High School is a teen's best friend. Yeah right.

By Risty Maskell and Silver15

Disclaimer: If we owned anything to do with LOTR, we'd be in heaven. Unfortunately, we don't so we are still on crappy earth.

Summery: You mean you still don't know? Well I'm not wasting time telling you, you can just read the previous chapters thank you.

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I sat with Jamie all afternoon. I missed my afternoon classes and dinner but I wasn't really bothered. After dinner, Legolas came to find us.

"Hey girls, I guess I'd better tell you this before you hear it from anyone else" he said slowly. "But right now Billee is in Elrond's office getting the biggest row of his life"

"What did he do?" I asked, seriously worried. "It was Gimli again wasn't it?"

"Yes" Legolas looked down at the floor. "During dinner, he came past our table and asked where you two were. Almost pretty friendly like. Arwen told him that your grandmother had just died…"

"What…" Jamie broke off and sniffed. "What did Gimli say?"

"He said…he smiled and said that at least it was one more mongrel hobbit less. Billee just…went for him. He had Gimli pinned against the wall by his throat, choking him. It took Elrond and Celeborn to pull Billee off him. And then Billee started swearing at Elrond. It was terrible"

"Billee is going to get into so much trouble" I said sadly. "It was nice of him to stick up for Jamie though. I just wish he could learn to control his temper a bit more"

I held Jamie as she started to cry again. And at that moment, I wished that Billee had killed Gimli. Why should he be allowed to go around hurting innocent people? He was never going to leave us alone. And now he had got Billee into trouble too. I knew that had been his plan, his way of getting revenge.

"Emma" Legolas put a gentle hand on my shoulder. "Boromir is waiting for you outside. He says he'll understand if you don't want to leave Jamie right now, he won't mind. But I'll stay with Jamie if you want to go"

"Jamie" I looked at my friend carefully. "What do you think?"

"I think you should go" She gave me a smile. A very weak smile, but at least it was a smile. "You've been sitting here since lunchtime and you need to get out. I'll still be here when you get back"

"Okay. I'll see you later" I gave her hand a squeeze and hurried outside to where Boromir was waiting. We smiled shyly at each other.

"Hello" he said quietly. "I didn't know if you were going to come"

"Jamie made me," I confessed. "But I don't want to leave her for too long"

"I understand," he said with a nod. "Come on, let's go outside for a while"

We walked around for a while, talking causally about school and the other students. Boromir took my hand and I let him. It felt right somehow.

"Emma" he said finally, his tone suddenly serious. "Can I ask you a question?"

"I suppose so," I said warily. "Depends what it is"

"It's about what…what you did yesterday," he said. I said nothing and he went on. "I was only wondering why you did it"

"When I get depressed," I explained. "It helps. I can't talk about my feelings easily so they all get bottled up inside me. When I cut myself, it…it's like all those feelings get released" I stopped and looked at him shyly. "You probably think I'm a complete freak now"

"No" he said immediately. "Of course I don't. I can say that I understand completely, I don't suppose many people can. But I don't think you're a freak. And if you ever need to talk about anything, I'll be here for you"

"Thank you Boromir" I said quietly, feeling suddenly near to tears again. "Your friendship means a lot to me"

"I'm glad," he said with a smile. "You know, you really scared me yesterday"

"I scared a lot of people," I admitted. "I don't plan on being as reckless as that again"

"That's good" He leant towards me slight and I thought that he was going to kiss me. However, he seemed to change his mind and drew back.

"Do you want to go back now?" he asked quickly.

"Yeah, I guess" I said, shocked by the sudden change in him. "Jamie might need me"

We walked back to the dorms in silence. I couldn't work out what I'd done to spark the change in him. I longed to ask him, but at the same time I was scared too. When we reached his dorm, he kissed me briefly on the cheek.

"See you tomorrow" he said quietly and disappeared inside. I thought about seeing if Billee was in there, but I decided against it. Right then I felt like I had to concentrate on Jaime.

When I got back to my own dorm, Legolas was still sitting there. Jamie was asleep and the others weren't back yet.

"How was she?" I asked quietly. "Any better?"

"Frodo came in for a bit" Legolas said, standing up and stretching. "She seemed glad to see him. Then she cried herself to sleep"

"Thanks Legolas"

"It's okay," he said with a smile. "I'm going to go and find Billee. See how he got on with Elrond. Goodnight"

"Goodnight Legolas" I waited until the door shut behind him before reaching under my pillow and taking out Billee's knife. I sat on my bed for a moment or two, running my finger up and down the blade. I felt so guilty for even thinking about it, after all Jamie had bigger problems than I did at the moment. Yet I couldn't cope with both of my best friends feeling so down. In order to be strong for them both, I knew what I had to do.

Being very careful not to wake Jamie, I went to the bathroom. As I unwound the bandage from my wrist, I could see the deep cut I had made the day before. I wasn't going to make that mistake this time.

I made three sharp cuts just below my elbow and ran my arm under cold water before doing the bandage back up. Once it was done, only a small bit of blood seeped through and my shirt hid most of that. I rinsed the knife off and went back out to check that Jamie hadn't woken up. Luckily she hadn't. I made sure that she was covered up, got undressed and got into bed. I figured that it was going to be a long night.