Hidden Behind the Lines

“I hate when they’re gone,” Kara sighed.

I nodded. “Me too.”

Today was Friday and an unseasonably warm day for early December in Huntington Beach. My best friend, Kara Sanders, and I were currently lounging in her bedroom and I was staring wistfully at the pictures of my boyfriend and Kara’s older brother, Matt, on my phone wishing he was here with me instead of just images on a screen.

As happy as I was for Matt, his friends and their band Avenged Sevenfold, to be touring and playing for their ever growing fans, I missed him like crazy and hated that we had to be separated for weeks at a time while he was on tour. Matt and I called and texted as much as we could but it was never enough and I missed him being here with me.

Matt and I worked hard on our relationship but the distance between us when he was gone made things difficult. I fully supported his dreams with the band and still attended every show they played at home and even a few that were at venues only a couple of hours away. But times like this, when I was feeling selfish, I wished that Matt’s dreams didn’t involve touring the world and being in a band.

Neither Matt nor I knew just how hard that first tour was going to be on us. Not being able to be with each other for weeks or months at a time sucked. I’m not entirely sure how we made it through that first tour without breaking up, but I’m just happy that things worked out. There was a particular late night call that turned into a stupid fight over rumors that some girls started online about sleeping with him. That fight turned into a huge blowout about me not trusting Matt to stay faithful to me. Like I told Matt later, after we had both calmed down, I did trust him, I just didn’t trust those girls around him.

When girls start rumors now, I just ignore them; I love Matt and I trust him, that’s all there is to it.

Thankfully, this was the guys’ last tour for the year; this was their third tour this year where they were playing only on the east coast and the longest to date – three whole months. I didn’t know it was possible to miss someone as much as I missed Matt right now, hell, even when my parents were gone for more than three months, I’ve never missed them as much as I missed Matt.

Saying goodbye to Matt before he left was always hard; I cried without fail and even though I knew it was a dumb thing to do, I couldn’t help the way I reacted. The hardest part of him being on tour is missing him all the time, not being able to see him in person, hold his hand, kiss him or even just hang out and watch a really bad movie together. I was even starting to miss fighting occasionally with Matt over little things like which Jim Carrey movie is the best or what Felipe’s motives really were for sleeping with Serena on a Spanish soap opera — Besos de Sangre — that we both watch. Not that anyone knows Matt watches it with me; if the guys or Kara found out, he’d die from the embarrassment.

I was glad that it was finally December. Not only was Christmas right around the corner but the last two months were spent applying to universities, both in and out of state, and helping Kara with her applications too. To say that we needed this break would be a huge understatement.

“Stop staring at your phone. You look like a love sick puppy,” Kara said flatly.

I looked over at Kara for a moment before looking back down at my phone again; I was staring at a picture of Matt kissing me on the cheek and I let out a soft sigh. “I will when you do.”

Brian and Kara were still together and if I could believe it was possible, I’d say that Kara and Brian were as happy as Matt and I were, but no one out there could be as happy as us in my mind. Kara would argue differently, call me an idiot and say she and Brian were happier.

Kara sighed and pocketed her phone. “We’re pathetic.”

“We’re not. We just miss them.”

“Which makes us pathetic. We should be going out and doing something fun, not sitting around my room looking at pictures of Brian and Matt on our phones wishing they were here,” Kara said. “It’s our last year of high school after all. Now is the time to do something crazy and go wild.”

“You go crazy and wild. I’m fine just sitting here missing your brother.”

Kara groaned. “You’re no fun. You know, Liv, these are supposed to be the best years of our lives and we’re just wasting them away waiting for our boyfriends to get back home from tour, gazing at our phones, willing them to ring. I say fuck it and let’s go to a party tonight.”

“But it’s Friday.”

“That’s my point!” Kara threw her arms up in the air.

“But Friday means movie night.”

She groaned. “There will be other movie nights, it’s not like we’re watching anything right now anyway. Now, get up we’re going to your house to find something amazing to wear before we go out.”

“Alright, fine,” my eyes narrowed on my dark haired best friend. “But if I miss my call with Matt tonight, it’s your head.”

Kara waved an uncaring hand at me. “Whatever. You’ll thank me later when we’re having fun; you know that thing we haven’t done in forever.”



Kara had spent the past half hour while I worked on her hair, calling pretty much everyone we knew to see where the parties were tonight.

“Unfuckingbelievable,” Kara shook her head, dark, bouncy curls waved back and forth as she paced across my room with quick strides. “Not one fucking party is going on tonight? What the hell is this, some sick joke?” She tossed her phone onto my bed.

I threw myself onto the couch. “A sign that we should go back to your place, watch movies and miss our boyfriends like the pathetic sad sacks you called us earlier.”

“You’re killing me, Smalls,” Kara shot me an annoyed look and then sighed in defeat. “But it would appear that way. This sucks, we’re all dolled up with nowhere to go,” she said. “These are supposed to be our golden years. We’re not getting any younger, you know. We won’t be seventeen forever.”

I did my best to not roll my eyes at Kara’s rant. “I’m eighteen.”

“You see? Every second that passes, we’re getting older. We need to party while we’re still young and able!”

“It’s not my fault that there aren’t any parties going on tonight,” I said. “It’s just one of those rare times when all’s quiet in Huntington.”

“More like all’s dead in Huntington. This sucks,” Kara pouted and stopped her frantic pacing. She shot me a look and ran her hands through her hair, making a mess of the work I’d done on it earlier. “Fine! We’ll go back to my house, order some take out and moon over our phones like the pathetic lovesick saps we are. Happy now?”

“I’ll be happy when Matt comes home,” I murmured under my breath, too low for Kara to hear. “How about we get some Italian? If we’re gonna wallow, we may as well do it right.”

“Let’s get some stuff to make brownies, too,” she said. “Chocolate can cure anything, especially the lovesick. Let’s get going.”

Kara and I left my room and walked through my quiet house, our heels clicked loudly on the floor echoing in the large, empty house. My parents were out of the country on a research trip so I was all alone at home. According to Kara — as she’d told me on multiple occasions — I was crazy to not throw huge raves here every weekend. However, with all the fragile, priceless art pieces my parents brought back home from their travels, I’d be crazy to throw one small party with only a handful of people much less a crazy rave with hundreds of people.

My house hadn’t changed much in the last couple of years save from a very graphic phallic statue that now resides right in the sitting room; my dad was proud of that piece, it freaked me out. Everything else had stayed the same, the chairs, the floors, the same paintings on the walls; everything was precise and clean with sharp edges and small bursts of bright colors to make the place a tad less clinical.

“How’s Carver doing?” Kara asked pulling me from my thoughts.

I smiled over at her. “He’s doing fine, says New York is great and he likes that he’s working somewhere with so much energy, his words not mine. He’s even met someone, though he won’t tell me much about him because he doesn’t want to jinx anything,” I rolled my eyes. “I don’t even know the guy’s name.”

Carver had started working at the New York Presbyterian Hospital at the end of August and I hadn’t gotten to see him often. The house had felt a little lonely without him, not that I’d ever tell him that. Even though this was the first trip my parents had been on in months, I still didn’t see them much given their busy work schedule. I’d taken to spending more time at Kara’s than I ever had before, becoming an almost permanent fixture at her home.

I looked back at Kara and noticed she was glaring at me. “Sorry, kinda zoned out.”

“It’s cool, it’s not like I said anything really important,” her eyes twinkled in the low light of the living room. “I was only saying we should get going, I’m getting pretty hungry and you know how cranky I get when my blood sugar drops.”

I grimaced; I knew all too well how cranky Kara could get. “Yeah, let’s go.”

Kara and I got into my car — the Prius my parents had gotten me for my sixteenth birthday — and headed toward the grocery store. While I was driving, Kara called Giovanni’s and placed our dinner order.

“Man, even the traffic is nonexistent tonight,” Kara noticed. She grabbed my arm, her eyes wide. “Do you think some kind of zombie epidemic has hit the city and unbeknownst to us, people are falling victim to zombie attacks while we go about getting Italian food and brownies and that’s why tonight is so, notice the pun, dead?”

“Highly doubtful, but I appreciate your creativity,” my fingers drummed along the steering wheel to the pop song on the radio.

“Jeez, you can’t even let me have a fake zombie epidemic, can you?”

I shot her a quick glance before looking back at the road. “I’ll buy you some ice cream.”

Kara bit her lip for a moment. “I forgive you. Ben & Jerry’s please.”

Kara and I were walking through the grocery store, putting a whole bunch of junk food into our cart which mainly consisted of chocolate bars, gummy bears, various potato and corn chips and four boxes of brownie mix when Kara stopped walking beside me. I turned back to look at her with a raised brow.

“When did we become those girls?”

“Which girls?”

“The kind of girls whose lives stop when their boyfriends aren’t around.”

“We’re not those girls. We will never be those girls. We’re just in a slump and contrary to popular belief, just because it’s Friday doesn’t mean a hundred and one parties are going on tonight. Kara, you and I are going to get some ice cream, go to Giovanni’s for our food, go back to your house, go crazy on all this junk and watch some movies like we do every Friday night. We’ll watch Mean Girls and recite every line and then we’ll bash on Mr. Brody’s totally obvious toupee and we’re going to be happy. We won’t think of Matt or Brian; tonight is about us eating too much food that isn’t good for us and having fun. We can go back to being all sad and pathetic tomorrow. Okay?”

Kara smiled one of her mega-watt smiles that I hadn’t seen since the guys left and nodded. “Aye, aye, Cap’n,” she saluted. “Oooh, can we also watch Family Guy? I love that show. Peter is such a lovable douche.”

I smiled as brightly as I could to show Kara that I meant every word I just said. “Dude, I think we have a plan.”

“Yeah, we do,” Kara held her hand up and I high fived her. “To the ice cream aisle!” She shouted and laughed manically doing her best to run in the four inch heels she borrowed from me.

“Cheater!” I called after her and started to push the cart in the direction she’d run off in. I couldn’t help the smile on my face. For the first time in weeks, Kara and I were back to being our normal selves. When I caught up with Kara she was talking to a guy that looked like he was in his early twenties. She was giggling at something he said and twirling her hair around her finger; classic Kara flirting technique.

“Hey, K!” I shouted. “The pharmacy did have your ointment!”

The guy rubbed the back of his neck and just left without looking back or saying goodbye to Kara. I smiled. You’re welcome, Brian.

“Dude, not cool. I was just talking to him.”

“Looked more like flirting to me,” I said as I scanned the ice cream in the freezers through the clear door.

“He had Brian’s eyes,” Kara admitted.

“Yeah, and you have Matt’s eyes but you don’t see me flirting with you, do you?”



Almost an hour had passed since Kara and I got to her house — ice cream aisle guy forgotten — and her kitchen looked like a disaster area. Globs of brownie mix covered the counter, the floor and somehow even ended up on the ceiling. I shared a look with Kara, who had a chocolate smudge on her cheek. “I was only gone for a minute.”

Kara swung her arms around, gesturing to all the mess. “This is exactly why no one should let me cook. Hell, I shouldn’t be allowed within ten feet of a kitchen! I’m Hurricane Kara, when is anyone going to remember that?”

I let out a low whistle as I scanned the kitchen again. “Your mom is gonna flip out when she comes home and sees this.”

“I suck,” Kara hung her head down, brown curls veiled her face.

As much as I wanted to laugh at the scene in front of me, I fought the giggles down and smiled over at Kara. “Come on, K, you’re mom is going to be home soon and we have to get this mess cleaned up before that happens.”

Kara and I managed to clean up Brownie Disaster: 2012 — as we were now calling it — in fifteen minutes and I finished up the brownies on my own while keeping an eye on Kara, making sure we didn’t have another catastrophe on our hands.

“Dinner time,” Kara announced as she dug into the large brown paper bags from Giovanni’s. She set the black take out containers on the table and removed the clear plastic lids. She made a face. “We’re gonna have to heat this up.”

I grabbed some plates from the cupboard and handed one to Kara. After we heated up our food, we went up to her room and Kara looked around for the Mean Girls DVD. She started the movie and sat down next to me on a purple leopard print bean bag chair.

“Tonight will be great,” Kara smiled.

“For sure.”

Kara and I ate as we watched the movie, reciting the lines around mouthfuls of pasta, laughing at how weird our voices sounded muffled by our dinner. After we had our dinner, we started eating all the unhealthy, salty, sweet colorful snacks that held no true nutritional value. At almost halfway through the movie, the timer went off for the brownies. I carefully took them out of the oven while Kara observed from what she deemed a safe distance.

Kara made some popcorn and started bashing on Mr. Brody’s toupee. Mr. Brody was our government teacher and was despised by everyone — students and staff alike — at school. Even Margie and Patty — the school secretaries — who loved everyone didn’t like Mr. Brody. I couldn’t blame them either; the guy was a total ass-hat.

“The damn thing looks like a dead rat carcass sewn together with a dead skunk,” Kara laughed.

I chuckled as I cut up the brownies. “You’re so mean.”

“Don’t act like I’m the only one. What was that thing you said about him collecting his back hair and adding it to the toupee?”

“Oh yeah,” I laughed. “I forgot I said that. Man, I really can’t stand Mr. Brody.”

“You and everyone else at school. I bet even his mom hates him.”

“Yeah, I’d put money on that,” I grinned.

“Those brownies smell so damn good,” Kara licked her lips.

I put a few brownie squares on her plate and watched as she sprinkled powdered sugar on them. We munched on our brownies in silence and my mind wandered toward Matt. He hadn’t called yet and I doubted he would tonight. I hated when he forgot to call when he said he would. He was probably either too tired, too busy or too drunk to remember that he was supposed to call me. I wasn’t going to let it get to me though, mostly because I promised Kara that I was going to be happy tonight and being mad at Matt would cancel out that promise.

“Okay,” Kara patted her stomach. “I’m stuffed and exhausted and tired and, Liv, what’s another word for tired?”

“Bushed, drained, weary, fatigued.”

“Yeah, those too. I’m so ready for bed,” she stood up. “See you upstairs.”

“Night, K. Hey, one more week and they’ll be home.”

“I know. I’m counting down the seconds,” Kara waved a hand behind her. “Night.”

I stayed seated for a few minutes before getting up and putting the brownies away. I wiped down the counters and put the milk back in the fridge. After I was done I checked my phone and Matt still hadn’t called. I sent him a text and then went upstairs to go to bed, well my sleeping bag.

After I was ready for bed and settled in my sleeping bag, my phone vibrated and I smiled as I read Matt’s text.

Miss you, too.
Call you tomorrow. Promise.
Love you.