7. Jayne #6
Liz is showing Sadie a new top she got for the party, and even I have to admit that it’s adorable.
Somehow, despite almost no feminine influence in her life, Liz has a pretty fantastic sense of style.
It’s a little too fast fashion for my taste, but she knows exactly how to dress with her petite frame to make the most of what she has.
I can always tell when Sadie is borrowing something from Liz, because it’s about two inches too small everywhere.
Liz is barely above five feet, and Sadie and I practically tower over her at five foot nine.
I’m continually shocked that Liz was able to get into the kinds of bars where she used to spend her time.
Sadie and I could probably pass for twenty-one at this point, if we dressed the right way.
Liz is the kind of girl who will probably look fifteen even when she’s thirty-five.
“Come on,” I say, sipping on the coffee I just made and giving Sadie my best please be reasonable and don’t put me in a tough spot look.
“It would be so much more fun to stay in tonight, I promise. This house is one hundred percent free of any weird disease you’re going to pick up in a field, and as an added benefit, you won’t spend the entirety of tomorrow feeling like shit. ”
Whether they decide to listen to me or not, I’ve had my eye on a bottle of Pinot Grigio in the wine cellar for Evan’s visit that I’m happy to drink all by myself.
That’s the funny thing about my parents—they keep the liquor cabinet locked (ever since an unfortunate incident with Sadie and Liz two years ago), but they’ve never given a second thought to the wine cellar in the basement, where they have so many bottles that it’s impossible for them to keep track of every single one.
I should know; I’ve been taking them quietly for over a year, and Steven and Carly either haven’t noticed or don’t care.
Somehow I have a feeling that my mom is the one who hasn’t noticed.
My dad is the one who doesn’t care. He’s always telling me to have more fun, and he’s careful to specify that I should take that advice based on my own definition of fun, not anyone else’s definition.
I ask Sadie to call me if she needs a ride home—I don’t trust Liz farther than I can throw her.
“Promise,” she says, and we both reach out our hands instinctively and shake our pinkies in unison from across the room. I swear, we’ll be making pinky promises from afar for the rest of our lives.
It’s obvious that it bothers Liz when we do this kind of thing.
She prefers to believe that there wasn’t really a time before her friendship with Sadie.
That we all just sprang into being on the day she met us, and there was no history before.
But that isn’t how families work. We’re all built on history, aren’t we?
The good stuff and the bad. But there are things between me and Sadie that no one else will ever really understand, not even our parents.
We’re both fond of just saying, “It’s a twin thing,” whenever people ask us about the particulars of the way we mirror each other.
And it really is true. No matter how deep the chasm feels between us sometimes, we both know that it isn’t bottomless.
We both know that when we reach out our hands to each other, we’ll be able to connect.
The distance is only as real as we allow it to be.
I don’t plan to tell my parents about Trevor’s party. I mean, like I said, I have plans of my own tonight. But it kind of slips out, and I do wonder now if it’s because of the bad feeling I have.
Plus, the funny thing about Carly, despite all her shortcomings, is that she has the maternal instincts of a hawk.
Meaning that she could be soaring at a thousand feet, but if there is even the tiniest movement in a blade of grass from the tiniest proverbial mouse, the woman is going in for the kill.
Unfortunately, in this scenario, I am the mouse. And I don’t realize it until it’s way too late for me to take cover.
I thought Carly was safely upstairs packing with Steven, so I nearly jump out of my skin when she reappears in the kitchen.
“So, Netflix and pizza, huh?” she asks casually. She obviously waited until Liz and Sadie had tramped upstairs and slammed the door to Sadie’s room.
If Carly Cooper is asking a question like that, it’s because she already knows I’m lying. She knows things.
“Oh, um, yeah. Probably. I don’t know, I think Sadie and Liz might head over to a friend’s place, but I have a paper due for Mrs. Cain’s class. So, definitely gonna put a dent in that and then just chill out.”
It seemed like a sufficient answer. Not so vague as to arouse suspicion. But not giving anything away.
Except…
“And would this friend of theirs happen to be named Trevor McClain?”
I freeze, my hand halfway into the fridge to grab an apple.
“I’m not sure,” I say, as casually as I can. “I thought Sadie mentioned something about them being a friend of Ben’s. I don’t know if he and Trevor are close.”
By the time I turn around and close the fridge, I know we’re all done for. Okay, more specifically, Sadie and Liz are done for—this is my one and only chance to save myself and my night.
“Okay, fine,” I say. “There might be a party going on at Trevor’s tonight. I’m not going, and I honestly don’t know anything about it aside from the fact that one of the guys in my class asked me if I was going—”
“Oh, was it that boy, Damian?” That’s Carly for you, suddenly perking up at the idea that I might have the chance to get together with someone on the same social level as Sadie’s boyfriend.
Which would be great if I had a brain the size of a pea and didn’t doodle anything in my notebooks except my name and the last name of my current crush.
I’m keeping my maiden name if I ever get married, anyway, so the point is moot.
“Um, yeah.” I’m momentarily thrown off by the level of enthusiasm coming from my mother.
Surely she isn’t about to suggest that one of Trevor McClain’s barn parties—which, by the way, led to Sadie being dropped off, passed out cold, in our yard last year for all the neighbors to see—is suddenly a good idea just because the “right” kind of boy asked me out.
You should have seen what she was like with Evan before she realized it was never going to happen with us.
She practically had our entire wedding planned, and she took it as a personal offense when I clearly, loudly, repeatedly stated that there was nothing going on between us.
Evan is probably my soulmate, just not in the way people normally imagine soulmates.
If anything, he’s more likely to try to make a move on my mom one of these days, just to see what she would do.
Just to sow chaos. That’s the sort of guy Evan is sometimes, and why we get along so well.
Every so often, you just want to see what a person will do in an unusual situation.
Frankly, that’s how I view the entirety of high school.
One strange, unusual, massive social experiment, and we’re all just the unwitting guinea pigs.
Well, this guinea pig is going to do her best to think for herself, thanks very much.