John Sr. dropped Emily at the closest deli to school at 6:30am. She spent a lonely forty-five minutes eating a bagel and finishing the history homework that she had ignored all weekend. Then she walked to the bus stop in the hope of catching her friends when they transferred.

Her heart sang out when she saw the crowd of uniformed students at the stop. Anna, Evie and Alex were amongst the NDA girls there.

But Jenny isn't...

However, Emily didn't have time to question where her best friend was because the moment her friends spotted Emily, they rushed over to her.

"Tell. Me. EVERYTHING," Alex demanded.

"I can do better than just tell. I have pictures too," squealed Emily.

She held up her phone. "First up, we have Kelly. He's my brother's best friend and he gave me his Pearl Jam shirt and this..."

Emily pulled aside her collar to show the girls the hickey.

"He's cuuuuute," enthused Evie. She leaned in for a closer look before adding, "and shirtless."

Emily looked at the photo of Kelly one more time before she swiped her finger across the screen.

"Next up is Evan," she sighed and turned the phone back around. 

Alex took the phone from Emily's hand while Evie peered over her shoulder.

"Shirtless too? I need to visit New Jersey," Evie decided.

"So. Much. Hotter," Alex congratulated.

"The tight pants definitely help. Plus, the fact that you're a baseball fan makes you biased Alex. He gave me a hickey too, but I covered it with makeup," she revealed as she lifted her hair to show the other girls.

"Not a very good job at covering it. Your Mom is going to flip out when she sees that," Anna observed.

Anna knew Emily's mother the longest since she grew up down the block from them. Her opinion was based on experience.

"Don't rain on her parade," chided Evie.

"Yeah, Em never does stuff like this. I'm sure her Mom won't come down too hard on her," Alex speculated. But then she took a compact from her bag to dab more powder on the mark.

"Anna's right. She's probably going to murder me. But it was so worth it!" crowed Emily.

She went on to regale her friends with as much of the story as she could during the remainder of their commute before they had to split up to their individual homerooms.