Rotten to the Core by Casey Kelleher

happened’ ? N othing ’ s bloom ing well happened,” Emma smirked. She knew what Kate was getting at , but she couldn’t be arsed to go into it. It was her house and she could do what she wanted. She didn’t have to explain herself to anyone , as far as she was concerned. Kate was too boring for her own good , Emma thought , as she put her fag out on the side of a dinner plate on the table next to her . T hen , picking up her fag packet, she immediately sparked up another.
    Kate could see her friend was on something . S he knew that some of Emma’s friends smoked a bit of weed now and again, but Emma had never done anything other than that as far a s she knew, and it had been a sociable thing when she had done it in the past. Now, Emma’s eyes were glassy , her pupils dilated.
              “Are you on something , Em ; have you taken anything?” T he concern in Kate’s voice turn ed to anger. What the hell was Emma playing at ?
              “ O h, chill out , Kate ; it’s just a bit of coke, nothing to get so het up about . ”   H er friend laughed at her .
              Kate was furious ; since when did Emma start using coke, if she had seen her in a nightclub dabbling in it , she still wouldn’t have been happy about it , but it would have made more sense . Emma was easily influenced and would have tried whatever her mates were doing; Kate woul d have put it down to being a one off while she was out drinking and not thinking straight. I t was two o’clock in the afternoon, and Emma was sitting in her dirty flat alone and clearly she was off her face .
              “Emma , w hat the hell is going on? Since when did you start doing co ke ?”
              Emma was bored of Kate ’ s tone : she may be her friend but she wasn’t her mother , and Emma in no way had to explain herself to her. “Kate, I don’t know if you’re aware of this or not but I’m a fucking adult and I don’t need to explain myself to anyone, I’m having a shit day so I’ve done a bit of coke, no big deal . O k ay, M iss G oody -T wo -S hoes?”
              Kate couldn’t believe it : w hat had got into her friend ? Emma hadn’t seemed herself at the beginning of the week when she had come around either, she realised; what was she doing ? “Emma, I came to speak to you about Jay . ” Kate spoke quietly.
    “Jay got attacked last night, he’s in hospital . ” Kate fought back tears as she spoke, then she felt anger bubble inside her as her friend had no reaction to the news .
                  Emma sat there quietly, tapping her foot whilst focusing on the picture frame on the window ledge; she wanted to ask how he was, what had happened, but she knew i f she spoke about him now she would give the game up. She knew that she had started to fall for Jay herself, and right now Kate didn’t feature in the bigger picture . S he was sure Jay felt the same way about her, but giving the game away to Kate would fuck things up for them before they had even started. She continued to stare ahead blankly , and didn’t appear to react to the news.
              “Don’t you give a shit , Emma? My boyfriend is lying in hospital as we speak. He’s b lack and blue, he could have been killed. Don’t you even care? ”
              Emma stared at Kate . S he was feeling higher than a kite, which was the only thing allowing her to keep herself together. She ha d only just snorted a couple of lines five minutes before Kate had knocked on her door. She had been looking forward to the feeling of complete oblivion that she was craving more and more as the days passed . She hadn’t realised how addictive th e stuff she was taking was, but she knew that when she wanted to she could give it up easily : it was only coke. Jay had given her a few lines the night he had stayed, and they had had the most amazing sex .