“Shall we then?” she asks cheerily, dressed in a short-sleeved beige suit jacket and matching slacks. With her hair coiffed and her makeup subtle but expertly applied, she looks like a senator or something. I can tell by her facial expression that she isn’t happy with my outfit today anymore than she was happy with the one from my first day here.
God.
It’s only been five and a half weeks since I arrived on a plane to SeaTac airport, situated in business class beside a woman who was a virtual stranger. Who still is a stranger. I feel like I know Parrish better than Tess. My first time on an airplane, and it wasn’t for any of the reasons I’d dreamed.
“Shall we take your car?” Tess asks me cheerily, plucking the key fob from the hook in the hall and giving me an overly bright smile. She’s trying too hard. Or maybe I’m not trying hard enough. There are no advice columns for how to deal with a situation like this. Trust me: I Googled it. The only things I found were articles about Alexis Manigo aka Kamiyah Mobley—a girl with nearly the exact same situation as me—and a book titled The Face on the Milk Carton.
Neither of those things helped.
I still feel alone and weird when I’m at home. School isn’t so bad now that I have Danyella and Lumen. Since neither of us has any real dating prospects—Parrish does not count as one, even if I were inclined to want him to be—Lumen and I have let the rumor that we’re going out hold tight. It keeps my social status up so that people generally leave me alone. And by people, I mostly mean Parrish.
“Sounds great,” I reply back with as much carefully calculated perk as I can manage. Together, we get into the BMW and Tess proceeds to give me a quickie driving lesson. After that, we leave the garage and I’m disappointed to see that the reporters are back, although substantially less in number. The best thing for drama is to remove the kindling from the fire. People get bored quick and move on just as fast.
As we drive, I play with my phone, just so I don’t have to absorb the awkward silence in the car.
There’s a text from an unknown number.
You got a B on your Japanese test, huh? Not bad, Little Sister.
A smile tilts my lips before I get control of it. Tess keeps flicking her eyes my way, like she wants to say something but doesn’t know how. I’d rather not try to find a way to explain that I’m grinning at a text from Kwang-seon ‘Chasm’ McKenna.
I program Parrish’s BFF into my phone and then try to think up a witty reply. When nothing comes, I send a meme that shows a girl perched on a boy’s chest like he’s a computer chair, her mic on and her screen showing a record number of kills.
He responds with a string of skull emojis and a pic of himself giving the middle finger.
I’m not entirely sure where we’re at as far as friendship goes, but this is better than the quips we were throwing at each other for the first few weeks. I guess he is sort of a nice guy, when he isn’t being hypocritical and trying to kiss me by a lake that he seems to own. Grr.
Turning the volume down on my phone, I very quickly pull up Parrish’s TikTok just to see if the video he made about me is still there. It is, and I frown, closing the app quickly. I’m not entirely sure why I thought he’d remove it, but I’m disappointed anyway.
“We could shop for things for your room today,” Tess suggests as I wonder why shopping is the only thing she seems to want to do with me. I’m not much for hikes, but I’d prefer if she asked me on one. Or we could watch a movie together. My grandpa and I always cooked together, but … it seems like that’s not Tess’ thing. Nor is gardening, another activity I enjoyed doing with my family. We could hang out in the pool together. Hit up a brick-and-mortar bookstore. Or do ‘the Kindle thing’ that Maxine and I still do together: pick a genre of book and set a fifteen-minute timer. We have to come up with five new titles we’ve never seen before, and then we each get to pick what the other person is reading and come up with a review. “I saw some really cute things at Pottery Barn Teen.”
Pottery Barn.
If ever there was a store that was further away from my vibe …
“Once my stuff from home gets here, I won’t need anything else,” I say, trying to keep the mood light. “My grandma does woodworking, so the bed is handmade. And my grandpa likes quilting so—”
