Emma Moves In

Chapter Six

The first day of school, Uncle Dean takes the girls to school on his sailboat. And this year would be no different. As Emma tips her head to the sky, she reminds herself this is ten times better than taking the school bus.

When the girls arrive at the school, Natalia is immediately whisked away by her friends… Emma recognizes Caitlin. Zoe is talking to her friends as well. Emma realizes her hair is a mess, and Zoe takes her to the bathroom to fix her hair up. Like everything else, Zoe is great at fixing things.

In class, both Zoe and Natalia offer the seat next to them to Emma. She doesn’t know who to sit with, so she nervously sits with Natalia in the front row. Mr. Thomas, the history and English teacher, asks Emma to introduce herself to the class.

Nervously, Emma stands up and says she’s from Seattle, and then quickly sits back down. Why do teachers always make new kids do that?! And then Mr. Thomas passes out their first book. It happens to be one Emma’s already read, and she relaxes a bit. She assures Natalia it was a funny story, and she learned a lot from it.

At each of the next classes, both Zoe and Natalia also save Emma a seat, and Emma always chooses to sit in front with Natalia. At lunch, both of them offer Emma to sit there. Emma takes a seat next to Natalia, but she’s quickly overwhelmed by so many people talking at the table. Emma gets up and sits next to Zoe. Zoe explains they were about to go to the art room to get away from the noise. Unfortunately, Emma isn’t done eating, and she feels a pang of loneliness as she watches Zoe going away.

Upon returning to Natalia’s table, Emma finds Caitlin has taken over Emma’s seat. Nobody notices she’s standing there, so Emma is forced to grab her lunch and sit farther away. Something about that rubs Emma the wrong way. Even though now Emma is surrounded by family, she doesn’t feel like she belongs any more than she did in Seattle.