Petal Pals Forever

20251114

Prompt from DailyPrompt.com

I didn’t always hate Emily. In fact, as little kids we were friends. The kind of friends you had because they lived nearby and everyone’s parents handed kids around to get a break, but still. I was young and blithe and having someone in the group who could morph to look kinda like our favourite characters was cool. I envied her, sure, but I didn’t resent her.
It was after we started school that changed. Her power was growing stronger. She was the star of the drama club, and her mom got her acting gigs. Real ones. She was no longer imitating characters, she was being them. And she was the poster child for every school event, since she could look like a literal poster child. Flawless and sickly sweet.
So she never had time for us, got tons of attention, and was already a movie star before anyone else had so much as a paper route. Resentment set in fast.
Not just me - hating Emily was a comfy topic. There was always gossip about her. The idle chatter only got deeper and nastier when we moved to secondary school and her roles continued to get bigger, her future brighter and so far above the rest of us.
When I saw her scuttling into an alley the chance for gossip was why I followed. Phone held ready to snap incriminating pics. Imagine if I caught the golden child taking drugs, or something!
I rounded the corner to find Emily slumped on the disgusting ground between two dumpsters, face in her hands, rocking back and forth and quaking with the strain of holding in sobs. She looked completely different - not just the forlorn pose, her entire body. No longer photoshoot perfect, but blotchy and lanky and… normal. If it wasn’t for my distant memories I never would’ve recognised her.
Shock propelled “Em?” from my lips, and she jerked upright.
Her mortification I could understand. But more than that, she looked… guilty. Apologetic. Her face morphed and shifted and suddenly she was the magazine girl I was used to, trilling “Oh, hiiii Alice! Sorry, you caught me at a bad time.”
“Um. Yeah.” I stuffed my phone in my pocket. “What’s wrong?”
“Oh, it’s nothing. I’m just, I’m being silly and selfish and making a fuss about nothing. Sorry.” Her smile is so polished it shines. Practically flashing ‘you can walk away without feeling guilty, now’.
But I couldn’t. Not after seeing that once-familiar face smeared with tears and snot. Not after hearing her spout excuses I’d used a hundred times.
Years of bitter, aimless hatred fizzled out into shock and guilt at the realisation that Emily was just a kid. Like me. All those hours on message boards trading wild guesses about her life, shredding her performances, guiltily gleefully hoping she might read and see what we were saying about her… I now hoped she never had.
Unsure how to process this revelation, and even more at a loss what to do, I slowly sat down in front of her.
Ugh, this place is gross I’m gonna have to wash everything when I get home. But I pushed that aside and said “C’mon, I’m not stupid. You can talk to me.”
What was that silly baby club we were in? “Petal Power forever, right?” I flashed my best approximation of the hand sign.
God, I felt like such a dork. But it startled a laugh out of Emily - and her face morphed and shifted again, returning to… her. She fumbled a tissue out of her pocket to clean up her face and gave a proper smile.
“Oh. Wow. I’d forgotten about that.”
She hesitantly made something like the hand sign back at me. We waved various attempts back and forth for a moment. Nostalgia and mutual dorkiness trapping us in awkward giggles.
“Ok, ‘petal pal’ Em, what’s bothering you?”
“Pff.” She’s still smiling, but the pain was back. “It’s just… there’s a role I don’t want to take, because the director is… mean. I hate working with him. But…”
She sighed and shoved the crumpled tissue into her pocket. “It pays great and will be good for my portfolio, so I have to take it. I just… I-I got all worked up. Sorry.”
“Mm.”
There’s more to this. I’m sure of it. ‘Have to take it’… that means her parents are making her, right? And the way she stumbled before saying ‘mean’… My gut twisted, sensing something nasty lurking beneath that look in her eyes.
But I don’t know how to ask. We haven’t spoken in years, I don’t know anything about what she’s going through, if it is that bad maybe I don’t want to hear it, terrible though that is…
I chewed my lip. Thought about what my parents had told me to do, if I was in an ‘icky, uncomfortable situation’ with an adult. Talking to Emily’s parents was clearly out, I don’t know if mine could help, so… the next step was ask for help at the library. “They’ll know who to call for you”, my parents always promised.
Hopefully they were right.
“Have you talked to Ms Fuller about it?”
Emily blinked, brow furrowing. “No?”
“Well… my parents always say librarians have the best advice, and if they don’t they know how to find it, so…” I stand, trying hard not to touch the ground, and offer her a hand up. “It’s worth a try, right? Better than talking to anyone at school.”
“I…” Emily wavered. Her expression torn.
“Maybe she can help you explain to your mom?” I pressed. “So she’ll understand.”
“Mm… o-okay.” Emily took my hand and let me pull her upright. Her face morphing once more into the pretty magazine princess.
But now I’d seen the pain in her eyes, I couldn’t believe I’d never noticed it before.
“C’mon.” I kept my hand in hers as we set off. Like we’re ‘safety buds’ again. Like nothing ever changed.
Maybe it shouldn’t have.

Prompt was “I stared straight at the person who I hated most, and then I realized that we were not so different after all.”