by Anna B. Doe
“I’ll check my schedule at the hospital and let you know.” He smiles at me and gives me tap on the shoulder. “You know I love to come and watch your games.”
Amelia
“What do you mean, you’re not going?” Mom cries out, looking between Brook and me. “It’s a tradition. You can’t not go!”
“Mom, calm down.” I pat Lola’s head to calm her down because Mom’s screeching woke her up from her nap. My poor baby. She won’t get her usual twenty-hour beauty sleep. “You are disturbing Lola.”
“You and that dog.”
Mom isn’t Lola’s biggest fan. She likes her just fine, but she doesn’t like the fact that Lola is in the house and sleeping in my bed. But there is no help with that.
When I got her she was just a small puppy and she couldn’t sleep all alone in her bed on the floor. It didn’t seem fair to me. So now there is no way of getting her to sleep anywhere else but in my bed.
“Really, Mrs. C, it’s not a big deal.” Brook turns the page in her book and looks at my mom. “It’s not like we are missing graduation or anything like that.”
“Yeah, Mom. It’s just a silly sleepover where we have to sleep in the school gym. On the floor.” Just the thought of it makes me shiver.
“But it’s…”
“A tradition,” we interrupt her in unison and giggle, rolling our eyes at the exact same moment.
She narrows her brown eyes at us. “You two,” she begins and points her finger first at me and then at Brook. “You are trouble, you know that?”
“If we are trouble then trouble’s looking really good these days,” Brook observes out loud before returning her attention to the book.
Lola sighs in my lap and I can only agree with her. “Seriously, Mom.” I look at her, hoping to make her see our point. “It’s not that big of a deal.”
“I know, but, honey…”
“You are shitting with me!” Brook shouts. She then jumps off the window seat and runs out of the room like the devil is at her heels.
“What the…?” I look at my mom, confused with what’s going on.
“I don’t know.” She goes to the window and looks down. “I think you have…”
Lola opens her eyes, tilts her head to the side, and then, in a heartbeat, she is on the floor, running down the stairs, her long ears flying all around her while she barks happily.
“… company.”
I get off the bed and leave the book on the nightstand. With Mom’s inquisition, it was long forgotten anyway. “Who’s down there?”
“I know why you are here, but I’m telling you, we are not going,” Brook yells from the foyer giving me a short list of people who could be waiting for me downstairs.
“Oh my god.”
The need to jump out of the window and end this day is really big. Why do things have to be so complicated lately? Why can’t everything be like it was before? Then I at least had a little bit of peace and quiet in my own house. But now everybody is around all the time giving my mom false expectations and pissing off Brook, and it’s just all too much.
I want to scream in frustration and pull my hair, but I have to be content with a loud sigh.
“I think it’s the twins from the other day.” She looks at her nails, suddenly finding them fascinating. “You know, the cute boy that…”
“I know who you are talking about, Mom.” I roll my eyes. “There are not many twins in our town.”
“Just sayin'.”
I follow my best friend down and look at the scene that awaits me. “What the hell is going on here?” I ask loudly, looking around. This is so not what I was expecting.
Everybody shuts up and looks in my direction.
I usually don’t raise my voice, and I don’t like to curse, so I guess I left them all stunned by doing both of it in the same sentence, but seriously, this is crazy.
Brook is standing in the middle of them all, poking her finger at Max’s chest and yelling at everybody around who would listen. But nobody listens, because Max and Derek are too concentrated on getting into each other’s faces, all while Andrew is standing by the door with his hands crossed over his chest watching the drama unfolding in front of him. Jeanette is standing there like a statue, looking down at Lola, who wants to play with her, with a scowl on her face.
“What are you all doing here?” I put hands on my hips, trying to look scary and demanding. “Did this house become an airport or what?”
“Lia.” Max smiles widely at me, completely ignoring my tough stance. “We came to see if you need a ride to the school sleepover.”
From the corner of my eyes, I catch Jeanette roll her eyes and squat down. Makes me wonder if it’s at her brother or my silly dog. Probably both. They are equally crazy, after all.
“And like I explained to you when you got inside, we are not going,” Brook snaps before I can even open my mouth.
I still don’t understand why, out of all people cramped in my lobby, she hates him the most. It doesn’t make much sense. Andrew or Derek? Yeah, completely makes sense. But Max? The guy we’ve only known for a few weeks, and who in reality didn’t do anything to her? No, I don’t get that part.
“Yeah, we aren’t going,” I confirm, hoping it’ll calm my friend and convince everybody else it’s time for them to go on their merry way.
“Yes, you are,” Max and Derek say in unison.
Their outburst is followed by an uncomfortable silence filling the room. Both of them look grossed out with their telepathic connection, and I want to laugh at how silly they are acting. They are both tall and bulky, but underneath all that bravado are hidden minds of two ten-year-old boys who can’t seem to grow up.
“I said we…”
“We have a lot of company today.” This is exact moment my mom decides to appear, of course. Her nose could probably find a group of cute boys in the radius of a few miles.
“Mom!” I look over my shoulder at her, sending her warning glances not to do or say anything embarrassing. “Our… friends came by to see if we were going to the sleepover, but now when they heard we are not going, they’ll go on their way. We wouldn’t want them to be late.”
“You’re such a party pooper, Lia,” Max sighs loudly. He crosses his arms over his chest covered in simple black shirt and stares at me.
“We should go. They obviously don’t want to go.” Jeanette shrugs, turns on the balls of her feet, and mutters to herself as she walks away: “I don’t know why we are going in the first place.”
“You can’t not go,” Andrew states matter-of-factly, drawing our attention. He is so quiet I almost forgot he’s in the room in the first place, which is really strange when you think about it. That guy can’t keep his mouth shut if his life depended on it. “Why are you looking at me that way? Everybody knows it’s mandatory for all senior students to attend.”
“You are lying,” Brook says without missing a beat. “If it’s mandatory why don’t we know about it?”
“Emm… because you are not the part of the in crowd?”
“Ohh, please.”
“Seriously, Brook. Everybody’s been talking about this thing from the day school started. It’s on the list of obligations all seniors have to do before they graduate.”
We all fall in another silence. I’m not sure if he is telling the truth, or if he’s bluffing. “I don’t believe you.”
I want to roll my eyes at her. Brook can be so headstrong when she decides to do something her way. She could be wrong, and she could know she’s wrong. But she decided she’s right, and there is no way you will convince her she’s wrong, if that even makes sense.
“Brook, let’s just drop it and go.”
“We have plans, Lia. And this is not a part of it.”
“I know, but…”
“You don’t want to break the rules, now do you?” Andrew smirks knowingly.
Jeanette, who’s still standing next to the door where she stopped earlier, looks at her wrist. “Technically
, we are all already breaking them because we are late, so it would be great if you could hurry up.”
I hear Mom’s footsteps moving away from us. She’s probably already packing all the things we’ll need. If she doesn’t have them already packed, that is.
Brook looks at me like I betrayed her and all but stomps her foot like a mad five-year-old who didn’t get her favorite candy in the supermarket.
“Come on, B,” I call her, admitting defeat. It’s five against two. We were doomed even before we started this argument. “Let’s grab our stuff and just go. I promise I won’t enjoy it, and we’ll sulk together.”
“You better not, because I won’t forgive you.”
Derek
“Everybody knows it’s mandatory for all senior students to come?” I look at Andrew, not knowing what to think. It’s amazingly stupid, but also, at the same time, amazingly brilliant. “Seriously?”
I’m still not sure if I should be happy for what he did or pissed at him.
“Hey, it worked, didn’t it?” He wiggles his brows teasingly. “After all, I know how to get the ladies.”
“Ohh, please. You wouldn’t know what the lady looks like if she grabbed you by the ass.” We both shut up and turn to look at the prettier half of the Sanders twins. I don’t even want to know much of our conversation she heard. Then again, if she is as smart as they say she is, she would already know Andrew’s story is bullshit.
“Maybe she should grab something else so I can see her better.”
Her ice-cold, grey eyes take him in, a smirk forming on her lips. “I don’t see anything big enough to grab.” She walks past us on the way to her car and just as she walks by Andrew she adds, “Well, except your ego. But that’s all in your head, babe.”
We watch her sashay away. Without giving us a second glance, she enters her car and starts playing with her phone while waiting for her brother.
“She smashed you, bro.”
“She’s acting bitchy. Daddy probably didn’t want to buy her a new dress or something.”
“Yeah, right…” I don’t get to say much, because the door opens once again. Brook almost runs out of the house with a duffle bag over her shoulder, followed by Amelia and Sanders, who is, of course, carrying her bag, playing the role of the reformed bad boy.
“But you should really come with us.” He looks down at her. “What if…”
“My car is perfectly fine, Max,” she assures him. “Dad checked it out and repaired it, so I’m good to go.”
“It’s one old car we are talking about. Something could go wrong again.”
“I’ll take her,” I stand next to Amelia, hands crossed over my chest, daring him to say something or stand in my way.
He doesn’t disappoint. “She can go with us.”
“I can go by myself,” she insists in a stern voice. “The car is fine.”
“We are already here with two cars,” I point out. “There’s more than enough room for everybody. Besides, we have a project to work on tomorrow, or did you forget?”
Frowning lines form between her brows. “We didn’t…”
I stop her before she gets into it. There is no way I’m giving her a chance to brush me off. I want that hour or two we’ll spend working on the stupid project. Fuck, even thirty lame ass minutes will do. It’s my only chance to get her alone and out of the school. “We said we’d do some research and meet up to look at it and put it together. I did some research, so we can look over it and write it down.”
“You didn’t say anything at school.”
“I was busy and I knew I’d see you later.”
“How?”
“Because I know where you live.” I roll my eyes at her confused, flushed face. “Come on, little one. Let’s grab your stuff and go. We are already late.”
She looks at her bag still in Sanders’ hand, and then at Max before returning her eyes to me. She is so uncomfortable, like she wants to do anything but make a decision on this subject.
“We can still take you,” Max offers again. This guy doesn’t know how or when to give up.
“Jesus, Dotty,” Andrew looks at all of us, a shit grin on his face. I had no doubt he is enjoying the show. The guy is always bored out of his mind, and there usually isn’t much going on around here to entertain. “Who would have known that you would be so popular with hockey players?”
“Don’t call her that,” Sanders and I say in unison.
Andrew waves his head in disbelief, laughing his ass off. “You two have to stop doing that shit. It’s getting really freaky. Reading minds on the ice is one thing, but this is getting ridiculous.”
“Lia, if you say yes to him, I’m going there on foot,” Brook threatens, standing next to the old junk of car that I assume is Amelia’s. Why am I just now noticing it for the first time? As much as it pains me to admit, Sanders is right. I don’t want her sitting behind the wheel of that car and risk getting injured.
Amelia looks at her friend and then back to me. “Let’s just go.”
I take it as my cue and take a hold of her bag. Max stares at me, and I glare right back at him, neither of us letting go of the bag. We both know who the him Brook was talking about is, but it seems like Sanders is a sore loser.
“You’ll have to let go of that bag you know,” I murmur quietly so that only he can hear me.
“And you’ll have to do more than play games if you want Amelia to notice you,” he replies equally as quiet.
“She notices me.”
“Not the way you want her to, lover boy.”
Then he lets go of the bag and starts walking to his sister’s car. When he passes next to Amelia, he ruffles her hair slightly, smiling at her. “I’ll see you there in a bit, Lia.”
She looks at him walking to the car until the moment he closes the door behind him.
“Can I have my bag back?”
Her big brown eyes look at me with shyness and something that almost resembles softness. It stirs strange things in my gut, but, if it is possible, in a nice way. It’s not half bad being looked at this way.
“Nope.” I put my hand over her shoulder and push her slightly to start moving. “I’ll take it.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I know.”
“Why don’t you return it to me?”
“I don’t want to.” I laugh at her. “Stop arguing with me.”
“I’m not arguing with you.”
Taking Brook’s bag out of her hand, I go to the back of my SUV and open the back to put the bags inside next to mine and Andrew’s. “Yes, you are.” I lean into her and whisper against her ear. “And if you don’t stop, I’ll have to take drastic measures to make you stop.”
“Drastic?”
I take a step back and look at her wide eyes and even rosier cheeks.
“Really drastic.” I wink at her. “Let’s go.
The school is filled with seniors, teachers, and even some parents that came to help monitor tonight’s sleepover. Everybody is supposed to sleep in the gym, but people are scattered everywhere.
There is a movie marathon going on in the gym, we can play different board games in classrooms, they even pulled table tennis out of the storage room, but there is no beer to play beer pong with so it’s mostly left alone. Loud music is blaring in the hallways and people are walking around in the groups.
Girls are dressed in all kinds of skimpy PJ’s, parading around like it’s summer and this is a pool party.
“This is boring,” Andrew whines loud enough for half of the gym to hear him.
When we get to the school we first go to the gym to leave our sleeping bags, but since then we didn’t move anywhere else. The twins were waiting for us in the parking lot, so there was no escaping them, and all of them seemed content with staying in the gym and watching a Harry Potter marathon.
Amelia and Brook are so focused on the movie you’d think they never watched it before. Jeanette is lying in her sleeping bag playing with her iPhone, he
adphones in her ears, while her brother is sitting next to her bag looking somewhere between Brook and Amelia.
No matter how hard I try, I can’t pinpoint which one of them he is looking so intensively at. I would have said Amelia, but after a few stare-offs he and Brook had… well, I’m not so sure. The possibility that it’s Amelia pisses me off, but on the other hand, if it’s Brook, then the guy is doomed. Totally fucked up.
I’ve known Brook Taylor for as long as I’ve known Amelia. She keeps to herself and she rarely even speaks. But when she does, she’s one feisty little thing and for some reason she hates Sanders’ guts. Yeah, I’ve heard all about their confrontation on the first day of school. Everybody heard about it. Even if you don’t want to know, news always finds a way to get to you in this town. And after seeing them today yelling and glaring at each other, I can’t not notice that there is something between those two, however bizarre it may seem.
“Then go somewhere else,” I mutter giving him a warning glance. Andrew is lying on his back on his sleeping bag looking at the ceiling.
“When do you think it was the last time they cleaned dust around here?”
My eyebrows rise at his stupid question, not believing he actually asked that kind of thing. How bored do you have to be to notice something like dust on the ceiling of the school gym? And if he is indeed that bored, why doesn’t he go look for one of his go-to girls for little messing around?
“What? You notice different kinds of shit when you are bored.”
“I wouldn’t know,” I mutter and return my eyes to the movie playing on the wall and Amelia sitting in front of me.
She braided her hair before leaving the house, but she didn’t change which means she is still wearing one of her big hoodies and leggings with those weird, slipper-like boots girls like to wear. All the guys we passed by were staring at her legs and ass and I had to glare at them to stop them from undressing her in their minds. Fucking assholes.