Ella smiles, her head resting on his shoulder and her hand on his thigh. I’m trying to like her, but I really can’t. “Have a good night with your friends.”
I nod my head in farewell and close the door behind me, heading outside and across the road. Now that I’ve been here a couple weeks, I’ve gotten used to the sunshine and the street has become familiar, but I’m still not sure where I stand with the girls I’ve been hanging with. Are Rachael and Meghan my friends now? With the amount of time I’ve been spending with them, I feel like they are. Tiffani, on the other hand, has yet to make it clear if we’re friends or not. Sometimes I think we are, others I think she hates me.
I walk through Rachael’s front door at 3:31 p.m., and as expected, I’m the first to arrive. She’s dragging a vacuum cleaner along the wooden floor, searching for an outlet, and looking exasperated and worn out. We haven’t even started yet.
“I couldn’t start anything until they left,” she explains, the vacuum cleaner trailing behind her. “They would have gotten suspicious if I’d randomly started cleaning.”
“It’s fine, Rachael,” I say slowly, my voice gentle. “Calm down, we’ve still got five hours.”
“Five hours, Eden!” she yells. She kicks the vacuum cleaner to the side and throws her hands into her hair. It’s wavy today and it really suits her. “Five hours to clean and hide all the china and buy booze and food and update my iTunes! Why did I offer to do this?” She stares at me, her eyes wide, and I can’t help but laugh.
“Rachael.”
More staring. “What?”
“We’re helping you, remember?” I arch my brows, nodding encouragingly in an attempt to calm her down. The only thing she needs to worry about is getting caught by her parents. “Tiffani and Meghan are on their way, right?”
“Right,” she breathes. Pressing a hand to her chest, she uses the other to pull down her sunglasses and then swivels around to plug in the vacuum cleaner.
“Right,” I echo. “So we’ll help you clean and we’ll all go to the store and we’ll help you put together a playlist. We’ve got enough time.”
Without replying, she starts up the vacuum cleaner and forcefully rams it into the floor. I decide not to question her about the sunglasses or her mental stability.
“I’m here!” a voice yells from behind me over the noise. I turn around to find Tiffani, her hands overflowing with crackers and dips. I feel guilty for not bringing anything. “Is she wearing sunglasses inside?”
I only shake my head in pity. “She’s a little stressed.”
“We’ll take the kitchen,” Tiff tells me, rolling her eyes at Rachael’s frantic vacuuming. “Let’s leave her be.”
I follow her through to the kitchen, where she dumps the crackers on the counter. There’s not much to clean, only some plates and some knives, which Tiffani quickly tosses into the dishwasher. I open up the back door and peer outside. Clean enough.
“So how many people are coming?” I ask as I shut the door again.
“Around forty,” Tiffani says. I can still hear Rachael vacuuming the other side of the house. “We’ve tried to keep it small. Declan Portwood’s crew isn’t invited, so that eliminates around fifteen people who usually turn up to parties.”
“The people who do drugs in the backyard, right?” I ask, just for clarification.
“Something like that,” she says quietly, then arranges the crackers in a row along the counter, neatly aligning them with the dips.
“Isn’t Tyler in that circle?”
She immediately stops what she’s doing. Her eyes meet mine, and it’s then that I realize I shouldn’t have said anything. It’s evident from her expression that it’s a topic that shouldn’t be brushed upon. “No,” she says unconvincingly.
I know perfectly fine Tyler is friends with Declan and all the other potheads and crackheads. I should know; I went to a party with them all. “Yes, he is,” I argue.
“What the fuck are you trying to prove to me?” she snaps. Her outburst takes me by surprise. I didn’t mean to provoke her. Getting on her bad side is the last thing on my mind.
“I was just saying,” I murmur. We exchange a long glance before she looks away. Clearly her mood has shifted, and her eyes are narrower. She returns to setting out the crackers and dips while I just watch, not quite sure what to do.
“I don’t like talking about it,” she confesses after a moment of tense silence. “It’s embarrassing having people know what I put up with.”
She doesn’t like talking about it because it’s embarrassing for her? Shouldn’t she be worried about Tyler’s well-being rather than people’s opinions of her? I frown. “I think he should get some help.”