The Hanahaki Club: Episode 27
Episode 27: Dates, Mates and Fakes, Part 1
So far…
Emery has bet Lila that she can get Lila to like her by Easter.
Episode 27: Dates, Mates & Fakes, Part 1
Emery
Lila was not keeping up her end of the bet. She hadn’t replied to Emery’s text at the weekend and she hadn’t responded in person either, today, even though she’d had plenty of opportunities to do so. It was clear that she was purposefully ignoring Emery, which wasn’t unusual, but it was clearly a violation of the rules of their agreement.
But that was fine. If Lila wanted to play hard to get, Emery was up for the challenge.
They were in newspaper club now and Emery had been shamelessly staring at Lila from across the room for the past ten minutes, hoping Lila would accidentally glance her way and catch her eye, or that someone else would notice and make a comment to Lila about it. Emery knew that Lila knew she was staring at her, because everything about Lila’s rigid posture, the focused pinch of her brow, and the way her fingers flew furiously, without pause, over the keys of her laptop screamed ‘I working too hard to notice you staring at me’. Bitch. Did she think Emery was too chicken to do anything whilst they were in school, in front of their peers?
After ten minutes had passed, and the club room was as busy as it ever got, Emery got up out of her seat and strode to Lila’s desk.
“Hey,” she said, trying to sound at least a little friendly through her gritted teeth. “Can we talk for a sec?”
Lila didn’t reply, didn’t move, didn’t even flicker an eyelash as she continued to type.
“It won’t take long,” Emery said, “Promise.”
She allowed ten seconds of no response at all to pass, and then, with a sigh, raised her hand and flipped the laptop screen down. Lila jerked her hands back, avoiding having her fingers trapped at the last minute and finally turned her head to glare at Emery.
“What the hell?”
“I need to talk to you.”
“I’m busy.”
Emery sighed again, and then raised her voice enough for the surrounding tables to hear: “"Why are you ghosting me?”
“I’m not—”
“I just want to arrange our date…”
Lila’s response was instant, like a snake that had had its tail trodden on. In less than than five seconds, she was up out of her seat, one hand grabbing Emery by the tie and yanking her across the classroom and out into the corridor before Emery had any time to catch her breath or register exactly what was happening. The club room door slammed shut behind them and Lila released Emery with a small shove that had her stumbling back a couple of steps before she caught her balance.
“What the hell are you doing?” Lila demanded.
Emery smoothed her tie carefully and then met Lila’s cold look with a pleased smile. “Well, that worked at least.”
“What is wrong with you?”
Before Emery could answer that question, the club room door opened and Bethany popped her head out. She eyed them both up and down, as if looking for signs of blood, and then tilted her head suspiciously.
“Do I need to be worried?” she asked.
“Probably not,” Emery replied.
Lila performed a classic ‘you’re such a weirdo’ eyeroll before adding: “We’re fine.”
Bethany didn’t look convinced. “If you start a fight on my time, I’ll kick you both out of the club,” she warned. She began to withdraw back into the club room, but paused to add: “And I’ll put it on the front page of the next issue.”
Lila and Emery watched the door close again, and then Emery gave Lila a bright smile. “Wouldn’t want that, would we?”
Lila didn’t reply but grabbed Emery by the arm this time and pulled her along the corridor to a little alcove where there was a vending machine.
“Hey!” Emery exclaimed.
“I don’t trust Bethany not to listen at the door,” Lila explained flatly, before asking again: “What the hell is wrong with you?”
“You’ve been ignoring me,” Emery said, “Which means you’re not holding up your end of our bargain. I sent you a text on Friday and you never replied.”
“I never promised I would reply to you.”
“You promised to give me a chance.” Emery allowed her smile to grow even wider. “Are you upset I asked you over text? Would you prefer if I ask you out in person?”
Lila didn’t take the bait. “I would prefer if you didn’t ask me at all. I’m not hanging out with you at a weekend.”
“What about after school?”
“No.”
“So you want to hang out during school? I could come and eat my lunch with you.”
“Hell, no. Stay away from me in school.”
Emery was quite pleased that she was the one who got to look unimpressed for once. She folded her arms for good measure too, just to make it clear how patronising she was about to be. “Well, then, Lila, when are you going to give me the opportunity to show you how loveable I am? We had an agreement, remember, a contract—”
“Ugh, fine! I will text you back.”
“I want a date.”
“No.”
“Okay then. I’ll join all your clubs.”
“You can’t. You’re banned from joining any more clubs.”
“I’ll quit all of mine and join all of yours. Foreign Language Club is on Thursday, right? And next Monday is Book Club?”
Lila huffed and folded her arms before asking dryly: “Why are you such a freak?”
“Hang out with me on Saturday and find out.”
Lila swore under her breath and rolled her eyes so hard, Emery worried she might detach her retinas. “I can spare an hour on Saturday.”
“Two hours.”
“No.”
“An hour and a half.”
“Not a minute more.”
“Obviously.” Realising they were both mirroring each other, as they stood on opposite sides of the alcove with their arms crossed, Emery quickly unfolded her arms and shoved her hands into the pockets of her blazer. “Got a preferred time?”
“Let’s get it over and done with.”
“Nine-thirty work for you? Meet you outside Hopton Shopping Centre? West entrance?”
Lila shrugged and then unfolded her arms. “Fine. But stay away from me until then.”
Emery gave Lila her brightest smile. “Happy to.”
Lila didn’t reply but gave Emery a parting cynical look before heading back to the club room. Once she was alone in the corridor, Emery took her new inhaler from her blazer pocket, gave it a shake and inhaled a puff. The doctor had prescribed her this second inhaler during her appointment this morning, after determining that she needed something to help with her increasing breathlessness. The latest set of x-rays had shown that the hanahaki blooms now covered most of her left lung and had started to spread into her right lung. She had about five or six weeks before she would be in the final two months of the disease, often referred to as the Dying Months. In just two and a half months she’d have to have the hanahaki flowers surgically removed to avoid permanently scarring her lungs; and in three months, maybe a little longer, if she was lucky and the hanahaki continued to progress more slowly than usual, the flowers would invade her lungs so completely that they would inevitably suffocate her to death.
One day, she would just stop breathing entirely.
Historical records suggested that the hanahaki plant could live for another five days after the death of its host, until it, too, wilted and died. Technically, she could provide her own flowers at her funeral—just cut her open and pull the bouquet she’d grown herself out of her chest cavity and stick it on her coffin—or, better yet, replant it on her grave. Could a hanahaki plant survive outside of the human body? Or did it need human feelings and organs to continue to survive? Presumably, without the emotions that had triggered it in the first place, it would lose its life source and shrivel up. After all, that seemed to be how the cure worked. Lose the feelings, lose the flowers.
Easier said than done.
For now, Emery just needed to make sure that she impressed Lila on Saturday. She had to make this the best date Lila had ever had. She would have to charm the socks of her, as if her life depended on it… which it did. Do or die. All or nothing. She had to win this bet.
Next time: Episode 28— Dates, Mates & Fakes, Part 2
Teaser:
Jack hummed again and turned a keen eye on Taran. “Sounds suspicious to me.”
A wave of panic flooded Taran’s veins and kicked his heart into a frantic rhythm. Oh, shit. Surely, this arsehole hadn’t worked out what no one else so far had realised?
“There’s nothing suspicious about it,” he said, as coolly as he could manage, “Just because a girl is ‘super cute’, it doesn’t mean I have to date her.”
“You’ve always dated the super cute girls though,” Jack pointed out, and, annoyingly, he wasn’t exactly wrong. “What’s different this time?”
Taran tried to think of an answer that would be so convincing it would kill this conversation dead, but it was hard to think with the blood rushing in his ears and his heart trying to mine its way out of his chest. Shit.
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Author’s Notes:
I enjoy writing these two. No fisticuffs yet, but there’s still time for Bethany to get her front page story.
Next time: Episode 28—Dates, Mates & Fakes, Part 2
PJ
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