He offered to drop by my house on Tuesday evening, which was fine—with Luke and Mom out of town, I was happy to host. When he showed up, I was surprised to see he’d brought Arianna with him. I’d thought it was just going to be the two of us.
It didn’t really matter—actually, I figured an extra set of hands and eyes could come in handy—but she kind of annoyed me right at the start by saying, “Oh my God, your house is amazing!” as they walked in the door. Not that there was anything wrong with the compliment. There was just something about how her eyes were darting around, greedily sucking in every detail, that made the words grate on me.
“Thanks,” I said. “We like it.”
“It’s so big. I can’t believe how big it is. How many of you live here?”
“Just my family. And the house may be big, but we always end up doing everything in the kitchen. Which is where we’re going now.” I led them that way. “You guys want something to drink?”
“Water’s fine,” said Ben.
“Can I see what you have?” Arianna asked, and opened the refrigerator before I could even respond. She seemed a little disappointed by the slim choices there. “I guess I’ll take a Snapple,” she said, and grabbed a bottle. She turned around. “So is there, like, a big music studio in the house?”
“There’s a small one out back,” I said.
“Can we see it?”
“No,” I said, a little more curtly than I probably should have. I softened it: “It’s kind of Luke’s private place. I don’t go in without him.”
“Are you musical, too?” she asked. “He must have taught you how to play the guitar and stuff, right?”
“He tried once, but it didn’t take.” I was totally tone-deaf, and even though I learned to strum a few chords, I never practiced and got fidgety when Luke sat down with me, so we both lost interest in the attempt. For Luke’s sake, I hoped Jacob would be more into the music thing; he certainly liked to sing along to Disney songs—always in his own language, but he nailed the tunes.
While Ben and I were working on the letter, Arianna leapt up to explore the kitchen. She kept opening cabinets and drawers, checking inside, and then closing them again.
“What are you looking for?” I asked.
“A snack, I guess. I haven’t eaten dinner yet. But don’t mind me.”
I got up, went to the pantry, and pulled out a bag of crackers. “Will this do?” I dropped it on the table and sat back down.
But a few minutes later, she was back on the prowl, glancing into everything she could open.
“Do you need something else?” I asked, trying to keep the annoyance out of my voice.
“Uh . . . silverware?”
“Why?” We were eating the crackers with our hands. I mean, obviously.
She just shrugged and came back to the table, where she looked over our shoulders and agreed with everything either of us said, but then she must have drifted away again without my even noticing because the next time I looked up, she was over at the opposite side of the room flipping through our mail, which was stacked up on the counter for Mom and Luke to sort when they came home.
“Hey!” I said.
“What?” She turned around, after quickly dropping whatever she was holding back onto the pile.
“Are you looking through our mail?”
“Not really.” She gave a little laugh. “Honestly, I don’t even know what I’m doing. I’m just sort of wandering around. . . . Short attention span, I guess. Do you mind if I use your bathroom?”
I minded that a lot less than her pawing through our private correspondence. “It’s down the hallway, take a left, and then another left.”
“Thanks.” She disappeared.
“That was weird,” I said to Ben in a low voice.
“What?” He looked up from his laptop.
“She was going through our mail.”
“Arianna? Why would she do that?”
“I have no idea.”
“I’m sure she wasn’t.” He pointed to the screen. “Shouldn’t this be a period instead of a comma?”
I let it drop and just focused on finishing the work as quickly as possible so I could get Arianna out of my house.
Later that night, after they’d gone, Grandma and I were watching TV together when she said, “Which friend of yours is that blond girl?”
“Blond girl? You mean Heather?”
“No, I know Heather. I mean the one who was wandering around upstairs earlier tonight—I heard a noise in your mother’s room and there she was. She said she was working on a school project with you and you’d sent her up to find something?”
“Oh. That’s Arianna. We were working on a project, but I didn’t send her upstairs.”
“Hmm,” Grandma said. “She had her phone out. I think she may have been taking some photos.”
I swore and pulled my phone out of my pocket. I didn’t follow Arianna, but I was able to find her Instagram account pretty quickly. And see her most recent photos.
Luke Weston’s driveway! Luke Weston’s living room! Luke Weston’s closet—and shoes!! Luke Weston’s drawer full of T-shirts! Luke Weston’s bed (squee!)!!!!!!!!
There was even a photo of me working on my laptop at the kitchen table, completely oblivious to the fact that my picture was being taken. She had posted it with the caption “Luv ya, gorgeous gurl!”
“Oh, for God’s sake!” I said.
“What?”
I showed Grandma the photos.
“The curse of fame,” she said cheerfully. She’d already had a cocktail or two. “But no harm done.”
“I guess not.” I felt violated though.
I complained to Heather a little while later, when we were video chatting. I made her check out the photos on her phone.
“Ugh,” she said. “People are jerks.”
“Right?” That was more the response I was going for. Grandma’s “live and let live” attitude was a little too easygoing for my current feelings about Arianna.