Quinn listened impatiently for the click, then slammed the phone into the cradle. She had had enough of Sandi's innuendos and paranoia for one day. She had to admit though, through her red haze of anger, Sandi sometimes worried her.
When Quinn had threatened to leave the Fashion Club last week, Sandi seemed to greet it as if it were the Second Coming; yet before the day was over Sandi was on the phone to her, practically begging her to come back.
When she had mentioned this at supper that night, Jake was of course clueless, happy that she and her friend had made up; Helen went off on her own tangent about Sandi's mom and her latest insult; and Daria had been of no help, saying something about Sandi being bi-polar, as if the Arctic had anything to do with it.
Quinn went to her room and pulled out a scrapbook. When things got tense like this, she liked to lose herself in the past. Daria had called it escapism. Well, duh!
She turned to the sixth grade class picture, the year that Ember had moved to Highland. There was very little she missed about Highland, especially those two horrid deviants Daria used to hang with (and she wonders why I don't claim her, she thought), but she missed Ember.
Ember became her best friend that last year in grade school. There were so many times she had wished that Ember had been her sister, rather than Daria. Those two never did get along, she thought smiling. It had been Ember that had first suggested she pretend that Daria was her cousin.
They had cut a swath through that nowhere town, leading their admirers around by the nose. They had accumulated a group following to rival the Fashion Club.
She wondered if any of them would still speak to her...
That's when the pang of guilt hit. That last month before the move to Lawndale. To think that she had known Ember so long, and yet hadn't had a clue about that one fatal flaw. Ember had hidden it so well.
Until they caught her with Connie.
Connie Lopez didn't even run with their clique. Highland was a different place than Lawndale. In Lawndale, Tiffany could be a member of the most popular clique and Jodie could be in the student government by her own merits, but not in Highland. Had Connie been a middle class norteamericana, she might have fit right in with Quinn's clique at Highland. Heck, she was cute enough that she might have made it here in Lawndale.
That is, if she hadn't been a... Ewwww!
Ember and Connie, the new targets of society's wrath at Highland. If Ember had been caught drinking, or smoking, or had even been knocked up (Ewwww!, again), Quinn might have been able to work up the courage to stand by her.
But not for that. That had been unforgivable, or so she had thought at the time.
She saw a tear splash on the page, so she closed the book and leaned back against her bed. She tried to hold back the tears, but it was too late. Fortunately, she didn't have a date tonight, and tomorrow the puffiness would be gone.
Ember-Sandi... Sandi-Ember... Lesbian vs. psycho. Who would any sane person choose?
Some escape into the past this had been.
She stood up and looked out the window. She saw Daria walking home from Jane's. She had occasionaly had her suspicions about those two, suspicions she had been afraid people would have about her if she'd have stood by Ember. But Jane has a boyfriend now, and Daria had a crush on Jane's cute but grotty brother. Yet, what if they had been gay? What if Sandi were, or Tiffany, or Stacy? Or even Aunt Amy?
Mom would just have to squawk about the phone bill. Quinn drew the numbers and area code from the deep recesses of her memory.
"H-hello, Ember? ...I ...I'm so sorry..."