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“We tried calling you.” Toni’s voice is pure ice. “We called Suzy. And your parents.”
“I…I text you.” She turns to Lyla. “Didn’t you get my text?”
“No! I didn’tget your text!” Lyla throws her hands up and marches over to Juliette, phone in hand. “Look!” She passes her the cell phone.
Juliette must read through the messages because she frowns and pulls out her own cell. “So weird.” After only ten seconds, she sighs and holds up the screen for Lyla. “Delivery failed. I’m sorry. I didn’t see the notification come through.”
“Where were you?”
All of us stare at her, waiting for her to reply to Toni’s question. “I slept over,” she finally whispers. “At Dylan’s.”
“Next time,” Toni’s voice would frost hell over, “please call and inform us of your whereabouts.”
Toni walks away before Jules can reply, her back rigid.
“Jules…” Lyla crosses her arms over her chest, holding herself together. “We’ve been up the whole night, waiting, thinking the worst.”
When Juliette looks at me, I nod so-so. “I just got up a few minutes ago, so I was spared the worst of it.”
“I’m sorry. It was an honest mistake.”
“You should probably apologize to Toni,” Lyla defers. “I’ve never seen her so panicked. She was almost irrational. Wanting to call the cops and show up at Dylan’s penthouse.”
“She’s been through a lot,” I remind them both.
Jules sighs and rubs at her face. “I’m sorry,” she repeats. “I’ll go speak to her.”
Before either of us can protest, she starts for the stairs after Toni, her stilettos still in hand, her bare feet completely silent on the hardwood floor.
“I feel like I could sleep for a month,” Lyla whispers, watching her go.
“When do you leave with Rye?”
She glances down at her watch. “Twenty-two minutes.”
“Ouch.”
“Yeah.” With one last tired sigh, she turns to me. “Come help me pack?”
“Sure.” Taking my coffee with me, I follow her up the stairs, making sure to be quiet in the early morning even though everyone is already awake. “Where are you guys going?”
“Paradise.”
“Huh?”
“It’s a long story,” she tells me as she opens her bedroom door.
I follow her inside and close the door behind me. Sensing that she doesn’t want to talk about it, I don’t push. I walk over to her unmade bed and sit, curling my feet up under me.
Sometimes, when I listen to her talk or watch her interact with other adults, I forget that Lyla is the youngest of us. Only twenty-five. Here, in her bedroom, the bold whimsy of youth still leaks through. There are posters on the wall. The largest of them has a black background and the masked V fromV for Vendettais shadowed above his symbol, which is painted in red that drips like blood.
While the others in the house have matching bed sets and furniture, Lyla’s room still looks like she’s just moved into her college dorm. She has a single bed. The side tables don’t match. One is small, round, and painted pastel green. The other is larger and looks like an antique; it's made from dark-grained wood and has heavy brass pulls. Her comforter sets got mixed up somewhere in the wash, so her two pillows have different colored cases, and her floral sheets don’t match her striped duvet cover.
“I’m going to try and seduce Rye.”
I sputter on the sip of coffee I’ve just taken. “What?”
She repeats herself slowly, as if I’m deaf. “I’m going to try and seduce Rye.”
