expired

Chapter 3, Part 2

"That was Clay?!" Tia mouthed to me as I pulled into her driveway. I hadn't even taken the keys out of the ignition before she was pounding on my window, begging for answers.

    On the way, I had mentally mulled over what had went down at the pool and decided that I would just wait and see what had even happened to that little boy before determining whether I was to blame or congratulate myself. After a few deep breaths I opened the door and greeted Tia with her thousands of questions.

    "Can I just get a shower?" I laughed as we came through the door, to Mrs. Das's surprise.

    "You girls are usually gone for much longer than that," she said, taking a seat behind the island.

    I looked at Tia, who was always quick to come up with an explanation. As usual, she pulled through. "Just a really bummy crowd," she said. "No one was even there to see my new suit!" I realized I hadn't even taken note of the new purple and blue number Tia was wearing and observed it as she twirled through the living room into the kitchen.

    "It looks absolutely ravishing, darling," Mrs. Das remarked, using a banana as a microphone and looking over her glasses at Tia with cartoon astonishment. "Who is it that you're wearing?"

    "That Mexican guy from the plaza in the hotel!" Tia squealed into the microphone, striking a pose. I laughed along with them, like I was part of their family instead of an outsider. I often felt more like part of the family in the Das house instead of my house, which was understandable when comparing Mrs. Das to my own mom. One was warm, welcoming and eager to talk while the other was warm and welcome to the idea to you getting out of her house if it was one of the short periods of time in which she was actually in it. Take a while guess at who's who.

    "Are you girls hungry?" Mrs. Das asked, taking me back to reality. Though Tia and I were 17 going onto our senior year, we were never a pair to turn down some of Tia's mom's sandwiches and homemade lemonade. My mouth was watering at the thought of it, and at my stomach growling I realized that I hadn't eaten anything but my daily cereal earlier this morning, and it was now well after noon.

    Tia, seeing the hunger in my eyes asked her mom if she could maybe make us something, to which her mom happily agreed and set to work, pulling some bread out of the drawer. Tia led me upstairs and continued to pester me with questions through the bathroom door as I got undressed and showered. I continued to feed her minimal answers, eventually telling her that if she left me alone while I showered and ate that I'd spill everything afterwards. She made me pinky-promise her in the middle of my shower.

    Since she didn't need to shower, Tia was rushing me all while I got dressed and while we ate, scarfing down her food and making me uncomfortable by staring at me until I sped up my pace too and hurried me up the stairs as I yelled a thank you to Mrs. Das for the lunch.

    "S-p-i-l-l," Tia spelled out, flopping down on the bed, eager to listen.

    "What do you even want to know about?" I asked, trying not to laugh as I pretended I hadn't ignored everything she had said for the past several hours. "Okay, okay.

    "His name's Clay Walker and he has big brown eyes and black hair and I think he'd be about as pale as the moon in the winter but is tan right now and he likes to ride his bike but then he almost crashed it into Clover--"

    "Wait," Tia cut me off. "First of all, slow down. Second of all, he almost crashed into Clover?!" She held her hand over her heart. Every once in awhile I wished Mrs. Das was my own mother, but Tia pretended that Clover was her child. She had a problem.

    After calming her down from what was, for lack of a better term, a meltdown over her poor baby Clover, I debriefed Tia on the whole Clay situation in full. About how he had almost killed Clover, and how he had lowkey stolen the Tree from me, and how he invited me to the housewarming, and how his dad was sick and his mom had left and the colored dixie cups and everything else through him stopping by at the pool. Tia nodded, contemplating this new information.