Abby

CHAPTER TWO

...

Her parents looked around her room after she'd gone to school. It appeared everything a teenage girl's room should appear. Dirty clothes on the floor, her tap shoes and bass guitar in the corner. Stage make-up scattered on her dresser. Pictures of bands and friends stuck in the edges of her mirror.

"How do you toss a room?" She asked. He laughed and then stopped short. "It's okay. I meant it to be an ice breaker." They had decided to search her room for drugs or any evidence of such behavior while she sat with the principal and the police.

"Don't they usually find things in ceiling tiles?" He asked, looking up. She didn't have any.

"One less place to search." She said, looking on the bright side.

"Under the mattress?" He suggested.

"Her bed needs to be made anyway." Jennie rationalized. She went to the bed and pulled the sheets and blankets off. She shook them out. Nothing but a few pieces of clothing and her phone charger. Jason lifted her mattress and her box spring. Nothing. Jennie made her bed like a loving mother would while he searched her closet. They came up empty handed, a relief to them. But they knew deep down that it didn't mean much at all.

...

"Hey." She recognized the voice at the door. It was Sierra. Her best friend of practically her whole life. She gave a half-hearted smile and waved. "How many days?" She asked.

"Five now. Then I go to classes for five. Then five more in here. If all goes well, no tardies, absences or dismissals, the rest of the punishment is forgiven." Silence. Neither girl spoke right away.

"That sucks." Sierra didn't know what to say. She was disappointed in Abby. This wasn't like her at all.

"Yeah." Abby answered. Abby was losing her best friend, and she didn't know how to stop it. Maybe it was too far gone, and she couldn't. "The make-up work isn't as bad as I thought." She added to fill the silence. Relieve the awkwardness.

"Maybe tomorrow you'll eat in the caf?" Sierra asked.

"Maybe." Abby said. "I'm just not hungry, and I don't want to stop working. I want to get it all done as fast as possible." That sounded promising to Sierra.

"Okay." She acknowledged. "How pissed was dad?" Sierra and Abby had been so joined at the hip, that they referred to each other's parents as their own. They even joked that Aaron had two sisters.

"He actually took it better than I thought. Mom cried." Abby said with a tilt of the head and a small shrug indicating that it wasn't all that unexpected. Sierra smiled. Mrs. Demarco was the emotional mom, while hers was thicker skinned, emotionally hardened. She hated to admit that they'd played to that the last few years.

"Aaron seems... pissed." Sierra offered. Abby scoffed.

"Yeah. He was a little too blunt with his opinion. But I knew he would be anyway." Her reply contained a hint of regret. "I knew he was pissed." She corrected, insinuating that she knew he'd been pissed the last couple months, and that she's done nothing to change her behavior. Sierra envied them the connection they had, being an only child. Everyone who knew them well called it the twin thing. They knew each other's thoughts and feelings before they knew their own.

"I'm going to go eat lunch." Sierra said awkwardly. "I just wanted to hear how things went."

"Okay." Abby said, letting her off the hook.

"See you around." Sierra offered, walking away. It didn't seem right to walk away. They should be laughing while Sierra served the time with Abby just to be with her. But Sierra didn't want to, and Abby seemed like she wanted to be alone anyway.