Emily And Elliot

My name is Emily. I'm 14 years old this year and I'm in junior high school. What I'm doing right now is looking at someone who is sleeping at his desk. A guy who looks quite striking in our class because he has a handsome face, so many girls not only in my class, but even girls in other classes are paying attention to him. I didn't know whether to feel happy or sad, because this popular guy was very close to me. Since becoming friends with him, I was often pranked by girls who were interested in him and sometimes they always looked at me with a hateful gaze. I honestly feel annoyed by their behavior and I don't like this. Sometimes I think, does this guy realize or not the girls' hateful stares at me are because he's the one who's close to me? On the other hand, I feel happy and a little proud to be close to him and make the girls jealous of me.

"Hey, Emily, what are you thinking? Smiling to yourself while looking at the sleeping Elliot without blinking?"

The voice startled me, a voice that came from a girl named Alice. She was my best friend in class, apart from Elliot. It seemed like she was the only girl I was willing to be friends with in this school.

"Not really, who's looking at Elliot?" I quickly refuted Alice's words to me earlier.

Alice suddenly laughed out loud making me squint in displeasure.

"Hahaha... no matter how hard I push you, you'll never confess, Emily."

I rolled my eyes, "Huuh, just don't tease me like this!"

The feelings of embarrassment and annoyance at Alice mixed inside me. Seeing my expression that was probably clearly holding back embarrassment, Alice laughed again.

"Hahaha... yes, yes, sorry. I was just joking. Oh, yes. I wanted to give you this." Alice reached into her skirt pocket, took out an envelope which I believe contained a letter, and handed it to me.

"What is this?" I asked as I flipped through the envelope that was now in my hand.

"Someone asked me to give this to you."

"Who?"

"You just read the letter yourself, you'll know," Alice said while winking with a mischievous smile, making me even more curious as to who it was that gave me this letter.

***

I was currently sitting pensively in my room looking at every word of the letter I was reading. I was indeed reading the letter that Alice had given me earlier. I was very surprised after knowing the contents of the letter, it was an invitation to a date from a man named Rico. I knew who that guy was, he was my senior and the vice president of the student council at my school. I was really surprised and confused about what I should do.

Should I accept this date? I thought I should ask other people's opinions in a situation like this. But I only had two best friends at school, Alice and Elliot. I thought about asking Alice's opinion, but remembering that she was laughing and teasing me earlier, made me abandon the idea. Then my thoughts turned to Elliot, it seemed like he was the only person I could ask for help to give me input on my indecision.

But immediately I imagined, what would Elliot say to me if he found out that there was a man who sent a letter and asked me to go on a date. Would he be bothered by this? Because I asked for his help to give me advice about other men's date invitations. If he had special feelings for me, would he be bothered by this? I quickly shook my head and pushed the thought away. But how could I have thoughts like this? I feel so stupid right now.

I can't deny it, I'm the one who has special feelings for him, special feelings that are more than just friends. My mind wandered and I remembered my first meeting with Elliot. When I first met him, I didn't feel anything special at all. Although sometimes I felt uncomfortable with the babbling of some of my female friends who kept talking about him. In my eyes, he was just a man who was energetic, jovial, and seemed to like helping others. Although sometimes he was indifferent to the problems around him. I'm sure he knew and realized that many girls in our school were eyeing him, but he didn't seem to care about it at all. Even though we were in the same class, I never approached him or even talked to him. Until one day something happened to me that made me change my views and attitude towards Elliot.

That day after school, I was walking alone towards home. Suddenly two men confronted me, from the looks of them I saw, it seemed like they were senior high school students. They flirted with me and they even took my hand and led me to a very quiet place. I was really scared at that time, there was no one there. There was no one I could turn to for help. When the two men started to get closer to me, suddenly a voice rang out.

"I'm sorry to interrupt your fun, but can you please let the girl go?"

Hearing the voice that suddenly came from behind, the two men looked very surprised, then they turned their faces toward the source of the voice.

"Heh, brat, what are you doing here? I'll spare you if you get out of our way right now!" One of the men said so with an angry expression on his face.

"Well, of course, I'll leave, but only after you hand over that girl to me."

I was curious to see the figure of the man who boldly challenged these two men. His figure was indeed invisible because it was blocked by the man standing tall right in front of me. I tilted my head to peek behind me and I was completely dumbfounded, I knew that guy very well. He was my classmate, Elliot.

"Hoo, so you want to challenge us, boy!!! Then don't blame us if you get hurt badly."

The two men walked up to Elliot and threw their fists at him. But once again I was dumbfounded, Elliot managed to beat them so easily. Looks like he has pretty good martial arts skills. He had saved me and without my asking, he also took me home.

From then on, I started talking to him a lot, it turned out that he was a very nice and pleasant person. As we grew closer, we often went home together because our houses were in the same direction. I would sometimes make him lunch and he would sometimes ask me to help him with schoolwork that he didn't understand. We started to become friends, and I didn't even feel embarrassed or reluctant to tell him my problems or to ask for his help.

I did realize that over time, a special feeling grew in my heart for him. But I never thought anything of it, I was sure that the feelings I felt were just feelings of affection for a good friend. That's what I believed about my feelings for him until the tragedy happened. A tragedy that made me realize that my thoughts had been wrong, and I began to admit my true feelings for Elliot.