Benji had watched the whole thing. He secretly had hoped that they would break up, but he knew that Emma liked Stephen and he wanted her to be happy. ‘She could be happy with me.’ He walked into the classroom as Joel and Roxi split up to go separate ways. He walked to the back of the room past Emma’s desk and sat in his own.

 

“Hey, sorry about Stephen.” Emma apologized.

 

“Yeah.” replied Benji. He lay his head down on his desk and waited for the class to be over.

 

Emma could tell that he didn’t seem too happy so she left him alone the rest of the period. She felt really bad and she knew that she liked Benji, but ‘what about Stephen?’ She liked Stephen but sometimes she didn’t know who she liked more.

 

............................................................

 

The next two days went by very slowly. Emma would ride the bus with the twins, but then she would leave them when they got to school and meet up with Stephen. She would spend lunch, recess, and after school with him. She thought that by avoiding Benji, her feelings for him would go away. It was really hard to do, especially since she was friends with Joel, Paul, Aaron, and Roxi also. To Benji, he felt that Emma didn’t even want to be his friend anymore. He spend most of the past two days tagging along with Joel and Roxi, but once he would get sick of seeing them so happy together he would go home and sit in his room blaring his music.

 

On the last day of school, Stephen and Emma rode his bus home. They went into his room and they were listening to some music when Stephen’s dad came home.

 

“STEPHEN!” he yelled.

 

“Coming.” replied Stephen.

 

He left the room and Emma could hear Stephen’s dad yelling at him for not taking out the trash and giving the dogs some water. She heard the screen door slam and heard what sounded like somebody getting smacked. When Stephen re-entered the room, he looked very pissed off.

 

“You need to leave now.” he stated, grabbing her arm and pulling her off of the floor where she had been sitting looking through his cd’s. The tug made her lose her grip on the cd’s and they all fell to the floor. His grip on her arm was hurting her pretty bad and when she tried to get loose, it would get tighter.

 

“But I don’t have any way home. My dad won’t be home for another 2 hours!”

 

“You have to leave. Now!” he said as he pushed her against the wall. He grabbed her hand, again with a tight grip, and he dragged her outside. “Leave.”

 

She lived quite aways away from Stephen so she decided to walk to McDonalds and wait until she could call her dad to pick her up. As she walked there, she was thinking about what had just happened and she realized that Stephen was just going to get worse with his abusive behavior. Entering the McDonalds, she went into the kiddy playground area and it had some video games in it so she occupied herself with them. After about 20 minutes, Mrs. Combs walked into the McDonalds with Sarah.

 

“Hey Emma!” beamed Sarah as she ran into the play area.

 

“Hi Sarah.”

 

Mrs. Combs walked into the area and noticed who Sarah was talking to. “Hello Emma! It’s nice to see you again.”

 

*a/n:i didn’t mention this before, but they HAVE already met...*

 

“Hi Mrs. Combs.”

 

“What are you doing here all alone?”

 

“I was over at a friends house but I had to leave. I’m waiting for my dad to get off work.”

 

“Oh sweetie, would you like a ride home?”

 

“If it’s no problem for you, that would be great!”

 

“It’s no problem at all! Benji and Joel aren’t home though. They are out with Roxi and Paul.”

 

“Oh. Ok.” replied Emma.

 

Mrs. Madden offered to buy Emma some dinner but Emma didn’t feel very hungry. Mrs. Combs dropped her off at home and Emma thanked her then walked inside.