Finding Sloane Winters Crazy

Eliza Bess Osztreicher
Apparently very naive.
And also apparently a normal person.

She’s happy.

It might not be so obvious to everyone else, but it was to Kay and I, Sarah, of course, was too busy doing unmentionables with her new buddy Patrick (or Pattykins as Sloane suggested, to which Sarah didn’t talk to her for the rest of the day) to see anyone else’s love lives but her own. Mine, which is currently none existent, except for the fact that I’ve been blushing whenever a certain blonde boy was around. Kay’s, which we’ll only be her makeup and hair products. And Sloane’s--

What to say?

She likes him, the guy Sarah calls ‘That-hot-tall-guy-with-the-tattooes-and-really-messy-black-hair’ or Kay’s version ‘Badass-Tatt-Guy’ which is her nicest nickname for him, she doesn’t like him at all, or as Sloane and I call him like normal people do, ‘Teak’.

He’s a mystery, we all know that, perhaps that’s why Sloane’s so keen on him, why her normally blasé stance tenses up when she’s around, the way her fingers fly to her lower arm, piercing the pale flesh. He knows a lot about her, he watches her a lot, when she’s not looking or conversing with him, Kay sees this, and when Sloane looks away, she sends him a glare, flips him off and mouths something.

Her message is clear.
‘Back off’.

He only stares at Kay, and that quirk of his lips comes, spreading into a smirk, and his grey eyes flash, the eyes that Sloane likes so much.

I asked her what that meant, when we were all at my house, eating leftover Chinese for dinner, I was sitting on a bench, picking at the noodles, Sarah was bustling around, only a granola bar in hand and giggling into her phone, Sloane was lounged across the couch, her long fingers flying across the keyboard, clean fingernails tapping on the keys, reading glasses on, no doubt another entry for her blog, which we are blocked from, and Kay was next to me, trying to do her History homework, glossed pink lips pulled into a grimace, her eyes darting to the tall beauty on the couch in the other room.

So I tell her, “Why don’t you like Teak?”

Kay’s hazel eyes, heavy with natural looking makeup and a whole stick of mascara, snapped away from Sloane and moved to me, she looked down at her textbook, sighed, and closed it.
“Look at her.”

So I do. Sloane, whose foot, was tapping onto my mother’s antique coffee table, a faint smile on her pale lips, while her blue-green eyes narrow in concentration. I shrug, “She’s happy, so what?”

“Right,” Kay muttered, “And who caused this happiness?”

My eyebrows furrow, “Teak, ya know, Badass-Tatt-Guy. What’s your problem?”

She sighs frustrated, her hands reaching up to run through her streaked brunette-blonde hair, bracelets jangling with the movement, “He is my problem Bessie! I know Sloane hasn’t been this... un-boring for a while, but I don’t like him, Bess. I don’t like him at all.”

“Why not?” I ask, “He seems fine to me.”

“Of course he does Bess,” she mumbles, fists clenching, “You’re so damn naïve. He’s bad, he’s like a... a—delinquent! Well... I don’t know. But he’s not a good person! I think he's going to break her-- you know how fragile she is, after the past four years.”

I squirm uncomfortably, four years was around the time Sloane's mum died. "Sloane's stronger now.

Kay shrugs, "I don't know, you know badly she took it. That's why she distanced herself from her dad, because if he died suddenly or shit like that, she wouldn't take it too hard."

"What about us though? She's close to us."

"We're not going for a long time, Bess, you know that. This Teak guy, I'm feeling that he'll get inside her, mess with her head, then leave as quickly as he came."

"Sloane's not that easy," I say firmly.

Kay nods, “True,” She shook her head, “but soon enough, she’s going to be wrapped around his finger.”

I only shrug again, “I like him. There’s nothing wrong with him, he’s friend Riley is awfully nice.”

Laughing, Kay grins, “Of course it’s about Riley, Bess, of course.”

I couldn't help but notice Sloane stopped typing, eyes travelling upward in deep thought, her fingers digging into her arm out of habit, and full lips set into a a thin line.