What The People Don't See

Girls

Eloise was right; her dad's veggie lasagne was definitely my favourite. It tasted like heaven in my mouth, even better than mixed slush puppies, and everyone knew how much I loved those. We ate sitting cross legged in their living room. They didn't own a TV so we talked instead about nothing in particular. I didn't even feel all that bad for leaving Cal on his own.

I had been hard though, much, much harder than usual. Normally, he begged me to stay. Just for one more minute, one more kiss, one more shag. But tonight he'd just looked at me like a puppy who'd been scolded and walked me out as far as the edge of his road. Which was weird. Then he kissed me goodbye on the cheek. Which was even weirder. He never, ever kissed me on the cheek, especially not in public. He had a very strong distaste for PDA and would barely even hold my hand in school. Actually, when I thought about it, we never held hands. I fretted over how he could've suddenly changed his mind. Maybe he got hit in the head during training. Maybe he was going through a personality meltdown. Whatever it was, it freaked me out and I made the mistake of telling Eloise.

"Why don't you just tell him to go fuck himself already? He's a manipulative limp dick...you could do so much better!"

I laughed, but I still sounded annoyed. She didn't seem to notice.

"Look, I know he's a sex god or whatever-"

"Hey, I never said that!" I protested.

"-and he can be really nice when he wants to be. But Stel, nice isn't enough, especially when it's served on the same platter as cocky, ignorant, selfish and obsessive. Don't tell him I said that though...he's still one of my besties."

"God El, you're impossible! Why are you even friends with him if you think he's such a twat?"

"He's funny, duh! Plus he always carries my bag for me when he walk to English together. And he bet up Henry for me, remember?"

Of course i remembered. Henry was Eloise's latest ex. I'd never liked him; as soon as I met him I thought he was vile. I was right. He started abusing El, sometimes physically but mainly emotionally. After she came into school one day with a bruised collar bone and hickeys scattering her neck, Cal cornered Henry in the bathrooms and kicked his puny little arse. If that wasn't already enough, Adam and I followed him home that evening and trashed his car. He was lucky we hadn't decided to do more. We both have belts and ten plus years of karate training at our will.

"Look, we're all messed up, right? I'm an emotional tidal wave, Cal's a snobby prude, Adam's mentally deranged and you're a psychotic bitch! Let's face it, we're problems...I'm just not sure that snobby prude and psychotic bitch click though, you get me?"

"Cal's not that snobby" was all I managed to spit out before the computer screen flickered and Josh's head appeared.

"Joshy!" El yelped, causing both Josh and I to flinch. He caught my eye and grinned, rolling his eyes as if to say "here we go again!"

"Eloisy! And Stelly! How you doin'?"

Eloise giggled hysterically next to me and I had to scoot away from her before she burst my eardrums. I didn't get far though; Ross's torso walked into the screens view and I quickly scooted back across the floor. El smirked at me and I threw her a look, daring her to say something. She wisely chose not to.

"Ross, sit down! They can't see you from up there; they can only see your pants!"

"Oh sorry" Ross sat down, blushing brightly and giving me and El a little wave.

"Where's everyone else?" El asked.

Now it was my time to smirk. She had her disinterested voice on play but I knew her well enough to know that really, she was terribly interested to know where Pete and Evan were.