An unexpected visitor

Christina put her hand on the teacher’s chair to slide it back when she heard the door open again.

Did they really come back? Did I give myself away somehow?

Panicking, Christina pulled her hand back under the desk and tried to remain as still as possible.

“Hello?”

It was another girls’ voice. Had she chased me too?

“Are you in here?” the student called out, “You ran past me in the hallway. I, um, I brought you my jacket. I thought you could use it.”

Do I trust her? Christina thought. Do I really have a choice?

She raised her hand meekly up from behind the desk and waived, “I’m over here.”

“Oh! Good. Well, not good, but glad I found you. You want my jacket?”

“Yes, please! Can you toss it to me?”

“Umm, yeah.”

Christina heard a few quick footsteps, and then the jacket landed with a light thud on top of the desk. She groped blindly for it by hand, found it and pulled it towards her. She squeezed out of the desk just enough to start pulling it on.

“So, did you lose some kind of a bet?” the teen asked.

“No. Nothing like that.”

“Oh… Can I ask what happened?”

Christina finished getting her arms through the sleeves and stood up to zip the jacket, facing away from the other student. “I don’t know if I really want to talk about it.”

“Okay… I saw Desiree and her friends leaving with your clothes, that’s why I thought it was a bet or something.”

Christina finished securing the jacket and turned around. She saw her helper for the first time, a blonde heavyset girl she’d seen around a few times but never had a class with.

“Oh,” she said, “your eyes are red. Have you been crying? Are you okay?”

“Well they didn’t hit me or anything,” Christina said, stepping out from around the desk, “but I’m not really okay.”

“Yeah. I think I get what happened now.”

“Yeah…”

“Kelly’s dumped mountain dew on my graphing calculators a few times. I got her suspended for it once and the first day back at school she did it again out of ****. Anyway, sorry I don’t have any pants or anything for your legs.”

“It’s fine, this covers me enough for now. I can get my gym uniform and give you your jacket back then.”

“Good thinking. What then?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well are you going to report what happened?”

“I don’t know, I hadn’t thought that far ahead. I probably should.”

“I think so. They’ll just do it again to someone else if you don’t.”

Christina nodded. As much as she didn’t want to have to tell the school administration, and write out the details of what happened, it was the better choice.

“Yeah. I will. Well I’ll go get my uniform and give this back to you.”

“I’ll come with you. If that’s okay, I mean. I won’t follow you in the locker room. Just seems like you could use a friend.”

“Sure. That would be nice.”

“I’m Emily, by the way.”

“I’m Christina. Thanks again for your help.”