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“This is so not like you, you know,” Rachel said. “You love parties!”
The statement was technically true. Or, at least, it had been. Last year, if anyone at Brentwood threw a party, I did nearly everything I could to get an invite. Even to the parties reserved for football players only. This schoolyear, though, the idea of squeezing myself into a house and mingling almost had me feeling…panicked. Suffocated. I couldn’t imagine pulling on a party face, holding it in place the whole night. There was too much going on that the idea of even attempting to be social had me feeling thoroughly exhausted.
“It’s homecoming week,” Rachel said. “Maybe Mom’ll extend curfew just this once.”
“No, she won’t.” Mrs. Manning pushed Rachel’s door from halfway open to fully wide, peering at her daughter with a basket of laundry on her hip. “Especially not on a school night.”
Rachel raised her eyebrows. “You could be the cool mom for once.”
“She’s already a cool mom,” I added lamely, trying not to wither under the brief look Mrs. Manning then gave me. It was a neutral acknowledgement, but it was near impossible to look at her and not remember our last interaction. Me, stumbling from her son’s bedroom at eight in the morning, wearing my rumpled pajamas.Kill me.
“A cool mom who is collecting towels.” With a stab of emphasis, Mrs. Manning whipped a cream-colored towel off the floor by Rachel’s closet. “No matter how many times I tell you two, you and Reed both leave your laundry lying around. Rachel, how do you have piles of clotheseverywhere?”
“It’s a science, Mom.” Rachel leaned over the side of her bed and picked up another towel from the floor, shooting it into her mom’s basket. “Is Reed home yet?”
“Should be soon. He said he’d be home around nine.”
I turned to study my reflection in the mirror, pulling a few pieces out of my bun to frame my face. Eyebrows down, lips relaxed, eyes not squinty.Channel the nonchalance.I ran through my bullet list of facial features for one reason: I knew Reed was out with Cindy. Apparently, according to Rachel, it wasdate night. Jealousy was a sick emotion.
Before Mrs. Manning ducked out of Rachel’s bedroom, we locked eyes in the mirror. I wondered if my mask was compelling enough or if she could see right through.
Once her mom’s footsteps disappeared down the hall, Rachel sprang off the bed and crossed her bedroom toward me, tripping over a sneaker she’d left on the middle of the carpet. “Ava,” she whispered, casting a furtive look at the open door. “What if we snuck out?”
I raised an eyebrow at her. “You think your mom won’t check to make sure you’re in bed?”
“I can stuff my covers. You know, like they do in the movies.”
My expression didn’t budge.
Accepting her defeat, Rachel flopped down in the corner of her room by her closet, her head landing on a wadded-up sweater. “Has there been any offers on your house yet?”
My stomach gave a sharp twist. “I don’t know.” I hadn’t talked to Mom since Monday, our longest string of the cold shoulder in a while. Then again, it was mostly on my end. When I wasn’t in my bedroom, I was at Expresso’s Café, trying to be home as little as possible. It hurt to look around the house and to know that all of those walls holding my memories would someday belong to someone else. Someday soon. “I haven’t even seen the house that she wants to buy.”
“I can’t believe you’re moving,” she said softly, almost like the words didn’t compute. “And I can’t believe you don’t want me to try to convince her.”
“If she doesn’t listen to her daughter, I’m sure she won’t listen to her daughter’s friend.”
Rachel kicked her feet a little in the air, letting out a groan. “Why did your parents have to get a divorce? Or, at the very least, couldn’t they have waited until we went off to college?”
I stared down at her, a surprising urge to snap spreading out from my chest. “You’d rather they be unhappy so I can live closer?”
“I mean, it’s not like they’re at each other’s throats or anything,” she said, tapping her fingertips on the hardwood floor. “Things weren’tthatbad between them, you can’t lie. It’s not like your dad cheated or anything to make things awkward.”
The heat surrounding my ribs stretched out further, squeezing my throat.
Rachel, oblivious to my dissolving patience, had to add one more thing. “You’re lucky it wasn’t like that.”
And that one more thing turned her bedroom into the blast zone. “You keep saying that,” I bit out, voice breathless with confrontation. “That I’m so lucky. Explain it to me, Rachel. I’m lucky my parents are divorcing? I’m lucky that I have to move away?”
Rachel tipped her chin so she could look at me, exposing the surprise sitting in her wide eyes. She rose onto her elbows, never breaking the stare. When she spoke, her words came slow. “You have to admit that compared to our situation, you—”
“Who’s comparing? Why do we have to compare who has it harder? Why can’t it suck for the both of us?”
“Because it doesn’t suck the same.”
“Sayswho?” My voice cracked. “Just because you don’t think my time is as tough as yours, you can’t hear me out? Sympathize just alittle?”
Rachel didn’t move from her half-sitting position, and she didn’t look away from me either. I couldn’t read her expression. It was like she’d read my mind earlier, and was creating a mask of her own. Eyebrows down, lips relaxed, eyes not squinty. The only sign that she was upset was the rapid rise and fall of her chest.
