Summer: Undefined

“Delilah, hunny?” My mom softly knocked on the door and entered. “Your father and I are leaving.”

I gently groaned and got up from my bed.

We walked downstairs together.

By the front door were three suitcases, Jude, and my Dad. They were completely ignoring the presence of one another by standing back to back and having their arms crossed.

“What now?” Mom asked as she pecked her husband on the cheek and did the same to Jude.

“Nothing,” Jude answered bitterly.

Mom gave him an “Am-I-really-supposed-to-believe-that?” face and picked up one of the suitcases.

Dad picked up the other two while Jude came to my side. I smiled at him; he just ignored me and stared at the floor.

Our parents went over the rules for the fourth and final time before giving us each hugs.

“Call us if you need anything!” Mom said with a cheery smile before closing the front door.

I turned to Jude. “A weekend alone. Have anything special planned?”

He looked me in the eye and shook his head.

Then without another word he stormed upstairs and slammed his door shut.

Another sigh escaped me. With shrugged shoulders I walked into the kitchen and picked up the phone. By habit I dialed Vince’s phone number but immediately hung up when I heard him answer.

“Think, Delilah,” I muttered to myself. I’d always had a hard time memorizing my friends’ phone numbers, even my best friend, who I hadn’t talked to in about a week.

A stroke of genius swept over me and I miraculously remember Elizabeth’s phone number.

“Elle!” I squealed when her familiar voice rang out a ‘hello’.

“Delilah!” She squealed back. “Hey! How’s it going?”

“Ugh, my parent’s just left for their first weekend trip in a year. Honestly, I think Jude’s up to something again.”

“Oh yeah! I remember you telling me something like that… What do you think he could possibly be doing?”

“Well…” I went in to explain the phone calls from Gerard and Vince. Whoever Mikey was, but I told her about him too. Then the incident with the making of the mix CDs. And Jude asking permission to have a party, a detail that until recently had slipped my mind. “I think, permission or not, he’s going to throw a party. Then he’d loose complete trust from my parents. Well, my mom at least, Lord knows Dad doesn’t trust him as it is.”

“Jesus, De. Maybe you should talk to him about it.”

“I was thinking of doing just that.”

There was a pause, as if she thought I was going to hang up on her.

“But not now,” I continued on. “He’s mad about something. I’ll wait till he cools off a bit. I actually called to see if you wanted to go swimming.”

“Of course! Oh, hang on let me ask first.”

I heard the phone hit a table and footsteps fading into the distance.

Elizabeth had to ask her parents to do everything. I bet she’d even ask her parents if she can have sex when she’s older. But… maybe that’s going to the extreme a little bit.

She lives only two minutes away from my house. I’d befriended her the first week of school about a year ago. I was new and she wasn’t shy. It turns out she actually really is, I just caught her on a good day.

“Yeah sure! I’ll be over in a minute or two!”

“Great! See you soon!”

“Bye!”

I clicked the phone off and placed it back in the phone jack.

Then with a smile on my face I ran upstairs to get ready for swimming with my friend.

“Hey, Delilah!” She yelled as she rode up the street on her bike with her backpack swung over her shoulder and her Ipod headphones hanging around her neck.

I waved to her with my whole arm as she drove her bicycle up our long driveway.

“Elle!” I said as she swooped me into a hug. “What’re listening to?” I asked, noticing the music still playing from her headphones.

“Oh, some CD your brother gave me once. It’s actually really good!”

“The Used?” I asked with a bit of sarcasm dripping from the words.

“No, it’s um, Green Day.”

I nodded, knowingly. He’d blast that a few times a week as much as he blasted The Used.

“Shall we head for the back?” I asked, changing the subject. I held out my arm as if to ask if I could be her escort.

“Yes ma’am!” She smiled and laughed as we skipped around my giant house to the backyard.

We had an unusually big back yard. It had three major points to it. One, the pool that was shaped like a lima bean and had a diving board at one end of it and lawn chairs off to the side. Two, the gazebo which was adorned with colorful plants and held inside of it three wooden benches with elegant ironwork on them. Three, the patio that connected the inside and the outside. On the patio were three long tables with chairs (just in case of a large party), and a hot tub that had vines growing along one side of it. Of course the vines were put there on purpose to add an earthy appeal to something that in all honesty wasn’t earthy at all.

My favorite part of our yard, though, wasn’t one of the bigger points in it. Off to the side of our house were two swings that had been there since we bought the house. My parents wanted to tear them down, but I insisted on them staying. So here they are today, still standing strong.

I loved our backyard and tried to spend as much time in it doing whatever I could. Reading, swimming, swinging, gardening, or just sitting in one of the lawn chairs, I did it all. Sometimes I would bring out a notebook and write in the gazebo, that is when I didn’t have an extreme writer’s block.

“Come on, De!” Elle yelled at me after she slipped of her cover-up and dived into the pool

“I’m coming!” I smiled as I tugged off my loosely fit T-Shirt and jumped in after her.

For about an hour we played around, undisturbed. We laughed until our sides’ hurt a lot of the time, at something that wasn’t even that funny when you looked back at it. Until Jude decided that he’d grace us with his presence.

“Jude!” Elle piped up when the sliding door opened and my tired looking brother emerged from the other side.

For as long as I could remember Elle’s always had a crush on Jude. And as far as I knew, he had one on her too. I thought it was really cute, because they really didn’t seem like the two would fit together. But surprisingly they really worked well as a pair.

“Shit!” Jude yelled seeing Elle in the pool with me. That’s when I noticed that Jude was only in his boxers. Without another word he jumped inside.

Elle looked at me with a smile on her face and a giddy laugh playing around her mouth. She turned slightly red when Jude came out again, in jeans and a shirt this time.

“Hey, Delilah. Oh, Elizabeth! Hi!” He tried to play it cool. In my opinion he completely failed. But Elle seemed to be charmed by his coolness… or lack there of.

“Hi, Jude,” She smiled at him and swam over to the edge of the pool where he sat down.

I had no choice but to join her.

“Did you want something, Jude?” I asked, making my presence known.

“Oh, yeah. Um, I actually wanted to tell you something, well, invite you somewhere.”

“Where?”

“Here.”

I raised one eyebrow.

“You’re inviting me to my own house?” I said with a hint of skepticism.

“No, well, I’m having this party tomorrow. And since you practically know all about it already, I figured I’d just invite you anyway.”

My mouth dropped.

“Is Gerard coming? And Vince? And…Mikey, whoever that is…” I asked mostly to myself.

“Yeah, as good of a detective you are, I figured I was a better one to find out that you already knew. So, how ‘bout it?”

“Jude, Mom and Dad are gonna kill you!” I exclaimed to him as I hopped up onto the edge of the pool. Elle joined me. “Remember what happened last time!? Do you want it to happen again? Think about it Jude!”

“I did! And I think, what’s life without a little excitement? And besides, I’m going to be more careful this time! I swear to God! And with your help, I know for a fact that they’ll never know!”

Out of the corner of my eye I could see Elle’s head moving from Jude to me as we argued back and forth. Knowing Elle she’s probably waiting for someone to invite her to this party.

“How many people would be coming?”

“Around thirty-five.”

My eyes grew wide.

“You know that many people?”

“Well a lot of them are bringing friends. Like Gerard, and actually Vince is too.”

“I dunno, Jude.”

“Come on, Delilah! It’s the summer going into our senior year! Let this be the start of an amazing last year of high school! You know you need fun! Please?”

I thought it through very carefully, weighing the pros and cons of having the party. I figured out each different scenario and what to do if our parents called, or came home early.

“Fine. But we’d have to have it outside.”

“Of course! Of course!” Jude almost sang from happiness. He helped me up and scooped me into a big hug, despite the fact that I was dripping wet.

“You want to come too?” Jude asked Elle as he danced around the pool.

“Definitely! But I’d have to ask my parents first.”

Jude stopped dancing on the complete opposite side of the pool. He lowered his arms and marched over to Elle.

“Listen, Elle,” He grabbed her shoulders and made her face him. “When you ask you’re parents just ask if you can sleep over tomorrow night? Okay? We don’t want them knowing about this party.”

She nodded vigorously.

“Oh, no,” She looked at the sky and then shook herself from Jude who was still holding her shoulders. “I promised my parents I’d be home before the sun sets.”

Elle scampered around everywhere for her things and quickly shoved them in her bag. She threw her cover-up on and put her headphones around her neck again.

Before riding off she gave each one of us a hug.

“Oh! Hey Jude!” She called back from half way down the street.

“Yeah?” He called back at her.

“Thanks for the CD!”

“No problem!”

Then she turned the corner and disappeared from sight.

“You really like her, don’t her?” I nudged Jude with my elbow as he dreamily stared off in the direction Elle was riding.

“Shut up,” He lowered his head and trudged back in the house.

“No! It’s a good thing!”

When I got inside I went around and locked all the doors. I got unusually paranoid at night when it was just me and Jude in the house. It might’ve been from all those scary movies I watched, but it might not be.

While I was doing my usual movie channel surfing around nine o’clock the phone rang. I reached for it and clicked the talk button.

“Hello?” I said my mind half concentrating on my thumb continuously pressing the “channel up” button on the remote.

“Delilah?” A male voice asked.

“Who is this?” I said, my attention now fully focused on the phone.

“No one you know. Now answer me this,” He barely gave me anytime to respond to the previous answer before continuing on with is question.

“Are you alone in the house?”

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{A/N} Yeah... Suspense, right? Hahaha. So these updates are probably going to be a little bit more frequent hopefully twice a week, if I have the attention span for that.

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