The disappointment seeps back into my chest like a weight “Yeah, the sleepover was canceled.” We arrive at the sock section. I locate the Xenomorph socks tragically fast. “Our last pair. The universe wanted you to have these.” I punctuate my response with a smile.
Beck smiles back. “Thanks! Yeah, these’ll be perfect for bed rotting.”
Beck and Paisley’s family lives on the opposite side of the Valley in a 7,000-square-foot home with an extremely picturesque pool. Even with all of the times I’ve been to their house over the years, I’ve never been in Beck’s room and therefore can’t imagine what the rest of her evening bed rotting will look like.
“Be safe,” I say.
We walk back to the counter, where my food is only getting more shriveled. It’s the most disgusting representation of how this night is going mentally for me. Beck eyes the whole scene on the counter almost curiously, hands sunken into her purse, but she’s not looking at it to find her wallet.
“You guys do the sleepover every week, right?” Beck says. Her eyes are on my food. “At Opal Bushida’s house?”
I shift my weight onto my right foot but quickly shift back to my left. Time seems to slow as I process the questions that feel unnatural for Beck to be asking. She’s never cared about what her little sister and her friends did before.
“Yep.”
Her eyes are still on the counter.
And why isshenot making eye contact with me? She was practically unable to keep her gaze off me before this moment. The metal playlist Amari put on suddenly pounds in my head, the sound of the instruments too sharp.
“Do you…want my food?” I ask around the tightness in my throat. “It’s kinda gross now.”
Beck straightens back out, as if awakening from a trance. “No, I’m good. I was just spacing.”
She rubs the back of her neck with one hand while fishing for her wallet with the other. Finally, she drops a blue debit card down. I flinch at the sound of the plastic hitting the wooden countertop.
Both Horne sisters are acting weird. This can’t be a coincidence.
“Hey, do you know why Paisley’s been acting all mysterious today?” I ask.
And at that, Beck goes ghost pale. My heart clenches. “Emma, do you…know where Paisley and Harlow and Opal are right now?”
Somewhere in the corner of my eye, I see Amari return from the exhibit artifact-free.
“At home?” I reply. “Maybe Opal’s with Paisley while her dad’s party’s going on?”
Beck takes a deep breath, eyes shut before looking me right in mine. “Oh my god. They didn’t fucking invite you, did they?”
The tightness extends down to my stomach. “To what?”
My food goes from “vaguely uninteresting” to “downright stomach-turning” as the grease smell hits me. I move to throw it away, but the trash can usually by the register isn’t here right now. I’m still holding Beck’s debit card. I blink, and I swear the lights blink with me.
“They’re on some camping trip this weekend. Paisley told me youwere working a couple shifts this weekend you couldn’t get out of. They drove off right before I came here.”
Every instinct in me wants to clutch at my throat and force myself to breathe normally before my body fully processes what’s happening. But I swipe Beck’s card, forgetting that I could get in trouble for doing even five minutes’ worth of work.
“Emma, are you okay?” Beck asks.
I asked Paisley that so many times like a fucking idiot.
The exhibit exit door bursts open, snapping our attention away.
“Oh, fuck that place,” Amari says as he massages his chest.
My head is swimming and nothing makes sense. Amari just entered the room, but I thought I saw someone exit from the door before him—someone I’d thought was Amari—minutes ago. Paisley went into the bathroom for over twenty minutes and Harlow and Opal gaslit me when I thought something was up. They didn’t invite me on a weekend-long camping trip.
“Do you know where they were going?” I ask. I thought my voice would come out strained, but I sound unnervingly stable. I hand Beck her receipt.
“Some place called Kingston National Park. Up near Lake Arrowhead.”
