“I always wished I had red hair,” Taylor said, running her fingers through mine. Hers was so pretty, though. It did that beachy-wave thing that I could never pull off. My hair just sort of...hung on my head.
“So you’d have an excuse to fly off the handle?” Hunter said, picking up his guitar again. It seemed to be his go-to in times of turmoil.
“Ha-ha, you wish,” Taylor said.
We sat for a few more minutes as Mase turned on NESN and checked the sports stats. Both Hannah and Dusty had been gone for longer than I was comfortable with, but it was nearly silent upstairs.
I got up and went for the stairs. I heard the rest of them talking behind me, but I didn’t care.
Being careful to walk quietly and carefully, I approached Renee and Paul’s room. The door was cracked just a bit. Dusty’s voice was the one I heard first.
“She’s going to have so many people watching her, she won’t be able to sneeze without one of us saying ‘bless you.’ Trust me.”
“Why should I trust you?” That was Renee.
I leaned closer and maybe a little too far, catching myself off balance and banging into the door, which slammed open and banged off the wall. Not the most graceful of entrances I’d ever made.
“Sorry, I just came up to see if everything was okay. I didn’t hear anything downstairs, so I was hoping I wasn’t going to come up and find a pile of bodies and one of you holding a knife or something,” I said, trying to save myself.
“Where would someone get a knife in my bedroom?” Renee said, recovering first from being burst in on.
“You do have that really pointy nail file,” Paul said, chiming in. Dusty was composed but Hannah was a little red-faced.
I wanted, desperately, to know what Dusty’s answer to Renee’s question would have been, but I couldn’t admit that I’d been listening.
“Sorry I flew off the handle,” Renee said, sitting down on the edge of her bed.
“No, it’s okay. Mom would have done the same thing,” I said.
“But I’m not your mom. Even though you’ve made some bad decisions in the past, you’ve been doing really great lately, and I haven’t given you enough credit. I’m proud of you.” The praise was going right to my ears, and I could feel them heating up. She couldn’t have done this when we were alone? I mean, I didn’t care if she did it with Paul around, because he was practically family, but with Dusty and Hannah there, it was embarrassing.
Dusty cleared his throat and moved toward the door, shoving his hands into his pockets.
“I think that’s my cue to go home. I’ll see you all...at some point. Okay, good night.” He was out of there quicker than you could say “saggy pants.”
“Sometimes I have an issue picking up on social cues, but this isn’t one of those times. I will see you tomorrow, Jos. Thanks for understanding, Renee. ’Bye, Paul.” Hannah scurried after Dusty, and I was left with Renee and Paul.
“I think I’m going to give you two a minute.” Paul left and closed the door quietly behind him. I sat down next to Renee on the bed.
“So what were you talking about when I made my awesome entrance?” I said.
“Nothing. Hannah was just explaining her reasons for wanting to go to the party. I swear, ninety percent of guys are complete and utter douche bags.” She closed her eyes and flopped backward.
“If that’s true, then how is it possible that we have three non–douche bags living in this house? I mean, those are, like, Powerball odds.” I joined her and let myself fall backward and we stared at the ceiling.
“I don’t know. But I’m thinking we should start buying more scratch tickets,” she said.
The comforter was bunched up under my head, so I smoothed it out.
“You ever take that thing off?” She reached for my bracelet, fingering the elephant charm.
“No.” I let her play with it for a second longer and then turned on my side, propping my head on my hand. She did the same. It felt like when we were little and used to build forts out of pillows and sheets in the living room with all the chairs from the dining room. That was before a lot of our siblings entered our lives. All I could remember was that it was pretty quiet back then.
“Sometimes I feel so old,” she said.
“How so?”
“Just between everything with Mom and Dad and with our family being so crazy. Do you remember that time when Mom forgot us at school and we had to hitchhike?”
I rolled my eyes.
“Which time?” It had happened often in our youth.
“It’s a wonder the two of us even managed to turn out relatively normal.” I tapped the side of her head.
“Relatively? Speak for yourself.”
“Hey, ‘relatively normal’ is a compliment for you,” she said, grabbing a pillow and whacking me with it.
“What the hell?” I dived and got a hold of one and smacked her back. And then, because we were sisters, we had a pillow fight. Renee didn’t have down pillows, so there were no feathers, but it got pretty ridiculous anyway.
By the time both of us were out of breath, we had an audience. One of the guys must have heard us yelling and carrying on and thought we were killing each other, but they found us collapsed and laughing in exhaustion.
“So, you’re good, then?” Mase said. “Because you could, you know, keep doing that. I wouldn’t complain.” He grinned, and Darah made a disgusted sound.
“I think the odds are going down,” I said to Renee and she laughed.
“What odds?” Hunter said.
“Never mind,” we both said at the same time.
Chapter 14
Hannah was more reluctant to go shopping than a virgin being led to the sacrificial altar.
“You agreed to this plan. It will be okay, I swear,” I said as I drove us toward the Bangor Mall. She kept changing the radio stations and it was driving me mad. I finally reached out and turned off the radio.
I drove around a few times and found a parking spot near the Dick’s Sporting Goods store. I got my purse and was about to get out of the car when Hannah’s hand reached out and stopped me.
“Okay, so you know how we’ve been sharing stuff lately, and I have to tell you that I haven’t been shopping in, like, two years.” She bit her lip and shrugged.
I sat back in my seat in shock.
“For serious?” I said.
“I mean, not like food shopping, but clothes shopping.” This was astounding, because she always looked cute, in a punk/vintage kind of way. She’d wear something that looked like it belonged in a 1950s period piece with something that had spikes or grommets or leather. “I buy everything online. I know which major retailers make their shirts small and don’t even get me started on shoes.”