Free Four Doors Down by Emma Doherty

eyes in my direction. “Bye, Sam,” he says, moving away.
    “Bye, Ryan. Thanks for the notes,” she calls after him as he heads over to where Jessica Murphy and Bianca Gallagher are waiting to talk to him. She turns back to me. “That was kinda rude,” she tells me, “and he’s definitely not stupid and you know it.” She has a point. Ryan’s actually quite clever. He more than holds his own in most of his classes from what I can tell. Annoyingly, even I have to admit he’s not your classic dumb jock.
    “Forget Ryan, I need to talk to you,” I tell her. She nods in agreement and I follow her into the girl’s bathroom where she promptly stops in front of the mirror and starts trying to French braid her hair. She’s gotten really into braiding her hair recently but is totally useless at doing it. It’s funny to watch.
    “What do you think of this?” I ask her holding out my phone. It shows a picture of a watch.
    She whistles under her breath. “Nice, really nice.” She takes it from me and starts to scroll through the pictures. “It’s really expensive, though.”
    “I know, but it’s nice, right?”
    “Sure,” she agrees, smiling.
    “But is it too much?”
    “For what?”
    “For Charlie. It’s his birthday in a couple of weeks.”
    She blinks at me in surprise. “This is for Charlie?” she asks. I nod. “I thought this was for your dad’s birthday. And, like, your mom would pay for most of it?”
    “You think it’s too much then?” I ask, suddenly embarrassed. I know we’ve only been dating for three months, but I want to get him something nice, something he’ll really appreciate.
    “No, no.” She pauses. “Well, maybe a bit.”
    I sigh in frustration. I know the watch is over the top but I’ve never had to buy a boyfriend a present before, and I’m totally clueless. I might like to pretend I’m all laid back and chilled out, but who am I kidding? I’m crazy about Charlie and want to get him a present that reflects that.
    Sam starts again with her braid. “How ‘bout we head to the mall now? We could look for something together, maybe something a bit more low-key.”
    I nod in agreement. “Yeah, okay.”
    Sam smiles at me. “I’ve never seen you like this before. You really like him, don’t you?”
    I shrug and look away, knowing I’m probably blushing like a five-year-old. There’s no point denying it; Sam can see straight through me, anyway.
    “But weren’t you worried he was getting distant?” she asks.
    I shrug dismissively. Last weekend Sam went to a friend’s with Chris and saw Charlie there. He’d told me he’d had band practice. At the time, I got really paranoid, but after stressing about it for days, he laughed when I finally told him and explained he’d finished early and had assumed I’d already be in bed so hadn’t called me. Simple, really.
    “Nah, we’re fine.”
    The door to the bathroom swings open and Jessica Murphy walks in with Bianca Gallagher.
    I turn back to Sam and watch her as she adds more pieces of her hair to the braid. I start to laugh as hair starts becoming loose. “You’re really not doing that right,” I tell her, taking a swig from my water bottle. She lets out a groan of frustration and drops the hair in her hands.
    A throat is cleared next to me and I turn to see Jessica has moved to stand right beside me. Jessica Murphy is pretty much the undisputed queen of our school. She’s Miss Popularity, head cheerleader, with blonde hair, blue eyes, and a Victoria’s Secret model body. She looks like she’s just stepped out of a magazine. We’ve attended the same school since we were twelve and I don’t recall us ever having a conversation before.
    “Becca, right?” she asks me.
    I narrow my eyes at her. We may never have spoken more than two words to each other before, but I know for a fact she knows my name. I mean, we were all just at Ryan’s house together. She’s just trying to put me in my place in the social standing