Author's note: This is an updated and edited version of my previously published original story.
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Emily's senior year in high school was supposed to be a breeze. She was 18 now, on her way to independence, most certainly on track with her college career, and caught up on all her credits, which left her with only a few classes she needed to attend for the rest of the year. And yet, her one mistake of skipping out on her gym credits the year before was really stomping on her parade.
Now, she was required to take the last gym class of the day if she wanted to graduate and not only did she have no friends in the class, but she didn't know anyone either. Well, that wasn't entirely true.
There was Harper Fletcher and her friends. Harper was only a few months older than Emily but they could've been decades apart with how much confidence and success she exuded.
She was the school's softball captain and star player. Anyone who didn't know her would have to have lived under a rock or never attended school. She even made the district newspaper one time because she nearly won the softball team the nationals. Everybody said the other team cheated.
She was also popular and pretty, so really, you couldn't ignore her if you tried. As for Emily, that was even more so. In all her time as the yearbook's Chief Editor, she couldn't recall even one year where she hadn't covered something without Harper in it.
Every school event, every interview, every shoutout, and almost every picture, there she was. So yeah, Emily knew her, but until now, she'd never actually shared a class with the Queen Bee athlete.
On the first day of class, Emily saw her in the corner of her eye; walking out the gymnasium doors with her friends onto the big football field. Instantly, she regretted her stupid decision to take a culinary class back in junior year in an overly optimistic way to "improve her cooking skills." The class was a waste of time and evidently, a waste of credits.
She couldn't believe the bite on her ass - it was goodbye smooth sailing and hello suffering. Emily wasn't exactly an athletic person, and now, having to be subjected as a loner as well as having to be in the blinding presence of the school's biggest celebrity only rubbed the salt in the wound.
As always, Harper radiated beauty and confidence and it made Emily grunt in vexation. It wasn't that Emily had a dislike for the girl. In all honestly, that wasn't the case at all. It was just that they were polar opposites - like water and oil. Not to mention she cast an even darker shadow over Emily's already non-existent presence in the class.
The period was just warm-ups and stretches until the last bell that day, but anyone would've thought they'd underwent some intense cardio circuit with the way Emily sluggishly crawled back to the girls locker room.
"What a shitty first day," Emily bemoaned. She lamely hoped she would eventually see the bright side of things. Soon.
A couple of months later, and before Emily knew it, love was in the air. It was almost Valentine's Day, a sickening excuse for mass PDA and torture porn for all the singles left on the holiday. But even so, Emily had a job to do.
Every year for Valentine's Day, the yearbook club would make a page for the school's "cutest couples." Hundreds of couples would submit their application to be on the page and then the school would vote for the top 20. It was just another way to entice more people to buy the book.
At the same time, the club also helped the student council with their Valentines sales by making posters advertising reminders to buy roses and chocolates before the big day.
It was still a couple of weeks before the holiday, and as far as Emily knew, the club was still in the middle of handling the application process and making those posters. The application bit was the easy part - all filing and organizing. The posters, however, required a little field work.
What they usually did for the posters was snap candid photos of anything remotely romantic and print out 24" x 36" images of them. As long as the theme was the same, anything could be used, really.
However, the yearbook club didn't own the equipment to print large images with most of the school's funds pouring into the sports programs year after year, so they'd send them to a printing company to be expertly enlarged and finely laminated before there return to their possession. Real professional shit.
In addition, the posters would be plastered with "important" information at the request of the student council regarding their flower and cocoa sales.
"Exactly as we've written for you. Word for word. No deviations, please," as the student council would pompously command every year the holiday came around.
Emily herself wasn't tasked to scout for pictures nor was she in charge of overseeing applications. She just monitored, really. She trusted the other members and her Managing and Photo editors who were also her best friends for the success of that process. Emily still had the actual yearbook to manage.
But enough of that, that was just another day to Emily. What was and had been stressing her out was her dreadful gym class. It was a big downer considering it was her last period, so she always ended the day on a sour note. She really tried hard to be positive, but as the days went by, she found herself more sweaty and isolated than the first.
Emily wasn't a shy girl in the slightest but she wasn't overly outspoken either. Her journalism skills relied more on her stubbornness and guts, not her social tactfulness.
She had a close circle of friends along with some close acquaintances and that was her bubble and she stuck with that bubble. If every once in awhile there was an easy opportunity to make a new friend, Emily was all for it. However, this class was really pinning her to be some kind of anti-social nerd.
It was really hard to insert herself amongst her gym peers since it seemed everyone had already formed their cliques, and being seniors, nobody cared for new additions.
"What the hell," Emily thought. It was beginning to feel like she was some new student who'd transferred in in the middle of the year. How was it possible she didn't know a single person in the class besides Harper and her friends? It seemed almost ridiculous.
Whatever the case, she couldn't change her situation, so she supposed she might as well deal with it.
It was just one lousy class.
But after some time, things began to look up. And eventually, even sharing the same space as Harper Fletcher didn't unnerve Emily anymore.
