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Goodbye. Such a simple word. Seven letters. Seven *awful* letters. Goodbye was something that Emma never wanted to say. Why couldn’t everything stay just as it was?
When her parents broke the news, Emma was at a loss for how to react. Elliot was over the moon, thoroughly convinced that germany had soft pretzels bigger than your head. Emma feigned excitement, too. She made up something about Paris to support her enthusiasm.
How could she say this to the girls? She couldn’t. Every moment together with Rikki and Cleo after that would be dripping in somber anticipation for the departure.
So she conveniently never brought up the trip. Was it selfish? Should she have had a proper conversation with her friends? Yes…probably. Emma didn’t want to think about that. About the trip.
June and July passed lazily, with the trio spending nearly all their time together. Just how Emma liked it. As the days went by and the departure got closer and closer, fears, both new and old, gnawed harder and harder at the back of Emma’s mind.
It was certainly the rude reality-check when mid-August rolled around. Emma’s mum asked if she had begun packing, as there was only a week left until the departure. She lied yes, that she was just narrowing down her last few items.
She promptly left the house and spent that day lounging on Mako’s beach with the girls. Her girls. She stared up at the sky through cat-eye sunglasses. Even if she was thousands of miles away, they would still look at the same sunrise each morning.
Emma went to bed like every night that summer, as early as possible to snooze away her worries. But no matter how much she tossed and turned, sleep evaded her. Maybe packing would tire her out. She couldn’t keep pushing that back much farther.
She emptied her closet and drawers, storing her clothes neatly in color-coded luggage. She gathered possibly everything she’d ever need in Europe and carefully packed it away. It was two hours later when Emma flopped onto her bed, both satisfied and unfulfilled.
Rikki. Oh, Rikki. Maybe the person she was most loathed to part with. Could she bear to confess her undying love? No, definitely not. But she still felt bad about leaving unannounced. A letter will have to suffice.
As she wrote, Emma couldn’t help but start chocking up. She was leaving behind everything. Her home, her friends, her school, Mako Island, the list went on and on. After a short eternity of censoring her true thoughts on the trip, Emma sealed the envelope. She thought about sneaking out and putting it in Rikki’s mailbox, but sleep was much too tempting at this hour.
Cozying up underneath her covers, Emma dreamed of many things. The trip, her friends, the toothbrush she just remembered she forgot to pack, but the clearest mental image was Rikki, standing in her olive-green cargo shorts, smirking at yet another one of her sarcastic remarks.
They were in Paris together.