I went to her house but only Mallory answered.
“Emma can’t talk right now,” she’d said.
After a week, rage started to build inside me. How could Emma treat me like this? She was the one who hurt me. I was the one who should be ignoring her, not the other way around.
When I finally spotted her walking outside on the way to school one morning, I ran out to her. My hands shook from the anger I’d built up over the last few days as I closed in on her.
She held the straps of her backpack, zigzagging along the sidewalk.
“Emma!” I shouted, desperate for her to acknowledge me. I needed her to stop ignoring me.
She stopped but didn’t face me. She stood still as the breeze blew her hair away from her face.
I sped up to catch her, running in front of her. I grabbed her shoulders, trying to look her in the eyes, but she wouldn’t meet my gaze. “Talk to me. Please.”
She took a breath, a pause that felt like a lifetime. “Why?”
Why?She couldn’t be serious. She knew exactly why. She’d killed my dog and refused to talk to me about it. But that wasn’t all. She was my best friend. She knew everything about me, from my favorite flavor of ice cream to my fear of spiders. She knew things that I had never told another soul.
Sheknewhow badly she’d hurt me.
“Why didn’t you answer my calls?” I asked, convinced there was no way Emma could be so cruel. There had to be a reason why she wasn’t talking to me. Maybe she was embarrassed, or scared that I’d be mad.
Whatever the reason, I needed to hear it. I didn’t want to be upset with her. I wanted to be able to forgive her.
“I was busy,” she said.
“No, you weren’t.” I wasn’t ignorant. I knew she could’ve come over if she wanted to. Growing up, any time I’d gotten hurt, she was there in an instant. She’d dote on me like I was her personal doll. Even if I only had a cold, she’d sneak overjust so she could put a cool washcloth on my head and hold my hand.
If she ever saw me cry, she’d wipe my tears away. Then she’d switch into her overly goofy, animated self, teasing me until I broke into a smile.
That’s who she was.
So I couldn’t understand why she wasn’t there for me this time. Where was her tight hug when I needed it most? Where was she when I cried into my pillow or when I threw my comforter away because it smelled like Duke?
I needed her to hold my hand.
“Why does it matter?”
I swear I had the wind kicked out of me. What had gotten into her? She’d never talked like this before.
Couldn’t she see how puffy my eyes were? Why wasn’t she reaching out to comfort me?
I knew she’d been more distant that year, but we’d spent our childhood with our lives so intertwined I believed we’d always be together in some shape or form. I thought we were close enough to overcome any misunderstanding. That had to be what this was. Maybe she was in shock, like me.
“Duke is dead,” I said.
That’s when she looked up at me. Her stare was direct and cold, nothing like the Emma I knew.
“He was just a dog.”
My hands went cold. At first I thought I heard her wrong because there was no way she’d say something that insensitive. “What?”
She shrugged. “Just get another one.”
I wanted to scream and throw up at the same time. The audacity she had to suggest that Duke was replaceable.
She was supposed to be apologetic, but she might as wellhave slapped me across the face. That couldn’t possibly be how she felt.
