Hi, I'm Zoe Nicole Merrick

*Friday at 8:00*

“HE WAS A SKATER BOY SHE SAID SEE YA LATER BOY, HE WASN’T GOOD ENOUGH FOR HER!” Kara and I sang loudly to the lyrics of Sk8er Boi by Avril Lavigne. We were both in my room dancing crazily. The boys were in Zack’s room for now, I think they were actually doing homework, nerds. Kara was dressed in purple plaid pajama pants, with a back cami on. I had blue striped pajama pants, with a white cami; we both obviously had bras on, there is 4 teenage boys in this house, were not completely insane.

“I’LL BE AT HIS STUDIO, SINGING THIS SONG WE WROTE, ABOUT A GIRL HE USED TO KNOW!” We finished off, as we landed on the ground, out of breath and laughing.

“It’s so nice having a friend that’s a girl again.” Kara smiled at me.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Well, you’re the only girlfriend I have, the rest of them left me at the beginning of freshman year.” She sighed.

“Why the hell would they leave honey bun!” I over exaggerated

She gigged, “Thanks Zoe,” she kissed my cheek and I smiled, as she continued “In 8th grade, I had this group of friends, they were awesome, we did everything together, they were slightly girly for my taste, but it didn’t bother me, because we were all so close. We all met in 5th grade, and continued to be friends all through those years. I’m ashamed to say, but one of those friends was Lisa Ruocco.”

Did everyone have a connection to Lisa, I mean seriously “Continue.”

“Okay. Well, she had sex with a lot of…… guys. I think she seriously had sex about 26 times over the summer, I’m not lying at all. She was always the queen bee of the group of five of us. She pressured all of them to have sex, and they all did it, she tried and tried to get me too, and I wasn’t doing that. No way, no how; so I pretty much straight up said I wouldn’t do that, and I wasn’t going to hang out with people who used people like that. So, I left, and that was that.” She said plainly.

“Aww! Kara I’m so proud of you!” I hugged her from our laying-down position.

“Thanks.” She chuckled.

“So, what happened with no friends on your first day of high school?” I asked, that honestly must have sucked ass.

“Well, I wasn’t alone for long. Homeroom was terrible though, Lisa was in it, and my other ex-friend Bree was there. They bugged me the whole first day, they would not leave me alone. Lunch was just as bad, I had no one to sit with, so I sat at an empty table, while people just stared at me. It was terrible” She had a sad look on her face and continued “Then, this nice boy came up to me, and he asked if him and his friends could sit with me, I of course said it was fine, plus he was cute. Two other boys came with him, and we all hit it off, I’ve always thought of myself as one of the guys actually. So, we all became friends, and here I am today. If you haven’t guessed, the cute boy was Rian, and the other two were Jack and Alex.” She smiled.

“Well, jeez she’s a fucking bitch! Rian came to your rescue, that’s adorable Kara!” I smiled.

“I know, I seriously love him so much.” She grinned so much her teeth were showing.

“Come on bitches! Let’s get this party started!” Jack spoke, as he kicked open my door.

We both laughed “Okay Jack.”

“Let’s go downstairs.” Zack suggested.

His voice was followed by a chorus of yeahs. As we started heading downstairs, my father’s voice rang out “Hey kids, where you headed?”

“Basement dad.” I said plainly.

“Aren’t you going to introduce your friends dear?” He questioned.

“Oh yeah! Sorry dad. This is Kara, Jack, Alex, and Rian.” I said, almost forgetting to introduce them.

After I spoke and pointed to each one as I said their name, everyone said “Hi, Mr. Merrick.” except, Alex gave him a firm handshake as he was saying it. He did that for my benefit, I’m pretty sure of it.

After a slight awkward silence, we raced into our big, carpeted basement. There wasn’t much down here, other than a few storage items we still needed to unpack in the corner, and that was the excitement of our beige wall and carpet basement, but it had a lot of space, and you can’t hear anything when your upstairs, plus their’s a door, so it’s very private.

“You have a big ass basement guys.” Jack observed.

“Thanks.” we both chuckled.

“What are we going to do?” Alex asked quietly.

“Spin the bottle.” Jack suggested.

We all looked at each other with worried gazes, until Zack spoke up “Well what the fuck, let’s do it.”

I laughed, grabbed Kara’s hand, and said “Yeah, let’s do it. Kara, let’s go get a bottle from upstairs.”

“Okay.” she smiled.

We went up the stairs, leaving the boys behind. We looked through the recyclables and found a water bottle as the best option.

“Kara, I need to tell you something, but you must tell NO ONE.” I held out pinky finger, and looked around, I wanted to make sure no one is around.

She linked her pinky with mine “Of course.”

“Well, while we were all watching the movie on Wednesday, and I went upstairs, Alex and I kind of well..” I trailed off.

“Kind of what?” She sounded anxious.

“We kissed, my first kiss, we kissed a lot, it was amazing. I just had to get that off my chest.” I said fast.

Her mouth turned into an “O” shape “I knew that would happen sometime babe, but not this soon.”

“I know, it just kind of happened.” I shrugged.

“Oh come on you just can’t just go off with that! Details girl!” She whisper-yelled at me.
“Well, he was crying because he got to thinking about Daniel right an-” I was interrupted by Kara.

“You know about Daniel already?” She asked, her eyes wide.

“Yeah, why?” I questioned.

“Never mind, just keep going.” she said.

“Okay, well, he got to talking about how he misses him, I put my arms around his stomach, my head on his shoulder, and he put his arm around my shoulders, while he put his head on top of mine. I cried a little bit because I felt so bad,” I took a breath and continued “He realized I was crying, so he put my head up, with one of his hands on each side of my face, he wiped the tears away with his thumbs. We got to looking at each other, and we kissed, a lot, until Rian came in to check if we were okay.”

“Wow Zoe,” Kara spoke “your so damn lucky it was Rian who caught you and not Jack or Zack. But, that’s really sweet! Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

“I don’t know, I didn’t want you to be mad?” I sheepishly said.

“Why would I be mad?” She was genuinely curious.

“I’m not sure actually.” I gigged.

She laughed along “Don’t ever be afraid to tell me something Zoe, it’s all good. You can definitely trust me, you’re my best friend!”

I smiled “You’re one of my best friends to Kara!” I hugged her “I won’t ever think about it twice again.”

Another voice chimed in “How long does it take to get a fucking bottle guys?” It was Alex, he was smiling at me. Kara was trying to hide the smirk on her face.

“We were talking, sorry.” I blushed.

“She knows doesn’t she?” Alex asked. Kara must not have been hiding it enough.

“Uh, yeah I told her, I’m so sorry Alex!” I whispered.

He chuckled “It’s fine, I knew she would find out eventually, look how close you two are already.” we both looked at each other and smiled as he said that “I only wanted to know, to see if I could do this or not.”

He went up to me, put his hands around my face, and kissed me deeply, I put my fingers through his long hair, and deepened it. Until, she coughed at us.

“Sorry.” I mumbled, I was blushing like a mad woman, I could tell the heat feeling in my cheeks. He smirked at me, only causing me to blush more.

“Are we coming or not people? Let’s GO!” Zack whisper-yelled, thank god he missed Alex and I kissing.

“Yeah I’ll go check on them Carla!” my father yelled up the stairs. “Oh, you’re already up here. We’re going to bed, so please keep it quiet. I don’t really have a bed time, but don’t pull an all-nighter please. You two are not sleeping all day.”

“Yes dad.” Zack and I both said together, then looked over and smiled.

“Alright, I love you.” He said as he kissed me on the forehead, then Zack.
“Night Dad!” We yelled up the stairs.

When he went into the room, we sighed of relief, he didn’t ask about the bottle, good.

“Alright, I’m going downstairs, you girls get some snacks, and come back down. Let’s go Alex.” Zack said quietly.

“Okay, we’ll get a bunch of crap.” I giggled.

When they went downstairs Kara spoke “Wow, totally close Zo! Yeah, you weren’t kidding about that kiss either!”

“I know, that was the 3rd time, well the 2nd time he just pecked me, but it was a kiss none the less.” I blushed.

“Well, we better get down there before Jack comes up here and wakes your parents up.” She giggled.

We looked through the whole kitchen for stuff. We ended up bringing a whole package of pop, 3 bags of chips, and the rest of the Oreos my dad didn’t eat. He would seriously get up in the night, and eat 25 Oreos as a midnight snack. He gets up a lot and snacks.

As we were walking down the stairs Kara and I both said “We’re here!” as we both giggled at the fact that we said it in unison.

“Yay food!” Jack yelled. I swear that boy was always hungry.

“Here’s the bottle guys.” I said putting it in the middle, we formed a circle around it. It was me, Kara, Rian, Zack, Jack, then Alex next to me.

“I go first!” Alex said.

He spun the bottle on one of the boxes we tore apart, so it would actually spin. It spun around and around and around, until it landed on Jack. Jack smirked, and Alex leaned in closer to him, grabbed his face and pecked him a few times on the lips. All of us were in hysterics. They are truly hilarious.

“Okay, Zoe, your turn.” Zack spoke through giggles of his own.

“Got it.” I voiced out

I spun it around, it kept going around and around, I suddenly had a fear, what if it was Alex, and Zack would think it was a real kiss, and that we’ve kissed before. Taking me out of my thoughts, the bottle slowed and it pointed right at Alex.