Emily

Who could that be?

The soft doorbell ring reached through my door and into my room. I sat up from my bed, in the process of listening to Sum 41 while imagining what senior year at Providence Prep would look like. In my head, it featured a whole lot of dancing, easy nights of studying, and zero drama with a certain someone.

In reality, it probably would look like the exact opposite, but a girl who had just celebrated her eighteenth birthday two weeks before without any trouble could dream of a similar outcome for the next nine months.

Those dreams, though, got put on hold by the unexpected ding-dong in the house.

“Dad! Can you get that?”

I waited a few seconds for my father to answer. I knew my mother, at best, was trying to sleep off the alcohol she’d had at lunch, but I hoped that my father would at least want to answer. But, apparently, he either had fallen asleep early or he just didn’t want to face the outside world right now. Both were equal possibilities.

“Never mind,” I said with some resignation.

I turned down “Fat Lip” by Sum 41, bounded down the stairs in my shorts and pink tank top, and peered open the door. Samantha and Jackie? What in the world?

I opened the door to see my two best friends in all of Providence Prep and all of the world standing there before, looking much more put together than I was. Jackie, with her curly brain how, mixed heritage, cute freckles, and exotic yet affordable dresses, always drew eyes wherever she went; the effect only got heightened when she chose to doll up a little, especially since she had curves not always visible when dressed normally. Samantha, meanwhile, had legs that made many a teenage boy swoon; she had pale white skin, deep brown eyes, and a sweet smile. She was also best described as “endearingly awkward,” a term she gave herself and one we used as a compliment for her.

As for me? Well, I’d like to think I kept myself in decent shape through soccer, and I knew a lot of guys had things for blonde hair. But aside from my work ethic and my dreams of becoming a doctor, I considered myself pretty average. Certainly not as beautiful as Jackie or Samantha.

“Hey girl,” Jackie said with a smile. “You look like you’re about to watch some Hulu and go to bed at the same time as your parents.”

“That was the plan,” I sheepishly admitted. “It looks like you two don’t have the same plans.”

“Duh!” Samantha said with a little bit more force than she probably meant. “We’re gonna go party.”

“Oh, where?”

Just don’t say…

“The Senior Kickoff party.”

Only one family could throw a party that would have had the entire senior class of Providence Prep invited. Only one person would have the antisocial personality to not care if the cops got called on a party of over two hundred teenagers. Only one person could throw such a party and have me not want to come.

“Do I even need to ask who’s hosting this party?”

“I know what you’re thinking, Emily,” Jackie began. “But—”

“It’s at the Collins,” Samantha blurted out.

I rolled my eyes as I looked at Jackie, the one who always got everyone involved without understanding why some people may not want to hang out.

“It is, but I promised Kevin that I would show up, and I just thought you would feel bad if you got left out, and—”

“Why?”

I loved Jackie, but to say she was a people pleaser—and practically a beggar for Kevin—was about as nice as I could put it. We’d told her many times in the past to not be so desperate to make everyone happy, but it seemed destined to be Jackie’s greatest personality trait and her greatest curse to want to make everyone happy.

“Why what?” Samantha said.

“Why would you think that would be a good idea?”

“Look, the house is huge, and you know the Broad Street Boys run in a pack,” Jackie said. “It won’t be hard to ignore them. It’s not like the four of them will be scanning the house.”

That much was true. Seeing one of the boys, especially outside of school, usually meant seeing the other three in short order. And the funny thing was, I didn’t really have a problem with three of the four members. I found them to be a little arrogant and, at times, too rude, but they at least didn’t seem to pick on me every opportunity they got, to try and make me cry every chance they got.

“You can always hang out with one of the smart guys,” Samantha said. “Maybe Tyler or Jacob. They’re nice or quiet. Heck, maybe even Nick!”

I gave a polite chuckle.

“At least come in and upstairs to my room,” I said as I moved aside from the door. “My parents would kill me if they knew bugs were getting into the house.”

They wouldn’t care. Mom wouldn’t, at least. Dad might, if he decides he wants to do things besides work and sit at home all day.

Samantha and Jackie entered and joined me in my room. Jackie put her own music on, switching over the band to Green Day. The two stood by my bed as I tried to move past, as if preventing me from just doing what I wanted to spend my evening.

“Samantha made a good point down there,” Jackie said. “Those guys are nice.”

“They are,” I said.

But none of them excited me. None of them made me feel the same way as… him.

Adam Collins.

My first crush, my first boyfriend, the first boy to ever say things that sent shivers down my spine and had me excited. He had brought me out of my shell in middle school, and he had given me confidence that I was beautiful. No one could make me feel like he did.

Unfortunately, that was true then and it was true now for different reasons. It was true then because he liked me. Now, it seemed true because he hated me.

Why? I had no damn idea. And by this point, with just nine months to go before I went to Vanderbilt or some other school far larger than the 800 or so students at Providence Prep, I didn’t care to find out. I just wanted to get through the school year, keep my grades up, graduate with a hug from my parents, keep in touch with Samantha and Jackie, and then remove Adam Collins from my life forever.

“So, what are you waiting for, girl?” Jackie said. “Look, if you’re scared of Adam, I get it. But are you going to let him define your senior year? Are you going to walk around on eggshells all year long because the giant douche said something?”

“It’s not just that he ‘said something,’” I said, but I could see that I was fighting a losing battle.

I knew what Adam’s house looked like. It was more appropriate to call it one of the largest mansions in all of Nashville than it was to call it a house. A house implied that it looked like something you’d see in the suburbs; a two-story house with three or four bedrooms, much like what my parents had.

No, Adam’s house, thanks to who his stepfather was, felt more like going to a museum than going to a house. If ever there was a single place that I could visit for four hours and never cross paths with him, it was there.

If it wasn’t his home, that was.

But still…

“Can you promise me we’ll stay far, far away from Adam?” I said. “I really was having a great night, and I still will with you two. But if I see him and if he calls me out, it’s going to ruin everything.”

“We’ve got you,” Jackie said with a smile.

“Don’t worry at all,” Samantha said.

In general, I did that. When I was in the classroom, when I was on the soccer field, when I was alone at home, I didn’t worry too much.

Unfortunately, Adam was like a black hole whose event horizon I constantly circled—one little bump into his orbit would suck me entirely, making it impossible to escape without having my self-esteem and self-worth crippled.

* * *