A month had passed since Emma had returned from her trip to Wasaga. She had started back to school a couple of days afterwards. She had kept to herself mostly and shut out most of the people who cared about her.

She felt her cell phone vibrate in her pocket as she climbed the front steps to Degrassi. He called at least twice a day since she had left but she never answered it. She walked to her locker where she was greeted by Manny.

"Hey Em! How are you doing today?" Manny asked excitedly watching Emma take her books out of her book bag and put them in her locker.

"I'm fine Manny." Emma said returning to her books. She took her cell phone out of her pocket and threw it up in the top of her locker out of sight for the rest of the day.

"There's this party tonight Em. Why don't you come with me? It'd be fun." Manny said hoping that her best friend would agree.

"I'm not in to fun these days Manny." Emma sighed. "Besides I'd just drag you down."

"I miss my best friend. I just want my best friend back." Manny said shaking Emma trying to make her smile.

"The girl you used to know is gone." Emma stated as she shut her locker and headed towards her first class leaving Manny at the locker alone.

Manny stood there dumbfounded for a moment wishing she could think of a way to cheer her best friend up. She caught up to Emma and followed her in to their first class of the day which happened to be History with Mr. Perrino.

Jay sat in the back of the class with his headphones on pretending to be reading his history book. He noticed the two girls come in and sit a couple of seats ahead of him. He noticed Emma looked sullen as was the usual the past month. She had lost her spark.

As the students chattered away between themselves Emma doodled in her notebook. Some days she would draw and some days she would write little poems. Today she wrote the same two words over and over again as they played on her brain. "one month one month one month one month." she wrote and wrote as her hand began to get tired. She felt that if maybe she wrote it enough she would be able to get it out of her system and just forget. She'd do almost anything just to forget that day.

Mr. Perrino brought the class to attention. "Today kids we are going to be starting a new project. I'm going to set you up in pairs and you will have a presentation due next week. The computer has randomly selected your partner so I don't want to hear any complaining."

Mr. Perrino looked down at his sheet and started calling out the partners. "Manny you will be with Toby. Liberty you will be working with J.T. Emma your partner is Sean Cameron." As soon as he said Sean's name he realized the mistake.

"I'm sorry Emma, I'll find you a different partner. I must've forgot to take Sean out of the computer." He looked down at the sheet trying to match her up with someone.

"That's okay, I'd rather work alone anyway." Emma spoke up. This was the first time she had said anything out loud in class since the shooting.

"You will not work alone. You will work with a partner. Your class participation has become non-existent. The shooting was a month ago. The grace period is over." He looked down at the sheet again finding that Jay didn't have anyone assigned to him. "You will work with Jay."

The blood ran through Emma's veins and for the first time in a long time she felt angry. She wasn't going to let him get away with treating her like that. "Tell me Mr. Perrino, have you ever had a gun pointed at your head? Have you ever watched someone get shot?"

The class was silent and all eyes were on Emma as she spoke. You could hear a pin drop. No one had expected her to talk back to Mr. Perrino.

Mr. Perrino stuttered. "Well….no….of course not."

"Well when you do then you can tell me when the grace period is over." Emma yelled. Emma grabbed her books and threw them in her book bag. "I'm outta here." she said under her breath as she ambled towards the door.

"Emma!" Manny said starting to get out of her own seat to follow her.

"Don't follow me Manny." Emma said without turning back. "I want to be alone." And with that Emma headed down the hall way and out of the school.

Jay closed his mouth which had dropped in shock. He hadn't expected an outburst like that in the middle of class from Greenpeace. Something inside him made him want to make sure she was okay. He hadn't felt that feeling before but decided to act on it. He scrawled something on a piece of paper and ripped it out of his notebook. He walked up to the front of the class and placed it in front of Mr. Perrino who was sitting at his desk.

Mr. Perrino read the note. "Doctor's appointment, huh?" Mr. Perrino asked eyeing the note suspiciously.

"Yup." Jay answered.

Mr. Perrino couldn't prove that it was a forgery and after the outburst that had just happened with Emma he decided to let Jay go. "Don't forget to sign out at the main office on your way out."

Will Jay find Emma? What will he say to her?