Me: Jenna can’t be scared. That would require having emotions.
Layne: And a heart.
Lola posted a GIF of the Wicked Witch from Wizard of Oz and I collapsed back on my bed with laughter, feeling better than I had all day.
Layne: Thanks for reaching out, Rose. It’s nice to know we’re not the only ones stressing over here.
Lola: Yeah, we should keep in touch. It helps to have allies.
Me: I just labeled this group chat “Diva Squad” so it’s official. An alliance has been formed.
Lola threw up a GIF from Survivor and a little while later we all signed off, but that feeling of dread had subsided big time. I might not have had much support from my mom, but at least I had some friends out there who understood the pressure.
And even better?
I had a plan.
5
Jax
My mom was big into TV. I grew up watching a lot of it, and I knew her favorites almost as well as she did. There were some common themes to the ones she loved best.
There was Ross and Rachel. Blair and Chuck. Peyton and Lucas. Angela and Tony.
My mom was addicted to these will-they-won’t-they relationships, and I got it. I could see the appeal.
But here was the thing. On-again-off-again, will-they-won’t-they relationships? They were way better in fiction than in real life.
Take my word for it.
I shoved a pillow over my head as my parents screamed. About what?
Didn’t matter.
Another day, another disaster. My parents seemed to thrive on melodrama. Don’t get me wrong. They loved each other—passionately. They were disgustingly into PDA when they were feeling all lovey-dovey. But they also hated each other—just as passionately.
They swung from one end of the spectrum to the other so often it would have made me dizzy if I bothered to keep track. As it was, I was over it. I was used to tuning out their fights and ignoring the blissed-out honeymoon period that inevitably followed.
Right now I was doing my best to block it out, but it was like they were trying to be heard over the music I had blaring through my headphones.
I groaned into my pillow. Seriously, were they fighting right outside my door?
I threw the pillow to the side and tore off the headphones. It was time to get out of here before I entered into the fray.
Nothing good ever came of me interfering.
I came out of my room to find them fighting in the living room. Not exactly right outside my door, but in the tight quarters of our little house, they might as well have been.
Neither of them seemed to notice me sneaking out and about ten minutes later I was down the block and banging on the glass door on Simone’s back patio.
Her dad didn’t even blink at the sight of me. He was used to me coming over at all hours, and he was well aware that I had no nefarious intentions toward his daughter.
I’d watched enough of my mom’s TV to know all about the friends-to-lovers plot, but that was never ever going to be the case with me and Simone. We were way too different. Or similar?
Whatever we were, we were best suited to be friends and we both knew it.
If anything, she was like a sister to me, as evidenced by the fact that she didn’t so much as blink when I barged into her room while she was studying.
“Can’t you learn how to knock?” she whined, a pencil bouncing off my shoulder where she’d chucked it.
“Can’t you take a break from studying for one night to hang with a friend?”
She glared at me over the top of her glasses. She wore contacts at school but at night she switched over to her old wire-rimmed glasses that hadn’t been upgraded since the seventh grade. “We hang all the time. Some of us need to study.”
“And some of us need to avoid our homes,” I returned.
She blinked. Then she sighed and I saw her sympathy outweigh her peevishness. “Okay, fine. Turn on the TV and keep yourself occupied. I’ll be done here in ten.”
It was twenty minutes by the time she finished taking notes from whatever it was she was studying in her textbook in front of her. I knew this because I hadn’t zoned out in front of the small TV her dad had put in her room—her dad was an indie film director and had no qualms with his daughter watching too many movies. In his world, there was no such thing. I suspected he secretly hoped she’d take after him and become a director.
Instead of watching TV, I’d been watching the minutes tick by on her bedside clock. I’d love to say I was just enjoying the silence, or maybe zening out to the soft, mundane sounds that filled Simone’s house.
I’d love to say that, but it would have been a lie.
I was stewing.
Maybe even obsessing.
By the time Simone closed her book with a thud, I’d folded my arms beneath my head and was staring at the old glow-in-the-dark stars that still littered the ceiling above her bed and which had been up there for as long as I could remember.
“So,” she said slowly. “On a scale of one to World War Three, your parents were…”
I pressed my lips together as I pretended to think it over. “It went to eleven.”
She gave a little snort of laughter at the inside joke and adopted a ridiculous British accent. “These go to eleven.”
It was a line from one of our favorite mockumentaries, This is Spinal Tap, and she’d quoted it just like I’d known she would. The girl couldn’t help herself. She was terrible at impressions, but she did them anyway.
Even in public.
Even when I begged her to stop.
“Sorry,” she said with a sigh as she sat on the bed beside me, making it sink.
She wasn’t apologizing for the bad impression and I knew it.
I shrugged. “Just another fun-filled day in the Hadley household.”
“Is that what you were over here brooding about?”
“I wasn’t
