Chapters On A Page

Despite the overall success of the party and having gotten through it myself with only minimal damage, I was still stressing over it. Thankfully it was over and done with, but there was still the small matter of making sure my mother didn't find out that it had taken place at all. I found myself fidgeting even more than I had in the hours before she had left for her trip, strolling nervously around the house to clean everything that had already been cleaned with precision. Whatever hadn't been done before they went to sleep, my friends took care of after they woke up and then took each garbage bag of evidence to be disposed of in random dumpsters behind the mall. They all had planned it perfectly and had executed it without a problem. I, however, hadn't wanted to be a part of any of it. They made sure that they didn't have to involve me in what I hated, and because of this I didn't feel as confident about getting away with it as they did. Even Lilah was as calm as a lake before dawn in the minutes leading up to our mom's arrival, sitting on the porch swing with one leg stretched out across its surface and the other dangling down with her toes scrapping against the floor. She had a pleased expression masking her face, and somehow I just knew it was there because I was continuously walking around the front yard and even going as far as climbing the tree in the left corner that hung over the sidewalk.

That's where I was, sitting on a branch that angled halfway above the sidewalk with my back pressed against the rough trunk, when an unfamiliar car turned into the driveway. There was music blaring from the speakers, causing the car to visibly shake with the beat. This was the one thing that clued me in that it wasn't Trix finally home after her week away. The car didn't shut off, but the passenger side door opened and out stepped a boy that was familiar to me. I could only see the top of his head as he made his way to the gate while the car jerked out of the driveway and sped away the way it had come. He ruffled his dark brown hair as he pushed his way into the yard, letting the gate bang shut behind him as he continued to the front porch. I was too high up to distinguish any of his words, but I assumed that what I heard leaving his mouth were greetings toward both of my sisters. He must have asked them where I was because I saw Kaylee pointing my way from where she sat on the railing, and he turned his face up toward the tree.

It was unlikely Alex could see me from that distance, not through the tree's branches lush with life regardless of the summer heat. He backtracked, skipping down the steps and crunching his way through the browned grass until he was right underneath the tree. "What are you doing up there?" he questioned, his head tilted back the whole way so that he could see me, his eyes squinted against the sun that was in the sky somewhere behind me. He crossed his arms while waiting for my answer, covering up the text on his wrinkled red t-shirt.

"Hoping a rabid squirrel might take mercy on me and eat my face off before my mom gets home," I called down to him in reply, doubling over slightly as if the closer I was, the better he'd hear me. I knew lowering myself back down to the ground would have been the smart option, but I wasn't ready to come down just yet. Partly because I was still convinced that being up here was settling my nerves and partly because it had been a bitch to get up here and I didn't want to waste all the effort I'd put into it. "What are you doing down there?" I countered, raising an eyebrow at him to appear menacing but knowing it hardly worked.

"Are we talking 'down here' at your house, or 'down here' not up in a tree being catlike like yourself?" he asked, chuckling. I shrugged to indicate that an answer to either would suffice, since just having a short conversation was making me forget that my mom was most likely going to hang me. "Well, I came over because… well, mostly because I left my keys at home before I got picked up for a party last night and I needed a place to hang out until my mom could come get me. Then I thought of you, who texted me only an hour ago, saying that you lied the other morning and that it was all my fault. So I thought I'd come to keep you company!" he answered, throwing his arms out in excitement as if he were a grand prize. He let them drop back down to his sides with a smack after a second, smiling up at me.

"That is not what my text said," I retorted defensively, my face twisting with my now incredulous features. I bent over even further, nearly hanging over the branch completely and threatening to fall. "It said that I was freaking out. That is all!" I reminded him boldly, pointing a stern finger at him when he started to laugh because he knew I wouldn't be so cruel to him. "You're a dick though, Gaskarth," I stated crossly, pointing a glare right at the top of his head since it was the only thing I could see since he had lowered his face again.

"I hope you know it's going to be perfectly fine. There's no need to hide in a tree where she can't get you," he claimed, suddenly turning back to me, that familiar smirk on his lips. He lifted his arms up above his head then, bending his fingers toward himself a couple times in a gesture to tell me to come down. "Go ahead and jump. I'll catch you," he promised, a serious look taking over his face yet somehow looking completely evil. When I didn't hop down right away, he waved his hands again, more urgently this time.

I snorted, not able to hold it in when his suggestion was completely insane. "I think I'll just climb down, thanks," I told him, holding my own hands up in an apology of sorts. He shrugged while lowering his arms, trying to play it off like I was missing out by not jumping down from the tree and probably causing the both of us to receive several broken bones. I turned around gingerly, letting both of my legs fall over the side of the branch I had been comfortably placed on and hooked my left hand onto the closest branch. I had contemplated climbing up barefooted since that was how I had been walking around the house all morning, but I knew that the bottom of my feet would more than likely get torn up from the contact with the bark. I had slipped my Vans on, knowing that there wasn't possibly anything that could ruin them even more and they gripped to the tree easily now, ensuring that I wasn't going to fall to the grass. When I got to the lowest branch, still a few feet off the ground, I finally did jump, landing with a stinging in the tops of my feet but otherwise unharmed. I wiped the excess dirt and fragments of tree bark off the palms of my hands onto my shorts before looking up at Alex standing a yard away. "If she catches me now and I die, that is your fault for convincing me to come down," I declared smugly, giving him a smirk of my own as I placed my hands on my hips.

Unfazed by my attempt to look even slightly angry, he took the few steps forward to meet me and draped his arm across my shoulders. "She won't catch you while I'm here," he assured me, walking me forward toward the porch. "She's not even going to want to kill you because there's nothing to kill you for. Hey Lilah," he said, grabbing the attention of my middle sister as we climbed the steps. Her head popped up automatically, alert to the fact that he was speaking to her. "There was no party here the other night, right? Val's just hallucinating again, isn't she?" he asked her, lifting his chin and turning his head to the side slightly in a way to make her agree with him totally. I elbowed him in the ribs as a punishment for mentioning the party in front of Kaylee, but she simply turned toward the two of us with a curious expression.

Lilah sat there for a moment, her mouth open in what appeared to be surprise as her eyes darted around everything surrounding us. "Um," she let out slowly, sounding confused by being asked either of these questions. But then she seemed to collect herself. She sat up straighter, closed her mouth, and replaced the misplaced shock with joy. "Of course she's hallucinating. Why would we have a party here when she doesn't even like parties?" she answered, making it sound like it was the most obvious thing in the world and the one explanation everyone needed. I couldn't give an argument since it was pretty spot on. But I sighed and pulled Alex into the house, kicking the front door shut behind us.

With his arm still around me, he led us up to my room, somehow reading my mind and knowing this was where I wanted to go to wait out my mother's return. He let go of me when we got to the door, stepping through after me and going to sit on my bed while I went to open my laptop. I scrolled through all of the songs until I reached my favorite band, double clicking on a song and then padding over to the bed to sit down with him. Instantly, I began my nervous habit of rubbing my wrist tattoo, trying to remind myself that everything was just fine like I used to, barely looking at Alex sitting across from me. "How are things besides all of this?" he wondered, waving his hands in the air to include the whole house in reference to the party. "Any news on the Dominic front?" he asked, raising his eyebrows suggestively and giving me a creepy smile.

I paused my action momentarily to give him a smack on the arm. "No, you weirdo," I answered, my left hand wrapping around my right wrist once more. "I haven't worked at the restaurant all week, so I haven't even seen him since the party," I informed him solemnly. It still wasn't as moody as it would have been just a week ago, I thought. I couldn't even say why this was because I knew for a fact that I still did like Dominic. Nothing had changed since the kiss besides not really seeing him. Yet I wasn't completely crushed by his lack of presence around me.

"That shouldn't make any difference," Alex remarked a bit indignantly, making it sound like there were rules on how to go about these types of things. "The dude kissed you. ...While you were drunk, but that shouldn't matter either. He should have made an effort to call you or see you. It's just plain rude that he hasn't!" he exclaimed, and I couldn't tell whether he was trying to be serious or to make me laugh.

I decided to go with the latter, mostly because I couldn't find any possible way to hide my giggles. I knew I should have agreed, maybe been upset because it was being pointed out to me that Dominic hadn't made the effort to get a hold of me since the party. Didn't other girls realize this and freak out, figuring that the guy had other girls he was spending his time with and thinking that he didn't like her as much as she had thought? I felt that I would probably be exactly like that for this situation, but it simply wasn't striking me this afternoon for some reason. "Whatever," I shrugged, taking notice of the way his forehead wrinkled in the middle of his eyebrows because I wasn't angry or bursting in to tears. "Maybe I was wrong about him liking me. Or maybe he changed his mind. I don't know. I'm not in love with him and we're not dating, so I guess it doesn't really matter what he does or doesn't do when it comes to me," I explained to Alex, lifting one of my shoulders again in a dismissive way.

"And I'm the weirdo," he muttered in a manner to express he thought I was crazy, turning away from me and rolling his eyes to point at the ceiling. He was only pretending to be exasperated because he faced me again after only a moment and gave me a grin. "Not to unsubtly change the subject or anything, but I have to ask. Why the exclamation mark?" he inquired, nodding toward my thumb running up and down the length of my wrist. "I've been trying to to find an explanation for it since we went swimming and I haven't been able to come up with anything logical," he admitted.

I hadn't even noticed I was still rubbing it, I was that used to it. The pad of my thumb always glided over the inked skin so effortlessly that it was easy to forget it was even moving rather than just setting there. I stopped now, resting both hands in my lap and smiling lightly to myself. "When Emma turned twenty, she wanted to do something special with me," I began the story, my eyes still locked on the almost-rectangle shape save for the slanted lines of the sides with the bottom line being smaller than the top and the dot below it. "It was her birthday, but she insisted that we needed to do something together for whatever reason. Her friend has just gotten a job at the tattoo place a few blocks down from our mom's salon, and she had this grand idea that we could get matching tattoos so we could always look at them and think of the other. She picked the exclamation mark -even drew a messy version herself for her friend to use- because most of the time when we talked to each other, it always sounded like we were stoked about whatever the subject was. There was almost always an excited air to our conversations because we genuinely loved talking to each other, even though we were six years apart," I divulged, looking up at him at last. I could tell my smile had turned sad but I was glad to tell the story because I hadn't had the chance in so long. "Our parents were pissed at her for somehow convincing her friend that it was perfectly logical to tattoo a fourteen-year-old, but neither of us cared. We didn't regret it in the least."

Alex gave me a wide smile, clearly liking the story behind my tattoo. "It's sad that you can't talk to her like that anymore. But it's nice to hear that you guys were close enough to do what you did," he said, reaching out to take my wrist in his hand and examine the exclamation mark that would be a part of me forever whether it ever faded or not. He took a long look at it as if trying to memorize the two shapes, and gently set my hand back where it had been when he was finished. "What are the others doing? Aren't they usually just hanging around, concealed in the couch cushions or something?" he asked, changing the subject again. This time, I didn't think he was actually curious, just wanting to rid of the melancholy atmosphere my room was now encased in. "I saw Russ chatting up some girl at the party. He have any luck with that?" he continued, being a typical guy and wanting to know if someone he knew had been able to score or not.

"Ugh, stop calling him Russ. His name is Murph, and Murph only," I scolded, trying my best to appear disgusted with his choice to use my best friend's real name instead of what I always called him by. I shrugged then, starting off my answer to his question. "Maybe, maybe not. I honestly couldn't tell you. I've been seeing more of you this summer than I have of them, it seems," I enlightened him. "Besides Gwen, maybe. She's been staying over a lot to avoid going to her grandparents' for the thousandth time while they all discuss what everyone's going to get when her grandpa dies," I said absentmindedly, my lips pressed together and pointed toward the same corner of my room as my eyes as I thought about it. "Anyway," I sang, coming back to the present, "I'm sure they'll be over sometime later. Saturday nights are when we plan to hang out just in case we haven't seen each other all week."

He opened his mouth, ready to respond to what I had said. Through my open windows though, we could both hear a car pulling into the driveway. I pushed myself across the other side of my bed and jumped up, going over to the window that overlooked the driveway. There was no music pouring out of this car, so it seemed to me that it was obvious who it was. But I still turned to Alex now standing next to me, poised to ask him if it was his mom, only interrupted when my own stepped out of the passenger side. She walked around to the trunk which was already open for her to grab her things, and in that small amount of time, I was already nervous again. Before I could watch her walk the whole way into the house, I turned on my heel, pacing passed Alex to get around my bed. I told him that he could wait here if he wanted but paid little attention to his answer, heading straight out into the hall and to the stairs. She was just coming through the door, my sisters trailing behind, when I came to the bottom step. As soon as I reached the three of them, she let go of her bags and suitcase and swiped the three of us into a tight group hug.

"Oh, I've missed you three!" she exclaimed, shaking us a bit as if it proved just how much we had been missed. Once she let go, she pulled each of us individually toward her and gave us a loud, smacking kiss on the forehead. "Are you guys here alone?" she questioned, appearing confused that we were the only three greeting her though we were her only three daughters.

I knew she meant my friends though because it was almost as if there was always at least one of them here, having been that way for a decade. "No, Alex is upstairs," I told her, using my thumb to point behind me at the stairs as if he was standing on them. He wasn't one of the friends she had been referring to, but he was still a friend of mine that she knew. "The girls and Murph are going to be here soon though. I think we're going to go get dinner or something," I said, spitting out the first thing that came to mind that my friends and I might do.

My mom had begun walking again, leaving her bags behind to make her way through the house. It was more than obvious that she was giving an inspection of everything as she passed through the hall into the kitchen, her eyes searching for anything that might lead her to believe that something happened here that shouldn't have. It was safe to say that I was holding my breath, waiting for her to turn on me with fire in her eyes and words on her lips that would condemn me to my room for the rest of my natural born life. "The house looks great!" she said instead, the shock clear in her voice though she tried to hide it as she spun around to beam at us.

"Yeah, we cleaned," Lilah announced happily, returning the delighted smile. It didn't even sound like a lie, it left her mouth so smoothly. I was surprised that she hadn't said something that hinted at the fact that I had thrown a party since she had been so entertained by my anxiety earlier. But I took a closer look at her, realizing that she was nervous as well. Calling me out would get her grounded all the same because she wouldn't be able to hide that she had been a part of the party as well. "We thought it would be a nice surprise for you," she lied even more swiftly.

"Hey, don't forget that I helped!" Alex reminded us, and I turned to find him in the doorway. Though none of us were going to mention the party, he still wanted the credit for being the one to clean up when it wasn't even his house. "You can thank me for how amazing this room looks," he told my mom, smiling at her and causing me to giggle under my breath. "My mom's here," he informed me then, his gaze on only me. "But I was going to tell her that I could catch a ride home with whoever came over. Is that cool?"

I had to put zero thought into my answer, nodding automatically. "Yeah. We can go pick blackberries out back while we wait for everyone else to get here," I stated happily. I wasn't sure if I was still riding on the delight over my mom not catching onto the fact that there had been a party here or that Alex was going to stick around, but I decided to go with it no matter which one caused it.