hall walls were spinning so fast I didn't think I could keep myself up right. The faces of my friends spun around me like a carousel, and they never slowed down.
Maybe I took it too far this time.
"Han, you okay?" I heard a voice say from far off. It kind of sounded like Spencer's but I couldn't be sure.
"Better than ever." I smiled looking in the general direction of the voice. It was indeed Spencer who asked.
Then I felt hands on my shoulders, keeping me steady. They were warm, and big for a girl. Was it even a girl's pair of hands? It didn't seem like it, they were much too strong to be any of my friend's hands. I followed the hands up to a familiar face and saw Caleb.
"Hey baby." I slurred, smiling like an idiot.
"Hanna, are you okay?" He asked, his voice full of concern, "You're walking like a drunken sailor along his deck. What's wrong?"
"Oh nothing baby, I'm just feeling good." I cooed, leaning into him, "You smell good."
"Alright, Hanna, it's time to go home. You can't go to class like this." Caleb stated as he pushed me to look him in the eyes.
"If you say so, baby." I smiled, leaning against the wall behind me.
The next thing I knew, Caleb had grabbed my bags and my elbow and started walking towards the front of the school. We made our way slowly out the doors and towards my car.
"Where are your keys?" He asked turning to me with his hand out.
I handed him the keys after fumbling in my pockets for a minute. He turned and opened the back door and threw my things on the floor before helping me in and laying me down on the seat. Finally he got into the drivers side and started up the car and peeled out of the parking lot.
"Did you drive here like this?" Caleb asked, sounding a bit mad.
"Why do you sound mad?" I slurred.
"Because, Hanna, you're tanked and you were at school. Not to mention if this happened before you got to school, you drove drunk." Caleb snapped.
"Baby, I'm fine. I'm not impaired and I didn't hurt anyone. It was fine. Not like I live that far anyways." I stated, trying to sound sober.
"It's not fine Hanna." Caleb said lowly, "It's not safe. What has gotten into you?"
"Nothing! I just want to be able to relax. Can you get off my back, dad?" I yelled.
Right as I said that we made it to my house, and being angry enough I got myself out of the car without a problem. I made my way up to the front door and inside before slamming the door. As Caleb came in, I turned and glared at him unrelenting.
"Give me my keys and get out." I demanded, putting my hand out.
"What?" He asked incredulous.
"I said, give me my keys and get out of my house. I don't want to deal with you right now." I stated, crossing my arms over my chest.
"Han—" He started, but was interrupted by my hand grabbing the keys out of his hand.
"Out. Now." I pointed towards the door. He looked down and sighed before turning and heading towards the door.
After he went through the door and closed it, I crumbled onto a stool and sat there staring at the floor. What was his deal? I was fine. Besides, he started this whole drinking thing, and now that he's staying sober he thinks he can get all high and mighty with me? Just because I love him it doesn't give him the power over me.
Power over me.
With recent events, I've learned that I hate not having control. I hate living for someone else, making sure I do everything right.
As I was sitting there I felt my phone vibrate, and fished it out of my pocket. What I saw made my blood boil.
"Looks like your relationship is on the rocks, much like your drink. -A"
"Fuck you!" I yelled at my phone. It wasn't even a threat, it was A taunting me. They were reminding me that I don't live my life unless they tell me to. I was a circus monkey and they were the ring master.
I'm so done.
—
Robbie's POV
After School
It had been a long day at school, I could feel myself going insane as I went from one class to another. One boring class filled with lectures that cause my IQ to decrease substantially. Not to mention all the people that utilized their time to make themselves look like complete asses. High school was my form of hell, because there was too much structure to it.
If I wanted structure, I'd join the military.
Then there was Paige McCullers. Every time I made my way to the next class or even to my locker, she'd glare at me. I swear if looks could kill, I'd be dead. I can understand why though, it's not like I was very subtle flirting with her girlfriend and I was wrong for that. I should apologize.
As I made my way towards my locker, I caught a glimpse of Paige kissing Emily good bye and I could feel my heart twinge within my chest.
I need to bury these feelings.
I reached my locker and started to put my things away when I suddenly got shoulder checked, and dropped everything. I looked up to see my bully, and saw the face of Paige smirking over her shoulder as she made he way to the pool. I then looked the other way and saw Emily's face filled with sympathy.
She walked over to me and bent down to help my pick up the rest of my books.
"Feels like we've done this before." I chuckled, looking up into her luminescent eyes.
"I think we may have." She whispered, smiling softly as she handed me my things.
"Thank you. You know, I think I may need to go apologize to Paige for..well you know." I said staring straight into her eyes.
"I think that could do some good." She smiled, placing a hand on my shoulder. I could feel my knees go weak to the touch. I shifted my weight and tried to shake off the feeling. I needed to bury these feelings.
"I'll go now, to get it over with. Besides, I'm going to practice some swimming so that I don't look like a total loser." I joked, nudging her so that she'd laugh a little bit.
"Alright, I'll probably be in the gym in half an hour or so, I have to go work on something for English that I missed a while ago." She stated, "I'll see you then? Maybe I can help you."
"That'd be great." I smiled.
"Then I'll see you soon." She said softly before turning to go. After I saw her turn the corner, I grabbed the swimsuit that I had brought and made my way towards the gym.
When I walked into the gym, I looked around and immediately saw Paige in the corner facing the wall. It looked like she was a bit huddled within herself. As I made my way over to her, however, I noticed that she wasn't huddled within herself, she was wrapped around a short brunette. I could see the brunette's hands roaming Paige's body above her shirt, stopping short of Paige's backside.
So here's your dirty little secret, Paige. How disgusting.
"Paige?" I declared to her back, "What the hell are you doing?"
I watched as her body froze and went rigid. She took her hands away from the hips of the other girl and slowly turned towards me with a hard scowl on her face. She took a step towards me and clenched her fists.
"What are you doing here?" She growled, taking another step towards me.
"I could ask you the same thing, buddy. I came to apologize for flirting with your girl, but that doesn't seem to matter to you as much as I thought." I retorted, standing where I started and not backing down.
The next thing I knew, she was running at me and shoving me backwards. I stumbled back a few steps but stood up straight and held a strong stance. I hadn't been ready for the first one, but I wasn't going to go down easily. I didn't learn how to defend myself for nothing.
The second I stood up she came barreling at me again, full force of her legs and body weight slamming against mine. I heard something crunch, but couldn't tell if it was from me or her, and next thing I knew I was surrounded by water.
Shit.
My head was still submerged when I felt her hand clamp down on my skull, pushing it further down. I could feel my body on the verge of panic, not being able to breathe was causing me to lose focus on what needed to be done. Too many factors were playing into this situation. As her hand push me down, I grabbed hold of her other hand and pulled the pinky backwards to get her to relinquish my head. I heard a muffled yelp from above water and her hand pulled back quickly.
I took advantage of that second to push my feet against the bottom of the pool and resurface. When I made it to the top I had a split second to breathe before I felt her hand on my throat lifting me slightly before plummeting me back into the water.
The hell was this girls problem?
As I struggled underneath the weight of the water and her combined, I attempted to reach for any part of her body. I could feel my lungs starting to lose air and scrambled to get a hold of anything. She wasn't letting up and spots were showing up in front of my eyes.
I can't let her win.
Finally my hand made contact with her belt buckle and I pulled my body closer to hers, wrapping my leg behind her knee cap and pulling. This caused her to lose her footing and start to tumble backwards, pulling me above the surface and her below. I gasped for air desperately and heard a voice yelling to my left. Before I could look to see who it was I was pulled back under and caught under Paige's body. Suddenly she stopped what she was doing and let up her grip. I pushed to the top again and swam a few feet away from her. She had stopped and was staring behind me with a terrified look on her face.
I looked in the direction she was looking in and saw Emily. She had tears streaming out of her eyes and her bag was on the floor.
"What the hell is going on?" She asked desperately towards the two of us.
I took a quick look at Paige and then turned to pull myself out of the water. As I lifted I could feel a pain sear through my abdomen. Apparently that crunching sound did come from me.
"Nothing, Em. Nothing, we were just..we were just playing around." Paige stuttered, stumbling over her words as she mustered up a small smile, "Right, Robbie?"
"If broken ribs and broken hearts is what playing around is, you sure do a lot of it." I gasped as the pain tore through my body again.
"What do you mean broken hearts?" Emily shot at me, still standing rigidly a few feet away.
"Care to explain Paige? Since this is your doing. Or how about you, Ms.?" I said, looking from Paige to the mystery girl who had witnessed the whole fight, "What is your name anyways?"
"Harleen.." She whispered, looking down quickly, and then looking back at Emily, "And I didn't know about you two being a thing."
"Wh-what do you mean?" Emily cried, tears forming in her eyes again as she looked at Paige, "You..you cheated?"
"Emily, baby, listen to me. It meant nothing, I was going to end it today." Paige started before I interrupted.
"Your lips were in fact busy, but it wasn't with breaking it off." I scoffed.
"You shut your fucking face." I heard from the pool before I heard splashing as she made her way towards me. I stood up as quickly as I could, only half aware of the pain as I took a few steps back.
"Stop it! Paige, back off!" Emily half yelled half begged. Tears were flowing freely from her eyes and Paige stopped as soon as she heard Emily. Before anything else could be said, Emily took off out of the gym and down the hall.
"Em, wait!" Paige yelled after her trying to get out.
"No, you stay here, you've done enough. I'll go talk to her." I demanded staring at Paige.
As I attempted to run towards the gym doors, my the pain in my ribs started up again and I doubled over for a minute to get some composure. After grabbing onto my ribs I stumbled out the doors to the hallway and saw Emily crumbled on the floor.
"Em?" I shouted as I ran towards her. "Emily?"
When I got to her rigid body, I saw that her face was contorted in pain. She was gripping her sides and moaning, biting on her tongue to the point it could start to bleed.
"Hey, sweetie, what's wrong?" I asked putting my hands on the sides of her face to get her too look at me. From behind me I could hear a classroom door opening and saw a young teacher looking down at me.
"What's wrong?" He asked, filled with concern, "What's going on, Emily?"
"Call an ambulance." I threw over my shoulder, "Or the hospital and tell them she's coming in with severe abdominal pain."
"Coming in? Don't you think the paramedics will do that?" He asked, unsure of what I meant.
"I'm taking her in, which way is the hospital?" I declared as I picked up Emily's pain ridden body and held her close to me.
"Let me just call the ambulance." The young teacher panicked, before the gym doors opened.
"Em?" I heard from a soft voice behind me.
I didn't take the time to tell Paige what was going on before I booked it for the front of the school. I made my way out of the parking lot and down the street, before I saw the sign for the hospital. It was a mile up the road and to the left, I could do this. I picked up my pace, running as fast as I could towards the tall building. For some reason, the sidewalk was packed full of pedestrians today, making it hard for me to run straight down the sidewalk. I looked down at Emily, and saw that her eyes were rolling back into her head and she was ghost white.
"Hey, stay with me beautiful. You gotta stay awake okay? Do that for me?" I whispered into her ear while I ran.
I finally reached the hospital and began yelling for someone to get me a bed. I was soon surrounded by mint green scrubs of nurses asking me what was going on and what happened before taking Emily and putting her on a bed.
"She caught me and her girlfriend in a fight. Then she found out her girlfriend was cheating, she ran out of the gym and that's when I found her curled in a ball on the floor. It looked like she was in so much pain. I couldn't wait for an ambulance, I had to bring her here." I rambled as they took her into the restricted zone, and I saw her phone drop.
"We'll take good care of her, and let you know what goes on." The nurse reassured, putting her hand on my shoulder and squeezing it a little.
When the nurse walked away, I made my way over to where her phone dropped and picked it up. As soon as I did it dinged in my hand and I noticed a text from an unknown number.
"Are you sorry yet? -A"
Who the hell was A? And what did they mean by that? Did someone do this to Emily? I looked around the room, trying to see if I saw anyone who looked a bit off. No one looked like they were out of place. The waiting room was filled with distraught faces, some of siblings and others of friends. I made my way towards an empty chair in the corner and looked through Emily's contacts to see if I could get ahold of her mother.
I clicked on the contact named "Mom" and put the phone to my ear, listening to it ring and waiting.
"Hello, Mrs. Fields, my name is Robbie Young and I'm a friend of your daughter's. I don't know if you've gotten a call from the hospital yet, but Emily was admitted just ten minutes ago. She was having severe abdominal pain that caused her to collapse, and before I had time to think I ran her here." I rambled, without taking a breath until the end.
There was silence on the other end of the line before I heard keys moving and a voice saying they'd be there in a few minutes.
As I sat and waited, I called up each of her friends and told them the exact same thing. It wasn't long before the waiting room filled with Emily's friends and mother. When her mother walked in, I stood up and extended my hand towards her.
"Mrs. Fields, it's nice to meet you, however under the circumstances, I wish it wasn't this way." I said curtly shaking her hand briefly.
"Have the doctors said anything at all?" She asked quickly with worry in her eyes.
"No, not since I brought her in here. But since I'm not family I doubt they'd tell me." I stated, looking down briefly at the floor. Mrs. Fields then turned on her heel and made her way towards the nurses' desk.
As she was talking, I walked over to the three other girls who all wore the same distraught face.
"What the hell happened?" The blonde demanded.
"I don't know, I found her on the floor in the hallway gripping her sides for dear life." I ranted looking at her through the hair that had fallen over my eyes. Suddenly I was fully aware of my soaking wet clothes that were sticking to my body, and my hair that was covering my forehead and much of my sight.
I bet I look beautiful.
I began telling the story and watched as each girls face went from worry to anger in a matter of seconds.
"And then, she got this text from someone named A." I mentioned, pulling out her phone and showing the girls.
I watched as their faces went completely white, and the taller brunette snatched the phone out of my hand.
"Did you read this?" She snapped shaking the phone at me.
"Yes, I did." I stammered, not quite sure why they were mad at me, "Who is it?"
"None of your concern." Spencer replied quickly, shoving the phone into her pocket.
I looked at Aria, who hadn't said a thing at all and she looked down quickly.
"Are you okay, Aria?" I whispered.
"I'm scared for Em." She whispered back, not taking her eyes off the floor.
Not knowing what else to do, I took a step forward and wrapped my arms around the small brunette. As soon as I did, I could feel her body start to shake and heard the quiet sobs into my shoulder. I slowly rubbed her back, and tried to console her as she continued crying. After a few minutes she stopped shaking and reciprocated the gesture.
"Emily will be okay." I whispered into her ear, "Nothing to worry about."
Just then I heard feet behind me, and someone clear their throat. I turned to find Mrs. Fields standing awkwardly behind me.
"They nurses said that they're running some tests and that it'd be a few hours before they get results, but that the pain has been controlled and we can go see her for a little while." She spoke softly.
Just then the nurse walked up and asked us to follow her. We started on our way, me falling behind the lot of them and following quietly. The three girls kept whispering to each other as they walked, sometimes looking back to stare at me.
When we reached the room, the nurse opened the door and walked in to the end of the bed. I followed her with my eyes, going up from the foot of the bed to find a half awake Emily, still as pale as she had been before, but smiling faintly at the sight of her mother and friends. I hovered near the doorway as they shared hugs and watched as they all whispered words of comfort to her.
Deciding that I could come back later, I turned to walk out and made my way to the cafeteria.
It was going to be a long night.
—
A/N Hey guys, I know this is only my fourth chapter, but what'd y'all think? Mind leaving a review? I'll take any ideas y'all have!