i have 2 new friends

Hi, I am Emily Russell. Just a regular 16 year old high school student. With tons of social anxiety and practically no friends, except for one, but we’ll get to that later. I live a pretty boring life, there’s not much to do in Riverdale.

I guess you could say I have a nice family. But I don’t think that’s true, it looks perfect from the surface but it’s messed up when you look closely. But then again, isn’t every family like that, so I guess it’s normal.

It’s the first day of school after the winter break. And trust me, if you hate people as much as I do, you wouldn’t have survived school, it’s more than enough that I showed up today. By the way, it’s 3rd of march, 2023. As per usual, I was a nervous wreck. My mom dropped me off to the school and I just hid behind the building to avoid running into other lame teenagers. And I overstayed. Even though my mom dropped me off early I still am late. Awesome. Just awesome.

Just when I thought this day is going to be terrible, I saw wu. You know the friend I was talking about before, yeah, that’s Lee Hwang wu. My childhood best friend and neighbor. Also my only friend.

He was waving at me, and I couldn’t help but smile and wave back because life just felt less terrible. By the way, wu knows everything about me and I knew everything about him.

wu is pretty popular. Mainly because he’s Korean and every girl in my class is obsessed with BTS. I’ve heard them say he looks like Jimin. But here’s the thing right, wu doesn’t care about the girls because he’s gay. And to top it all off, he also likes a guy. But there’s a small problem, the guy he likes lives HALF A WORLD APART! Yeah, my single, ******, handsome best friend fell in love with a Korean guy.

I still remember when he told me he was gay. We were 15 and he’d just gotten back from his grandparents’ place in Korea with his eyes full of longing. He was in love. The only problem was the guy he fell in love with was continents apart.

And it wasn’t like he could date the gay guys in our school, mainly because they’re all jerks and also, he hasn’t really told anyone besides me that he’s gay.

The guy wu is hopelessly in love with is named Minho. I’ve heard a million stories about Minho, and I could tell you everything about him even though I have never met him.

And did I mention that Minho doesn’t really know Wu is in love with him.

Unlike me, Wu has other nerdy-geeky-popular friends that I don’t really talk to. They’re sweet and welcoming but I just never have the guts to actually get to know them. The first time I met Wu was when we were 6, and back then I didn’t really have any problem talking to people.

Like I said, I am late. Or you know what, Mr. Charles is way too early! I was just heading to the back of the class to sit alone in peace when I hear Mr. Charles harsh voice asking me why I am late. I just turn around to look at him when he just says, “I’m letting it go because it’s the first day, go sit next to Rebecca.”

Honestly, sitting next to a complete stranger on the first day of school is the literal definition of the worst punishment ever.

Too much for letting it go. Huh?

And as I am mentally cursing my life while I sit next to Rebecca.

How the hell am I going to live?

That was before Rebecca introduced herself.

“Hey, I am Rebecca Martinez.”

And because my parents paid for pre-school where I learnt manners, I introduced myself too. Even though I’d rather sit alone.

“Hey, I am Emily Russel.”

I guess that’s how Rebecca and I became friends.

Thankfully, I didn’t have to indulge in useless small talk for the rest of the class because Mr. Charles doesn’t let anyone talk.

After class ended

I was thinking about this new girl who looked confused. Although my non-friendly instincts were telling me to just walk away, the other side of me wanted to talk to her. Who knew, what if I could have other friends?

I asked her what she had next, she just said ‘French’.

I had science, so I had no choice but to leave and hopefully never talk to her again.

Maybe the universe wants me to have no friends.

Just as I was heading towards the locker Rebecca said, “ I am new here and I don’t really know anything about Riverdale. Do you mind showing around after school? You’re the only person I’ve talked to today.” She ended with a chuckle.

Before I could process my thoughts, I instinctively said, “Yeah, sure. Why not. Meet me at the cafeteria after school ends.”

I guess the universe has different plans for me.

As I was going go towards my next class. I saw another girl that I had never seen before. She seemed new and was having a hard time opening up her locker. Being the amazing and helpful person I am, I decided to help her.

Well, I had already agreed to Rebecca around after so I thought maybe she could join us.

She introduced herself as Vivian Ryan. After I helped her with her locker and figuring out her classes. I invited her to join Rebecca and me to hangout. She agreed readily.

At lunch time

I saw Vivian and Rebecca looking for a place to sit. I usually don’t sit in the cafeteria during lunch because I don’t really have anyone to sit with. Wu usually just sits with his other geeky friends.

But today I had made two new friends (well, not really, kind of).

I invited them to come sit with me. The looked extremely relaxed after that. We made plans to meet up after school so I could show them around Riverdale.

And the next thing I knew, Wu was excitedly pulling me across the cafeteria. I asked him what’s up.

He excitedly said, “He’s coming. He’s coming.”

“Who? Voldermort? Harry Potter? Harry Styles?” I asked laughingly.

He glared at me for a second but the his face resumed to the excitement he was feeling.

“Minho. He’s coming.”

He paused and took a long breath in longing.

I had a million questions running through my head. Why? When? How? What are you going to do?

But I refrained from bombarding him with those. Instead, I decided to scream….. internally in my head. Because if I screamed loudly I would attract attention.

If no one was around we would’ve danced.

I said, “I have a million questions, but before we get to that, we need to have a Taylor Swift dance/karaoke party.”

He laughed and said, “Sure. This deserves a whole concert. But just the happy songs this time.”

I laughed and said, “Yeah.”

The last time we had a Taylor Swift marathon was when he had returned from Korea, completely heartbroken. We listened to ‘all too well’ and screamed it on top of our lungs almost every day.

Eventually he recovered and regained hope that maybe someday he could actually tell Minho that he was hopelessly in love with him.

I was so happy for him.

We decided to talk it all out at a sleepover at my place tonight.

The evening

Vivian and Rebecca had agreed to meet me at café 1997 at 04:30. And the whole evening was so much fun.

Turns out that Vivian and Rebecca were actually pretty cool and talkative. It was just the new environment that prevented them from talking in school.

They were very cool too.

Vivian was into One direction and read a lot. Rebecca loved a bit of everything.

And I think I had seen Vivian checking out Wu earlier in school, turns out that she almost thought she saw Jimin from BTS because he looked so much like him.

While we were at it, I told them that Wu was my best friend. (I skipped the only friend part because that would’ve sounded pathetic). And anyways, I technically now have two new friends.

It was getting dark now, so I called Wu to come pick us up. As it turns out, I forgot to tell him I had two other fully grown people with me. (Because I am dumb, I know). And although both of them offered to go by themselves, I convinced them to stay because Wu would drop them off in his car.

Yeah, I know. I am dumb.

And to top it all off, Wu showed up in a motorcycle. Yeah, bad things always happen to good people, like me.

And when we were waiting for him to show up we were talking about our old lives, that’s when we realized that none of us had ever had a boyfriend.

We were laughing when Wu showed up in his motorcycle. And I realized what a horrible mistake I had made.

And we argued, in a funny way though. It was clearly an honest mistake, but people don’t need to know that, right. I just nagged him a little bit.

But we still had no solution to the problem.

It was almost dark now, Wu offered to go back and bring his car but he lived too far away. The buses were mostly gone too.

The only sane solution, which was offered by Wu, was that he could call some of his other friends on their bikes because they were all hanging out nearby.

It sounded okay.

We all agreed to it.

A few minutes later, Dominick, Robert and Ben showed up. They were all Wu’s close friends.

We decided to split up. I sat behind Wu, because we were neighbors and our houses were the farthest from there. Dominick offered to drop Rebecca, even though their houses were nowhere near, but I guessed he just had a crush on her. Robert and Vivian lived in the same locality so they paired up. Ben was just third wheeling. He lived around our area so he stayed along.

We were on the main highway when an idea struck me. I asked everyone to stop. Everyone still had almost an hour left before curfew. And there was nothing important for them to do. It was the first day, so there wasn’t any homework too.

I gave them the idea to go check out the horror house near Greendale Avenue. It was a few miles away.

They were a bit hesitant at first. But Dominick convinced everyone. Did I mention he was a horror freak? Well as it turned out, he had always wanted to go there.

Maybe he was just looking for ways to impress Rebecca. Who knows?

All that matters is that everyone eventually agreed.

In the house

It was scary. Very scary. We were all freaked out. At least we had our phones for flashlights. So we could see stuff.

The house was very creepy though.

And to add to that, I accidently locked myself in an abandoned room. Yup, that proves it people, bad things happen exclusively to good people only.

I was almost about to cry when the door just wouldn’t budge. Because it was originally my idea, I assumed everyone would just think I went exploring alone. I thought to scream for help but that would freak them out. We’re in a horror house, and me screaming would just end up in them running away.

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