CHAPTER FIFTEEN | EMMA DUVAL

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          "I'm guessing that meeting didn't work out the way you wanted it to," Odette comments, as I pick at my pumpkin soup. It's the only thing my body can stomach at the moment and it saves me from the embarrassment of returning to the café after I ever so casually puked my guts out in front of dozens of people. "I'm sorry. I wish I'd been there; at least you would've had a familiar face in the crowd."

          I shrug, not willing to dwell on what happened. "Claudia was there. It still sucked."

          "Yeah, but it's different. She's in your World Literature class; you and I are friends."

          "Are we?"

          "Sure. Why do you ask?"

          I grip my spoon tight on my hand, so tightly it would draw blood if it were a sharp object. "I don't know. I've always had this feeling that I'm annoying you or that I'm intruding. It's stupid." I shake my head, happy I had the decency to pull my hair back into a bun so it wouldn't fall into my bowl of soup, and she presses her lips together into a thin line. "It's probably nothing, right? I'm overreacting."

          An awkward silence descends on the table and I'm grateful for my soup for giving me an excuse to not look up at Odette. Maybe there's always been a reason why we've never hung out, just the two of us without Betty, but I don't want her to think that's because I don't like her or don't appreciate her company. Though I do like her and appreciate her company, I've always gotten the feeling that she prefers to keep me at arm's length, like she doesn't fully trust me or my intentions.

          I have no desire to steal Betty away from her. I didn't come to Alaska with the sole purpose of ruining other people's friendships to make them feel as lonely and miserable as I do, miles away from everything I've ever known and with all my friends being buried six feet under. I'm under the suspicion that I'm closer to Betty thanks to both an affinity between personalities and to convenience, since she lives right across the street and her sister is kind of dating my brother, kind of isn't, but it's in no way a personal dig at Odette. In fact, I want to be closer to her, but I have a hard time figuring out whether she's looking for the same thing or not.

          She owes me no explanation, nothing, really, but I can't read her, and I'm not sure what she wants me to say or do. Maybe dropping a bomb like this on her was uncalled for, and we're both stuck in a conversation neither of us knows how to continue or even end.

          She's saved from having to come up with an answer by a male voice booming in the distance, startling us both, and I lower myself into my seat, the instinct to become smaller, almost invisible, overpowering my desire to be polite and accessible.

          "OC!" the voice calls. She looks up at something above my head, something she wouldn't normally be able to do considering our height difference, but I'm hunched forward. Before I'm ready, the dark-haired guy I saw her with earlier slides into the empty chair next to hers, stealing a fry from her plate and conveniently not noticing the way she scowls at the gesture. "Hey, I've been looking everywhere for you."

          "You saw me earlier," she points out. tugging at her cardigan's sleeves until they cover half of her palms. He doesn't notice me just yet, but I worry I'll draw too much unnecessary attention towards myself if I make a move to leave the table to give them some privacy. "I'm having lunch."

          "Actually, yeah, I could eat."

          Part of me expects him to keep stealing Odette's lunch, but I'm pleasantly surprised to see him get up and walk towards the end of the line leading up to the counters. Odette straightens once his back is turned to us, as though she, much like me, has to make herself smaller, and my stomach flips with that realization.

          That's not the olive branch I wanted. That's not the way I wanted to relate to her.

          "So, that's Callum," she tells me. "He's my boyfriend."

          "Oh," I say. I don't want to throw Betty—or Clara, for that matter—under the bus by giving off any hints that I already knew about it, so I try to make my comments as vague as possible, keep the vacant look in my eyes. It's not an easy thing to fake, so I try to keep it to a minimum. "He seems . . . nice."

          She scoffs. "Yeah. He is nice. Sometimes."

          "Is there a story behind that?"

          "No, not really." She reaches out for a small table salt packet and spins it around her slender fingers. A flash of red hair in the distance alerts me to Betty's arrival and, with Callum being almost ready to return to our table, this is a recipe for disaster. She's approaching us from behind Odette, so I'm the only one who notices her. "That's just how he is. It depends on his mood and on who he's talking to. I know he can come across as being a bit . . . arrogant, but he's a good guy. He's always been great to me."

          "That's good." She throws me a tight-lipped smile in response. "What's the deal with him calling you OC?"

          She lets out a deep sigh. "Look, it's . . . it's not a big deal. My mom is a big deal, so I'm used to people forgetting about my dad, but it's kind of annoying. It's Odette Chen-Chatraine, not just Odette Chen. It should be OCC, not OC, but it doesn't roll off one's tongue like OC does. It just sucks that people ignore a part of me for the sake of convenience. It's disrespectful towards my dad and all the good he does for everyone in this town, but it's also disrespectful to a vital part of my identity." She looks up at him, still standing on the line but already holding an empty plastic tray, then focuses back on her own plate. "Sorry for dumping this all on you. I don't expect you to, like, fully understand where I'm coming from, but I don't have many people to talk to. Betty has always been more of a people person than I am. Still, part of you must get it, right? Having people constantly erase an entire portion of your life and identity because it doesn't fit the image of you they've created in their heads?"

          I don't think it's fair to compare my situation to hers, as they're completely different, and I could never feel as rightfully offended over it as she does, so I'm hesitant to agree.

          There's one defining moment marking the two eras of my life—pre-Incident and post-Incident—and it has reflected itself in the way I'm perceived, even by those who have known me since before that all went down. My friends' parents, even Zach and Emma's, see me as nothing but the girl who survived in the place of their kids and wonder why it has to be me, so I'm partially thankful for the opportunity to not have to face them anymore. The media circus around me is frankly ridiculous, not to mention the trolls and the stalkers constantly trying to contact me and my family, and the Final Girl is the only thing they see. Even here, where I was promised a fresh start, people know who I am and what happened to me, and everything revolves around that.

          Even I have a hard time disassociating myself from that, unsure of where the girl I used to be has gone. For the longest time, I've convinced myself she, too, died that night, without any possibility of things going back to how they used to be, and the dream also died three months ago. This is life now, for me and for every Final Girl, and not everyone gets through it.

          So, no, I don't think it's a comparable situation to Odette's. It's disrespectful to her and to her family, whereas I'm being reduced to one event in my whole life. Even if it feels intrinsic to me, like I've never known how to not feel this way, it's objectively not.

          "So, I've been talking to my advisor," Betty announces, tucking her hair behind her ears on the empty chair next to mine, and the sweet scent of her perfume fills my nostrils like a caress. She hasn't yet noticed Callum's jacket swung around the back of that next to Odette's, and both of us are just waiting for the bomb to drop. "She thinks I should switch a few courses around if I want my curriculum to be more well-rounded before going into the law pathway. Less Sociology, more Political Science and Government, but I'm a bit confused about whether all of this will be worth it or not considering none of the electives actually focus on law."

          "I'm sure you're aware that this really isn't the best place to be a law student," Odette remarks, glad to have an excuse to change the subject. Both conversations we shared in Betty's absence are good enough indicators that we don't have a lot of things in common to use to fill the void when Betty isn't around. "You can't even study pre-law, so you'd be going to law school at a disadvantage compared to everyone else. Where would you go to law school, anyway? Oregon?"

          "My advisor spoke wonders of Willamette, so we're going to prepare for that. I still have a long way to go before taking the LSAT, but I can't help but feel a bit worried, you know?" Like Callum before her, she reaches out a hand towards Odette's plate to steal a fry. Unlike with Callum, Odette doesn't show any signs of feeling bothered by it, a heartwarming reaction all around; in fact, she looks at Betty a lot more warmly than she did with Callum. "So, what were you guys talking about? How was the meeting?"

          I clear my throat, jumping in my seat when Odette kicks me under the table to gently let me know the target of the conversation has switched. "Ow—it was fine. Awkward, actually. Pretty awkward."

          "Yeah? What happened?"

          "I . . ." I straighten in my seat, as it helps me both get a better view of Callum and pretend to have some confidence and laugh it off. "Well, I freaked out. They asked me to come up on stage and say a few words, which was fine, but then I grabbed the microphone and . . . yeah. It didn't go well. It ended with me throwing up into the nearest trash can and bolting out of that place." Her bright blue eyes widen and her hand, still holding a fry between her index and middle finger, hangs in the air. "I don't know if they're expecting me to come back tomorrow, but I can imagine I didn't leave too good of an impression. Don't know what they were expecting from their new resident head turner, but it might not have been that."

          Betty exhales through her nose. "Dang, Wendy. I'm sorry. I know you were looking forward to it."

          That's not the word I would use to describe my feelings about the meeting, especially considering how conflicted about whether I wanted to attend it or not I was up until the moment I stepped through those doors with Claudia, but I still appreciate the sentiment. It's a nice change from her attitude from this morning and from the days leading up to today, when she was vehemently against it.

          "I wasn't ready for it, I guess. It makes me feel pretty pathetic, like speaking in public is the absolute worst thing that could happen to me." I lean back, finally deciding to relax now that the world doesn't feel as threatening anymore, but there's an ache inside me, tucked neatly between my ribs, that is quite bothersome. "It's just frustrating. It's the one thing I need to get right this week, and I couldn't even do that today. I don't know if I have it in me to go back, if they'll even have me."

          "Honestly, if they're expecting some profound speech about overcoming struggles and adversities when it's only been, what, three months ever since what happened, that's on them. You shouldn't feel bad for not being able to meet unrealistic expectations."

          Realistically, I know that.

          I know that, which is what makes this situation so dire and depressing. The fact that I'm not able to make my brain act on these realistic thoughts is what frustrates me the most, like there's a clear separation between what it knows and the emotions that knowledge—or the lack of it—triggers and what it leads me to do. Though I've never liked public speaking—once again, that was Emma's thing, not mine—I've never gone through the public humiliation that naturally comes with throwing up in front of two dozen strangers. It feels like too much, even for me.

          I open my mouth to thank Betty for the insight, even though it's something I was already aware of, but she stiffens as soon as I do so and I lose my chance to speak. She's looking up, staring right at Callum as he returns to his chair, plastic tray set over his forearm.

          "Elizabeth," he greets. "Feels like it's been forever since the last time we spoke."

          "I know," she agrees. "Somehow, I still find myself lamenting forever was cut short."

          Odette shoots her a deadly glare. "Betty, come on."

          For a split second, it looks like Betty is going to give Callum the satisfaction of falling for the bait and giving him exactly what he wants, by the way she shifts in her seat and how a muscle in her jaw throbs, but it never happens. Instead, her lips stretch into a polite smile.

          "You're right. I shouldn't bother." She pushes Odette's tray back towards her, harder than necessary—Odette has to stop it from falling off the edge of our table with her hand—and turns around to put her coat back on. "I need to return some library books. Wendy, come with? You've already finished your soup."

          Indeed I have, though my brain hasn't processed a single thing about it—flavor, texture, temperature, seasoning—so I barely noticed how much of it there was left in the bowl. Odette's eyes meet mine for the briefest of moments, almost pleadingly, and then she looks away, and I know what she's asking me to do.

          It's not the first time I've had to choose between two opposing sides. Everyone has to do so at one point in their lives, even those who pride themselves in being as neutral as they possibly can be, and you can't run away from conflicts forever.

          When I had to choose between living and staying with Zach—when he made me choose to leave him behind so one of us had a chance at getting out—it took every fiber of courage—or cowardice—to turn my back on him and run to save my skin. When I turned my back on him and left him to die, becoming as much of a monster as He was, part of me hoped it would all be in vain so I wouldn't have to face the consequences of my decision. When I chose to live, when I chose to fight back, overcome by the will to survive the night, it was mostly out of self-preservation than a genuine desire to honor Zach's sacrifice and to live to tell the story.

          The selfish monster on the hill—on the campsite—outlived all her friends, but at what cost? After all my choices that night were meant to serve me and my agenda? When I could have chosen to stay with Zach, giving him a numerical advantage?

          Nevertheless, I seem to not have learned a single thing since then, even after the disastrous consequences of my decisions. Betty looks at me expectantly, and I still choose to follow her, in spite of everything that just came out of my mouth regarding Odette, something I don't doubt will dig a wedge even deeper between the two of us.

          Even with that knowledge, even after everything I went through, I go after Betty.

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