Our house is big, but tonight the walls seemed much thinner than normal and I’m plagued by the sounds of their loud giggling and general girl chatter. Their cackling makes it so much harder to sleep and I imagine them all braiding each others’ hair and painting nails while they do a thorough post-mortem on the party. Dissecting all the details with their surgical scalpels; who looked at who, who danced with who, what did so-and-so wear and who were they hooking up with? But my blood ran ice cold the second I heard Mike’s name being whispered, followed by even more giggling.
Knife stab and twist.
It’s not a secret that almost every girl at school wants him. And no secret that he’s dated a rather substantial amount of them either – not that I’m counting, or maybe I am. I’ve always given him crap for that because on the outside he’s everything they want, but on the inside, he’s nothing like them at all.
The giggling finally tapered off at some stage and I must have fallen asleep, or fallen into some version of a sleep filled with strange swirling thoughts of Mike. One thought bled into the next, which blurred into an image and into another and another and–
“What the?!” The sun came screaming into my room and slapped we through my sleepy face. “Hey, what time is it?” I turned to the window and tried to open my eyes, even though they felt like they had been superglued shut. Through the half-closed slit I could just make Mike out. Maybe this was another dream? No one should be that bright eyed and bushy tailed so early in the effing morning, and not to mention how loudly he was calling my name.
"What you doing?" The words struggled out of my dry throat.
“Time to get up.” I felt the duvet being rudely flung off me and a hand pushed my shoulder.
“Seriously, what time is it?” I tried to pull the duvet back but Mike had a firm grip on it
“It’s already eight.” Suddenly two hands grabbed my arms and without warning I’m standing on my feet face-to-face with him. Good thing I’m not one of those girls that wears cute night dresses, or sleeps in my underwear. In fact, I always make sure I sleep in a baggy shirt and gym shorts in case I’m ambushed in the morning by Mike. Mind you, I don’t think it would make a difference if I was standing in front of him wearing some Victoria’s Secret lacey thing. I am so firmly in the friendzone right now, maybe even worse, the sister zone, that I don’t think Mike would notice if I were half naked and giving him a lap dance with tassels and Perspex heels. In fact, I don’t even think he considers me to be an actual female.
“Remind me, why are we up so early on a Saturday?” I rubbed my face, which still felt half asleep and wiped a tiny bit of drool away with the back of my hand.
“We’re off to investigate.”
“Investigate what?”
“The mystery kisser, and the only lead we have for now.”
Suddenly it hit me all at once and I was now very wide awake. He was serious about this. He hadn’t been joking last night! And to top it all off, he was using the collective ‘we’, which was just so horrific and totally inappropriate under the circumstances, considering that the other half of the “we” was the person standing right in front of him.
But the only sensible thing to do right now was to play along, well just until I figured out a better way of dealing with this. “What lead is that?”
“The gum. It’s all we’ve got to go on. If we can figure out what brand it is, at least I can narrow it down, if I see someone at school chewing it.”
“So we’re going to go to the shop and buy every flavor of gum and try it?”
“Exactly.” He clapped his hands together looking far too excited for my liking.
One thought went through my head. Shit… what the hell have I started?
Chapter 4 (Mike)
I knew it was minty, with a hint of cinnamon, at least that narrowed it down somewhat. Because as I stood in the / and looked at the shelves, there were at least fifty different flavors to choose from. Winter this, Ice that, fire and berry blazing and blasting and exploding in your month. Long lasting, teeth whitening.
I grabbed all the cinnamon mint flavors off the shelf, there were six different brands and Maria and I walked off to the counter together. Walking... it was more like dragging her, she still looked fast asleep.
“Wait, if you’re going to drag me around at this time I need sustenance, and you’re paying.”
She slapped a large doughnut and a soda down on the counter as well as a few chocolates. “For my stash,” she said.
Maria has a secret stash of sugar under her bed. Her mother banned sugar from the house about three years ago so Maria keeps some for emergencies.
“Sure.” I happily paid for all the stuff, even though Maria’s dad has more money than God, but Maria doesn’t act like that at all. In fact, if you met her you wouldn’t think she came from tons of money. I like that about her. She’s down to earth.
We left and without even thinking about it, or discussing it, we both instinctively started walking in the direction of the park. Maria and I have this special place in the park, tucked away from the crowds, a place that no one knows about and that we have been going to for years. We discovered it as adventurous kids and have
