"Em?" I hear footsteps rushing up, "Oh gosh, are you okay?" I looked up and she gasped, "Oh my god..."

I must look terrible, my face red from the slaps and the tang on blood on my tongue - the opposite to her face so pure and clean, but now gone a shade of porcelain white. She was scared.

She reached as though about to touch the cheek I felt throbbing with pain, then thought better of it and withdrew her hand.

"Geez Em... I'm so sorry. I never thought... I can't even. It was just meant to be some stupid prank."

My heart dropped like a stone,
"It-It was you?"

I felt my tears - now hot and angry as I flushed - flow again.

"Oh my... I'm so sorry Em." Tears began to well up in her own eyes, and for a moment I almost believed she looked genuinely remorseful and concerned. "It was just meant to be a dumb joke. We... we wrote a letter to Jonathan saying for him to meet you here, acting as though it was from Michelle. We thought it would be funny to see his reaction when it was just you. Jeepers. I never though he would go at you like that. I'm so sorry Em."

She looked sincere. Goodness how I wished I could believe her. But how could I?
Every time I had ended up backstabbed.
If I believed her only for her to laugh in my face again, my heart would break. I couldn't take it again, couldn't bear it. But the clues, the reasons...
They were false. That note to ignore Kara and them? A misdirection. That comforting presence? A figment of my stupid imagination so desperately wanting to believe.

"Em?"

I looked at her, in a daze. Her hand was outreached to help me up, but I didn't take it, my heart weighing me down so much I could barely gather the energy to speak,
"It was you."

"It was." Seeing that I didn't intend to take her hand, she withdrew her outstretched arm, "Damn it all, I wish I had never suggested such a stupid thing. But when I saw you with that note in your hand I just couldn't help it. The girls thought it too good an opportunity to pass up. I should have spoken up. Goodness knows what happened last time Jona got a secret admirer note. I just never thought... that he, cripes, would do" she gestured to my face and arm, "this."

All I could do was sit there in the dirt where I belonged, looking at her face so wrought with guilt. All I wanted to do was jump up, wrap my arms around her and say "it's okay Kally - I forgive you!" and she'd hug me back and we'd laugh and it would all go back to the way it used to be.

But it couldn't be the same. Never again.
Time always goes forward no matter how much I yearned and wished to go back to those days when we were young and happy. I couldn't. Time doesn't go back, for anyone. So I just sat there. Until my heart relented enough in the face of her distress to say, through a lip now beginning to slightly swell up,
"You weren't to know."

But it's a lie. We both know that she was well aware of how cruel Jonathan Thompson can be.

A voice, Michelle, called from the edge of the courtyard, "Come on Ari. Why are you even wasting time talking to Miss Fatty Patty?"

At the cruel nickname, the girl before me flinched. She looked at me, for all the world looking like a lost puppy reluctant to go to her owner.

"Go."

"Are you sure?"

I nodded, trying not to show the small spark of pain it caused me, "It's fine. I'll survive. Like I have all these years."

She almost looks hurt, "look, Em. I really am sorry for all I've done-"

"Don't." I cut her off, "Maybe when we were younger an apology would make me forget everything that happened and we could go back to playing happily together. But we're grown up now. You made your choices. You knew what you were doing, even if I didn't at the time. 'I'm sorry' doesn't make it alright.

She opened her mouth to protest but I cut her off,
"Let me finish. I'll never understand why you made the choices you did. Why... why you went from promising to always have my back and be best friends forever, to stabbing me in the back and changing completely. Why you felt the need to keep giving me false hope only to crush it over and over. Well I've learnt my lesson now, and just 'sorry' won't cut it anymore. You're 'Miss Popular' and I-" my voice broke, "I'm just stupid Fatty Patty whatever. Don't pretend that after this we'll actually be friends again. You know as well as I do that will never happen.

"Ugh. Hurry up already!" The voice called again.

After one more glance at me, during which I gestured for her to join the group of waiting girls, Kara walked away,
"Well, then I guess it's goodbye then, Emily."

"Goodbye, Kara."

♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡

Author's Note:
Greetings! Thank you again for reading, it means a great deal to me :)
So sorry for having yet another sad scene, but this one has been present in my mind since the threads of this story first formed, and so it felt wrong to leave it out.
If I was cruel, I would leave you to suffer - but I can't do that to you guys so I just want to say: please don't despair. This story does have a happy ending, promise!