It was the last day of school, and Emma waited anxiously on the front steps for her best friend Kelly to meet her so that they could go get their traditional end-of-the-year frozen yogurt treat, and then sit on the beach. They had done this every year since the seventh grade, and it was somewhat of a tradition. They had spent every summer together since most of their friends went to camp up until this year, however this summer she knew she’d have to share her best friend. Emma heard Kelly giggling and turned her head to discover what the fuss was about. She saw what she had expected to see - Kelly and Jake with their faces close, engaging in flirtatious small talk about their plans to hang out the next day. Emma smiled as she was happy that her best friend was finally going to go out with the boy that she had been crushing on since middle school. Jake was a nice guy, and Emma approved. She walked over to the two of them.


“Hey Kel, my mom’s here to take us to the beach,” she said. “Ready to go?”


Emma paused for a response but Kelly just kept her eyes on Jake and didn’t answer. Emma figured she didn’t hear her over the exuberant chants of the students celebrating the end of the school year.


“Kelly!” she said a bit louder. “My mom is here, are you ready to go?”


“Oh, “ Kelly said as she drew in a deep breath. “Actually, Jake is going to give me a ride home.”


Emma looked at her for a moment, puzzled, but knew Kelly had been lusting after Jake for years, so she understood. After all, they had hours to spend at the beach.


“Okay,” Emma said. “So we can just go to the beach later,” she offered.


Kelly and Jake brushed past Emma just as she finished her sentence and shouted, “Yeah, totally. I’ll call you when I get home!”


Emma got in the car with her mom and explained to her the change in plans and they went straight home.


“Do you want me to make you something to eat?” Emma’s mother asked as she stood in the kitchen. “Your father and I are meeting friends for dinner at that restaurant Bartaco that just opened up in town two days ago, so I won’t be able to make you dinner later.”


“All right,” Emma said. “It’s fine. Kelly and I are going to get frozen yogurt at the beach and I can eat at the snack shack if I’m still hungry.”


“Okay sweetie, I have a few errands to run before I meet them at the restaurant, so I’ll see you later.”




As the afternoon faded to evening, Emma’s phone was still dormant. She had checked for Kelly’s call every twenty minutes or so, but it never came. Finally, after hours, Emma called Kelly figuring she had probably just forgotten to call.


“Hey Em, what’s up?” Kelly said as she answered the phone.


“How come you never called?” Emma asked.


“Oh my god, sorry! I totally forgot I have to go to my cousin’s house for dinner tonight, so I cant go to the beach,” Kelly said in a flat-tone.


“Okay,” Emma responded, not trying to hide the disappointment in her voice. She grabbed some ice cream from the freezer, no bowl, but a big spoon, and headed up to her room to get cozy in bed and watch TV. She mused about the loss of her and her best friend’s tradition and wondered if this would foreshadow the rest of the summer.


After watching one episode of Gossip Girl, she wondered if any of her other friends were around to hang out with. She texted her friend Chelsea asking what her plans for the night were. Ten minutes went by without a response, so she texted her other friend Taylor to see what she was up to. Still, no answer. She was feeling neglected, but wanted to make one more attempt to turn her night around; surely one of her friends would answer. So lastly, she texted a new girl in town named Mackenzie who had joined their table for lunch one day.


The evening had now faded to darkness, and still she had gotten no response.


Feeling bored, she refreshed her newsfeed on Instagram, and discovered a picture of Kelly, Chelsea, Taylor, and Mackenzie all having dinner together. She examined the picture carefully, and did not recognize the setting. She wondered if perhaps the picture had been taken the weekend she had recently gone away with her parents, however it was odd none of her friends mentioned the get-together.


A little while later, still bored and alone, Emma checked her newsfeed on Twitter. As she scrolled through posts and pictures about how excited everybody was for the summertime, she came across a tweet from Taylor that said “Celebrating the first day of Summer at Bartaco with my BFFs Kelly, Mackenzie, and Chelsea!”


Emma could not believe what she was reading, why would her best friend lie to her and exclude her from a celebration? She had never done something so awful before, and if it weren’t for the picture and the tweet Kelly would have gotten away with her lies.


As her eyes filled with tears, Emma realized that she was no longer a part of her group of friends. This summer was going to be awful; she had nobody, and she was extremely despondent. In the next minute, her sadness turned to anger, and the tears rolled down her face as her rage began to consume her. She grabbed her phone and immediately punched in Kelly’s number and texted her, “Hi, how’s your family dinner going?”


This time, Kelly answered promptly, “Oh, it’s boring as usual.”


“Yeah, I’m bored too,” Emma responded. “I’m home alone because my parents are out with their friends at that new restaurant Bartaco.”


Emma stared down at her phone with a different feeling than usual. It had always a been a device that brought her a sense of togetherness with her friends, but now, it only brought an overwhelming sense of loneliness.


Across town, Kelly sat at the table with her friends also staring at her phone, but was sharing her text messages with Taylor, Chelsea, and Mackenzie as they all laughed at the thought of Emma home alone desperately trying to reach all of them. She decided not to respond to Emma, as she knew she was caught in her lie, but she didn’t care - Emma was old news to her.


Emma stared at her phone even more, willing it to come alive, as she wanted Kelly to plead for her forgiveness, but the phone lay in her hands stubbornly silent.


Suddenly, Emma’s despair took over her being as she typed in a new tweet that read, “I hate my best friend.” She then turned her phone off for the night, as she had had enough.


Across town, amid the laughter and camaraderie of the girls at the table, Kelly look at Emma’s new tweet, and rolled her eyes before passing her phone around for everyone to see. When the phone returned to her hands, she immediately composed a new text, “You are such a loser, I can’t believe I ever even pretended to like you.” She confidently pressed send, and then put her phone in her bag as she left the restaurant.


As Emma lay down to go to sleep, she wondered if she would always feel so alone, or if the pain eventually end.


When Kelly got home and did her usual nightly check for messages before going to sleep, she eagerly opened a new text from Jake. She was so excited and assumed he was texting to confirm their plans for tomorrow. When she opened the text, she read in disbelief what he had written, “Stay away from me, you’re just plain mean. Forget about our plans tomorrow.”


After a moment of confusion, she realized he was merely replying to a text that she had sent to him, she looked at it as it read, “You are such a loser, I can’t believe I ever even pretended to like you.” Kelly felt the air around her thicken, and she struggled to get a breath. She quickly responded that the text was intended for Emma and not him. Within seconds, her phone lit up again as Jake responded, “It doesn’t matter, now I know what kind of person you are, I hope we never speak again.”


As Kelly lay down to go to sleep, she wondered if she would always feel so alone, or if the pain eventually end.