Making The Move

September 2028 - Pine Hollow, North Carolina

Zane Smith is 45, Belinda is 46, Dee is 16, and Emily is 14
(Caleb Gates is 16)

"I'm getting confused on what it is Mr. Gates wants me to write in this paper on advanced waste management," Dee says as she looks over her homework assignment. "What would I know about waste management?"

"Maybe he wants you to write about recycling," Emily says.

"Everyone already knows about recycling," Dee tells her.

 Suddenly, Emily isn’t listening to her sister. She bends down low over the computer and whispers, "There he is!"

"Who?" Dee asks, starting to turn around.

"No! Don't look," Emily says. "It's Caleb. He's going over to the bookcase behind us."

Caleb Gates is the guy Emily has had a crush on for the last few months. He’s older--she is 14 and he is 16, but they do have a class together. And she sees him walking in the halls ALL the time. Because she doesn’t care who else is around her. All she ever sees is Caleb.

She looks forward to the calculus class they have together. Emily is great at math and so she had advanced to a higher level class even in her freshman year of high school. She definitely wouldn't have said no to the class since Caleb is in there too.

He says hey to her each day and Emily smiles and tried to say hey back, but sometimes her voice cracks into a high-pitched sound, leaving her embarrassed.

"I don't know what to do," Emily says one night at dinner. "It's like I become stupid when I try to talk to him."

"Well, at least you have some guy who talks to you," Dee tells her. "I have like zero probabilities in in anyone around here."

"There is someone out there," Emily says. "I don't know if any are as handsome as Caleb..."

"Am I able to complain about my own life or just listen to yours all the time?" Dee asks.

Emily just wants to find love like her parents have for each other.

Sometimes it’s like they are still teenagers who had just started dating. They can’t keep their hands or lips off each other.

But to get to something like her parents have with each other, Emily knows she has to make a move toward Caleb. She invites him over to play chess one afternoon after school. She had heard him telling someone else how much he likes the game and so it seems like the perfect way to spend some time with him.

But Caleb is definitely better than her at chess. So she can’t resist cheating.

But it doesn’t work. "Checkmate," Caleb tells her a few minutes later, grinning wide.

Emily scowls and then swipes her hand across the table. "Fine," she says. "You win."

Caleb looks shocked at her reaction to his winning. Emily is immediately embarrassed. She overreacts to little things like this all the time and she hates that she has let him see.

"What should I do?" Emily asks. "I was so stupid."

But Dee isn’t listening to her. "Hey," Emily says. "Do you hear me?"

"What?" Dee asks. "Oh, yeah. Don't give up on Caleb. You can stop being stupid and make him like you."

But Dee never looks away from the computer screen as she speaks. "What are you doing over there?" Emily asks, trying to look at the screen.

But whatever it is, Dee closes it quickly. "Nothing," she says. "Come on, it's our turn to cook tonight."

***

The next day after school, Dee tells Emily to go home without her because she has to talk with one of her teachers. But really, Dee drives out to Arcadia to a little club she's read about online.

She isn’t sure if there is anyone her age inside the club, but she’s able to get in without any problems.

The club is full of interesting people and Dee loves dancing to the music that pounds across the room.

There is even Dustin Broke there, along with the people who follow him and take pictures. Dustin is one of Dee's favorite musicians.

 Should she try to talk to him?

"Hey," she says, trying to keep her voice from sounding too high-pitched. "I'm Dee."

"Nice to meet you," he says. "Want to dance?"

***

Emily has her own plans for that night. Even after her angry outburst over chess, Caleb asks her to go to the little festival over in Arcadia with him. She says yes, of course, and she tries to make conversations during the drive there. Even now at the festival her words come out jumbled and silly.

But he doesn’t seem to mind. He keeps talking with her, giving her that smile that always makes her stomach flutter with a million butterflies.

As the night goes on, Emily feels like she can’t hold back from the way she feels about him. Every time Caleb smiles, she feels like kissing him. She can’t keep holding it back.

And so she does. Just as he tells her some story about how much his sisters can annoy him just because he is the only boy and has no one to help him annoy them, Emily moves in and presses her lips to his.

She expects him to push her away. But he doesn’t. When she pulls back, he grabs her hands and looks back at her, smiling.

"I've been wondering if I could do that to you or if you'd think I was getting too close," he says.

"I'd never think that," she tells him.

And so it is that she is now the girlfriend of Caleb Gates, the title she's been dreaming of for what feels like forever.

***

But things with Dee aren’t going like a dream. One morning Belinda confronts her daughter over breakfast.

"I heard you get back late last night," Belinda tells her. "Where were you?"

"Finishing up some research at the library," Dee says. It is a lie, she had really been at that club again, but her mom doesn’t need to know that.

"The library doesn't stay open that long," Belinda says.

"I was taking my time getting back," Dee says, avoiding her mom's eyes. "I had to stop and get a milkshake after all that studying I did."

But Dee isn’t about to tell the truth or even let anyone guess. She reads her text messages from her new friends when she’s alone, not keeping herself from smiling wide at the screen.

Her older brother Sam had moved to San Myshuno, New York. He comes to visit his family when he can and sits and talks with his sisters, giving them all the advice on teenagehood as he can.

"How do I get Mom to stop questioning me about everything I do?" Dee asks her brother.

"Move out of the house and across the country," Sam answers with a laugh. "Although she still hasn't completely stopped all the questions whenever she calls me."

And even her sister annoys her these days. All she ever talks about is Caleb, sighing happily at the fact that she has a boy who wants to kiss her as much as he can.

"Excuse me, but I'm trying to study," Dee finally says, breaking into Emily's retelling of her afternoon with Caleb. "I don't need to hear about how soft his lips are."

Emily closes her book. "Sorry to bother you then," she snaps before getting up and stomping out of the room.

Dee pulls out her phone and presses the buttons to call one of her contacts.

"Hey," she says. "Are you headed out to the club? I'll meet you there."

-------------------

Dee ended up at the club with all those people when joining the Partihaus club. I'm not sure yet where that club is in the game, but I have Dee written as visiting a club in Arcadia because in my story it is the closest city to Pine Hollow. The other cities are all across the country.

But that didn't stop Tucker Craig from showing up all the way from Oasis Springs, Nevada

In between school and a date, Emily set the family's oven on fire: