TTW [OLD - HAS BEEN MOVED TO NEW ACCOUNT]

Chapter Two

“Hey, y’allz!” I turn to see my best girl friend, Ria, run up to us, looking as fabulous as usual.

“I don’t know how you do it.” I shake my head in wonder. Ria could wake up ten minutes before the bus left, and still throw on something random and look good. She was just that instantaneous fashionista.

“Do what?” she says distractedly while adjusting her tote strap.

“You know, throw on some clothes, POOF, and look fabulous?”

“Yea, unlike Mrs.Potato-and-Bathrobes here,” I hear Tony’s teasing voice behind me, and I restrain the urge to punch his shoulder…lightly.

Ria looks critically over my clothes, then shrugs. “Nothing waking up earlier won’t fix, Ally. If you would only let me curl your hair, and do your makeup, and pick out an outfit –“

“No, absolutely NOT. Do you remember how in sixth grade, I let you do that after our sleepover, and you pulled out that dress and expected me to go to school with it?”

“Well, it’s not like it was breaking the dress code!”

“But it was this long –“I demonstrated by putting my hands at the mid-thigh level, “and kind of tight! Do you want me to look like a – a – a hooker or something?”

“It looked really good on you though! And you wore to school, didn’t you?”

“Well, yea. But then all the boys were staring at me like I was some kind of animal, and I didn’t like it.”

Ria rolls her eyes, then explains, as if I were totally oblivious to the world of guys, “They thought you looked hot. That’s why they were ogling.” As if to back her up, she turns to Tony. “Didn’t she look hot?”

“Er…tell the presses I have no comment.” He turns away, looking flustered.

She throws her hands into the air. “I give up. But, just let me have a second chance. I swear, I won’t make you wear ANYthing uncomfortable.”

I roll my eyes at her pleading, and give in. “Fine, I’ll try to wake up early tomorrow morning and go over to your place.”

“No, no, we’re having a sleepover tonight, at your place.”

I was about to cut the whole plan off, since I didn’t think my mom would be really happy if I brought someone home, and on a school night too. But then again, she seemed to be fine today.

I shrug and say, “I’ll call my mom and check in, but if we can’t, then it’s either a sleepover at your place, or I’m walking over.”

“Fine. Oh, bus is here!”

We file onto the bus, along with 10 other students at our stop.

“Let’s go to the back,” Ria shouts over the screams of other kids.

I can’t believe it’s already at the screaming point at 8 in the morning. Everyone claims to have a hard time waking up, but I swear, on the bus, it’s like they had ten shots of caffeine or something.

“Isn’t it full already?”

“No! See?” she points around the line of students to the lone seat way in the back.

“Can we make it there before everyone else?”

She shrugged, then squeezed past everyone else (how she did that too, I didn’t know) and hopped onto the seat. I could barely her smug reply, but I didn’t need to. “Told ya so!”

I rolled my eyes, and waited as everyone else found their seats, and I finally got to the one next to Ria.

“Did I tell you about what Mack did yesterday?”