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Audrey cuts out of gym pretty quick when the first bell rings, not sparing much of a backwards glance for Emma or the still-groaning Will or even for the jeering classmates who punch her, congratulatory, in the shoulder. It’s not as though it’s unlike her to be antisocial, but Emma kind of wanted to talk to her and you’d think she’d know that. Since Audrey had just judo-flipped her ex in front of the whole class and everything.
So she shakes off Will’s hand on her elbow and his pained whine of “Emma,” and follows her towards the girl’s locker room. She thinks she might get a flash of Kieran in the doorway, staring at her like he always does, but it’s not much of a hesitation on her part. She needs to change out of her clothes, first of all, and she needs to talk to Audrey.
By the time she gets to Audrey’s locker, her own clothes in hand, Audrey’s shimmying out of her shorts. “Audrey-”
She jumps, and Emma immediately jumps in response, and they end up about a foot away from each other. Emma giggles nervously, and Audrey just rolls her eyes and finishes pulling her shorts off. “Jeez, Emma. Sneaking up on people these days, not super tactful.”
“Sorry,” Emma says, “I didn’t mean to sneak up on you,” and then she fidgets. She’s been having a problem, lately, with delicacy, and with Audrey. The delicacy thing probably has to do with trauma; the Audrey part of it probably has to do with spending so much time with people like Nina and Brooke, who deflect any thoughtless comment thrown at them like Teflon and toss it right back with a sharp laugh. Audrey’s never been like that. She’ll just bite you.
And her teeth have been getting sharper. Emma knows that.
Audrey waits for another second while Emma hesitates, then turns away to start wriggling into her skinny jeans. “So, what?”
It sounds a tiny bit clipped, but with little of the animosity Audrey’s voice has been carrying for a few weeks now, just impatience. In fairness, she’s probably one of three people that genuinely feels sorry for Emma about the whole sex tape thing. If pounding Will’s face in the mat is any indication, Audrey does at least have some sympathy for Emma left for her, which is totally, completely undeserved. “Um. Just. About Will, and the-”
“Oh my God- Emma,” Audrey says, managing her hips into the denim and giving her an exasperated look before reaching into her locker for her shirt. “You’re not really about to white knight me for the sake of your scummy ex, are you? That’d be a little too cavity inducing, even for you.”
The thought hadn’t really crossed her mind, not since Audrey had crawled off the mat and off Will and smirked at Emma just for a moment, like they were in on this together, like they were in together again. “No, I- no, not for Will. It’s just-”
Audrey takes off her shirt, and Emma stutters a little over the look Audrey’s giving her over her bra- it’s one she’s been making a lot lately. The challenging look, the I-dare-you-to-say-lesbian look.
But Emma doesn’t break eye contact, just reaches down and pulls off her own shorts, stands on one leg and angles to step into her skirt. Audrey does that little thing with her eyebrow that used to mean she thought something Emma did was smart. Now Emma doesn’t know what it means. “Spit it out, Emma.”
Now she’s not even sure what she meant to say in the first place. She pulls her hair out of the ponytail and shakes it out in front of her, an easy barrier. “Did you just pull the white knight card? You on me?”
That gets her full-on glared at, and Emma ducks behind her hair again. “I’m not a white knight.”
The stab of sudden, almost instinctive fondness that surges through Emma almost makes her laugh, but it would be out of place to laugh now, today, this week, ever again. “Audrey,” she says, and she has to bite her mouth to keep from smiling at the frustrated huff Audrey directs towards her locker. “It’s just that you really didn’t have to do that.”
She gets a half-glance in response. “Emma, the coach told me to kick his ass. What was I supposed to do, fail gym for your ex?”
Pulling her shirt on, Emma shakes her head, mostly for Audrey’s benefit but also to pull her hair free. When she untangles herself, Audrey’s watching her with an expression that’s not quite a glare but not very inviting either. It’s a familiar look on Audrey, and it makes Emma feel like she’s still in her underwear. “No, but um. The gusto with which it was done. It’s not that I was against it, exactly, but uh. I think we’ve both been humiliated enough this week.”
When she looks up again from putting her earrings in, Audrey’s not mildly scowling anymore. Now she just looks straight up murderous. “He taped you having sex. It was your first time, and you didn’t even know-”
“Yeah, I know,” Emma says tightly. “I was there.”
Instead of backing off, Audrey just glares some more. “Yeah, so excuse me if I’m not too worried about hurting his feelings.”
If Emma was better than she is, she’d probably protest more, for Will’s sake. But she’s not. She just looks down, and toes into her shoes. “Yeah, okay. I mean, you’re right.”
“Of course I am,” Audrey says crossly, and then is apparently done with the conversation. She goes to pass by Emma, hands wrapped resolutely around the strap of her bag, and head towards the door.
Emma catches her arm, because she’s brave, but doesn’t look at her, because she’s not that brave. “Wait.”
She hears the impatient noise Audrey makes, without having to look, a small grunt in the back of her throat like a rock catching in a grate. “The bell’s gonna ring. I know I put on a cool and disaffected front, but like, I actually do care about getting to math on time.”
“I know,” Emma says, “just hang on, wait for me,” and she uses Audrey’s shoulder for balance as she slides on her own shoes. She goes tense when Emma leans her weight into her, her shoulder blade cutting a little into the palm of Emma’s hand. It’s the first time Emma realizes how much skinnier she is, the muscle and the bone so immediate under her fingers.
She’s not a good friend. She takes her hand off of Audrey’s shoulder.
This time Audrey waits for her, and falls into a slow, reluctant step beside her out the gym door. It takes eight seconds of silence for Emma to realize Audrey’s waiting for her to say something.
So she tries, “Thank you.”
Audrey snorts. “Don’t thank me, Jesus. I wasn’t doing it to impress you. I just-” And she cuts herself off, and when Emma looks at her curiously it doesn’t look like she intends to finish the sentence, jaw clenched shut and forehead creased.
It’s a couple awkward, silent seconds after Emma has looked away when Audrey continues the thought. “I just… know what it’s like. To have someone do something like that to you.”
Guilt immediately floods Emma’s whole body, and she nearly jumps back from Audrey again. “Audrey, I am so-”
“No!” Audrey snaps, wheeling on her. “Stop apologizing! Emma, Christ, enough. I get you’re sorry, but there are bigger things happening here! People are dead! The killer is stalking you! Your shitty ex taped you losing your virginity and gave it to Nina and all you’re going to do is say you’re sorry to me?”
Emma swallows. “All of that did happen,” she says, very evenly, “yeah. But that doesn’t mean I don’t still owe you an apology. That doesn’t change.”
Audrey blinks at her, exactly three times, then her face screws up and Emma’s prepared to be reprimanded again but instead Audrey’s voice comes out low. “Emma, you should be mad,” she says. “God, how are you not so mad? This was someone you trusted, someone you- when I saw, when I found out that Nina had done to me what she did, I was so angry, I wanted to-”
“I am angry,” Emma says, before Audrey can say anything else.
And Audrey laughs, a little hysterically. “No, you’re not! Emma, if you were angry, you wouldn’t be chastising me for flipping Will in a class exercise. You wouldn’t be defending him!”
“You don’t get to tell me how I feel,” Emma says sharply, and a few passing heads look over. Kieran’s one of them, and he makes as if to head over, but Audrey glares at him so hard he falls a few steps back instead. “No one gets to tell me how I feel, or how I should feel, not you or my mom or- anyone else. I am angry, it’s just- there’s no point to it. It doesn’t help anything.”
More heads are turning. Audrey glances furtively at them, grabs Emma’s jacket with a light hand, and hauls her out of the middle of the hallway until they’re against the shadowy brick wall lining the gym. “Then what does help, Emma? Nothing helps. I’m mad, and it gets me through the day. That’s what you need.”
Audrey’s so small when they’re close together like this. Emma isn’t used to having to look down to see her. The weird black flecks in her irises are still there. “What I need is to figure out what’s going on.”
She’s standing closer than is strictly necessary, and it becomes more obvious when Audrey lets go of her jacket in a sudden, almost startled motion. Emma rocks back on her heels, only a little, and doesn’t step back. Audrey leans back, hard, against the wall, and crosses her arms. “What you really need is better ways of protecting yourself. I might not be around next time.”
That flares up something in Emma, a little bit like indignation but something else too, similarly fiery but different in weight. “I don’t need protection. You sound like my mom.”
Audrey rolls her eyes, and comes off the wall a little. “Okay, one, never compare me to your mom again, bad comparison and also weird. Two, Emma, your ex is a sex criminal, this new guy won’t stop eye-fucking you, and oh, right, you’re being targeted by a serial killer. If you don’t need protection, then what’s the point of having the word in the English language?”
Emma’s working up to an equally snappy response when Audrey gives an extended sigh, looks out of the corner of her eye at a waiting, perplexed-looking Noah, then pushes off the wall, comes within two inches of Emma, and crosses her arms. “Okay, look. I’m coming for you down a dark alley. What do you do?”
It takes a second for Emma to take the comment seriously, and even longer to take Audrey seriously as a threat. Her neck is starting to hurt from looking down at her, and Audrey’s hair is flopping in her eyes. “You? Audrey, you’re gonna have to come up with someone, like, a foot taller to really be intimidating.”
She means it as a joke, but Audrey doesn’t take it as one. Her brow just furrows harder. “No, Emma, it’s just me. Five foot three, cloaked in the cover of darkness, and I really want to kill you. What do you do?”
So now Emma has to stand there and assess what she’d do if Audrey wanted to kill her. Audrey, who’s probably about a buck twenty soaking wet, her and her silver studs and thick jackets and thick skin, Audrey who beat up Trey Lawrence in the fourth grade when he said Emma was a bedwetter, Audrey who probably still keeps her mother’s locket and butter knife under her mattress. Audrey, who’s bigger and sharper now than she was when she and Emma were real friends instead of fellow victims, but she still does the same impatient hair toss and vulnerable nose scrunch she did at twelve.
Out of everyone in this creepy, messed up town, Audrey might not be the person least likely capable of murder, but she’d never kill Emma. There’s no plausible scenario where Emma has to talk Audrey out of killing her. There’s always, always going to be a third party between them, like there’s always been, absorbing the blow.
Not this time, though. Two people are dead and Emma’s had enough of third parties.
Now Audry’s fidgeting, obviously impatient, side-eyeing Noah again and then doubling back to glare at Will before she meets Emma’s eyes again. “Listen, as stimulating as you’re making this conversation, I don’t have all day, so make up your goddamn- mmph!”
Because Emma’s kissed her, because that’s probably exactly what she’d do if she and Audrey were in a dark alley and Audrey said something along the lines of I’ll kill you, I swear to God I’ll kill you. She’s heard it come out of her mouth before.
Audrey shoves her off almost immediately but Emma doesn’t get punched, which is better than she expected. “What the fuck, Emma, what is your fucking damage-” Her eyes are wild and her face is dark and she has to shove her hair back into place with both hands. “Don’t you dare fucking do this like you-”
“I’m not doing this to impress you,” Emma repeats back to her, breathless and feeling the way she did the first time she convinced a bartender she was twenty-one, nervous and excited and buzzing all over, still scared but a little reassured. Will is stopped dead in the middle of the hallway, staring at her in shock, and she wants him to hurt but mostly she wants Audrey to understand. Only slightly nonsensically, she adds, “You’d never kill me in an alley anyway.”
That gets Audrey to bark in what’s definitely hysterical laughter, her eyes flitting all over Emma’s face. “Wanna bet-” she says, and then they’re kissing again. Emma thinks Audrey started it this time, but Audrey still grunts in mild surprise before tilting her head to the side. There’s a slow, building murmur in the hall as it goes on, as Emma doesn’t break it, but it’s suddenly cut through with the sharp sound of applause and the distinct sound of Noah shouting “GET IT JENSEN,” from across the hall, and Emma almost laughs. Audrey exhales so hard through her nose it’s almost painful.
It doesn’t make anything better. It doesn’t make any of those dead people not dead, it doesn’t catch the killer, it doesn’t make Audrey’s mom better, or bring Emma’s dad back. But it’s the first thing in about three weeks that doesn’t taste like death, and just that is enough.