Free The Ordinary Life of Emily P. Bates by Anna Cackler

anyway.”
    “Thanks Mom!” I called, darting towards the front door.
    “Hold on!” she called after me. “I still want to know where you’re going and when you’ll be back. You know the rules.”
    “I’m going to Ethan’s place, and I don’t know. Now can I go?”
    “Ha!” Aaron barked. “It’s not even a date! You study with him every day after school. You’re going to have a study group, aren’t you?”
    “You’re such a jerk, Aaron!” I wrenched open the front door, terrified that he was right. What was I thinking? How could I set myself up for what would turn out to be, as my moronic older brother had so succinctly put it, nothing more than a study group?
    “Home by ten, you hear?” Mom called after me.
    I waved a hasty response and dashed across the gravel drive to Oscar.
    The entire ten minute drive to Ethan’s house was spent in agony. My gut was twisting itself into a giant soft pretzel, and no matter how many times I checked my hair in the mirror or yelled out loud at myself to calm down, it didn’t straighten itself back out. It only got worse when Ethan answered the door with his usual charming smile.
    “Hey, you did remember.”
    “I told you I did.” My hands were jammed into my back pockets in an attempt to keep them from fidgeting with anything. I had been to Ethan’s house a couple of times before to study. Both times, though, Shannon or Margo had been with me. Tonight felt very different than those other nights. Tonight I felt like the spotlight was directly on me. At least I wasn’t giggling like an idiot the way I usually did when I was anxious about something.
    “Are your parents here?” I asked, noting how quiet the big house really was when I stepped inside. I had met Dr. Cavanaugh and his wife once before. He seemed friendly enough, but he really didn’t have much to say to me at all. He, like his son, was that weird shade of brown that was difficult to place as a race, so I still had no clue where Ethan’s family came from. And I still hadn’t had the nerve to ask.
    “Naw,” he shrugged. “They went to see a movie. Nancy had to practically drag Dad out of the house.”
    “Oh.” Suddenly my stomach rolled over even harder. I grasped around for something to say to distract myself from the fact that Ethan’s perfect brown eyes were drilling into my face. “So, ah. What’s the plan?”
    It was like I’d stuck him with a pin. “Oh, right.” He disappeared into the kitchen. After just a couple of seconds he reappeared with a large bowl of popcorn and an armful of soda cans. “The plan is popcorn, soda, and a riotously hilarious movie.”
    I stared at him, not sure of what sort of response he was looking for. His smile began to fade. He gestured towards the couch with the popcorn bowl when I didn’t move. “May I escort you to the sofa?” he asked.
    I laughed at his quizzical expression, and his face melted into the usual grin.
    “That’s not necessary, thanks.”
    He dropped off the snacks on the coffee table and went over to the media system under the large flat panel TV that hung over the red brick fireplace. After a few minutes of fiddling w ith it , he joined me on the couch juggling three different remote controls. “There,” he muttered to himself, pressing a button on one remote. The TV clicked on. “And there,” he pressed three buttons on another remote. There was more clicking coming from the surround sound, but nothing spectacular happened. “And there.”
    He settled into the couch next to me. I had elected to sit on the far right side of the couch, a fairly neutral position, but Ethan sprawled out in the very middle. He was far closer to me than I had expected, which gave me license to hope that maybe Aaron had been mistaken about the innocence of our night.
    After all, his parents weren’t even home.
    “That was the most complicated thing I’ve ever witnessed,” I said.
    “Yeah,” he said as the main screen popped up, He pointed the