Driving Me Crazy

Part 2

The following day wasn't nearly as eventful; to begin with anyway. Kelly called me first thing to apologize, again. And to see if I wanted to hit the mall.

The Santa Maria District Mall's no Rodeo Drive but this side of LA it was the best we were gonna get and for two seasoned shopping pro's like Kelly and I it wasn't a problem. By noon we were struggling to carry the bags and I may have come dangerously close to maxing out my Dad's credit card so we decided it was time for lunch.

We got our favorite table in Ciao Bella's and I was in the process of stuffing a giant slice of pepperoni pizza into my mouth when two blonde girls turned from paying their cheque and spotting us began to make their way over to our table.  

"Hey Shannon, Hi Kelly." the first girl said. 

"Oh hi Autumn." Kelly answered.  

Trying to swallow the mouthful of pizza I'd just taken I waved at Autumn and Jen, the other blonde and grabbed my glass of Coke.

Autumn Sloane is your typical long-legged, golden tanned, blue-eyed California blonde, the girl standing behind her, her best friend Jen, is of the same mould but with short platinum curls instead of long blonde tresses. I wish I had hair like Autumn's which looks like its straight out of a shampoo commercial, mine used to be blonde when I was little but it darkened as I got older to a sort of sun kissed golden brown.

"I totally forgot to tell you guys, there's a party at my place tonight. Starts at 9 sharp. You'll be there right?" Autumn smiled brightly.

Autumn is the kid with a house of a sufficient size and zero parental supervision. Her dads an actor in one of those crappy daytime soap operas that make you want to slit your wrists after you've watched them for five minutes and her moms a news reporter - "Suzie Sloane for CBS News", so they spend most of their time at their place in LA.  

As a result the who's who of the junior and senior student body of the Mission Academy and quite a few from Santa Maria High spend their weekends getting wasted at 12 Buchannon Place.

"Umm...yeah...maybe, we'll see." I say evasively.

Autumn Sloane and Jen Hoffman are seniors like Kelly's boyfriend Aaron and they rule the Mission Academy with an iron fist and a big fake smile, or at least they think they do. Although it might sound like Autumn is inviting us to her party she's actually ordering us to attend. Which is exactly why we won't be showing up.....well not until at least 10:30 anyway, I mean there's no reason to miss a perfectly good party just to show Autumn and Jen who's boss.

The bell jangled as the door of Ciao Bella's opened again and the four of us turned to see who had just come in. I rolled my eyes and reached for my pizza again as the tall dark figures of Aaron and Danny walked in. Aaron's eyes lit up as he spotted Kelly and they came over to the table, he slid into the booth beside Kelly and leaned into kiss her.

"I don't think so. Outside. Now." Kelly said standing up and marching him out of the restaurant. Looked like Aaron was really gonna get it for last night.

"Hey Danny!" said both Autumn and Jen together.

Oh god how obvious could they possibly get. I sniggered into my cola as I watched them, one on either side of him, flicking their hair, touching his arm and giggling. And I should just point out here Danny Harper is not remotely funny.  

Danny caught my eye and winked, then he slid an arm round Jen's waist and said, 

"You wanna ride home, babe?" 

"Why not." Jen said shrugging casually, as if she wasn't about to explode with sheer delight. Danny immediately steered her out of the restaurant, the arm around her waist sliding down to grope her ass.  

If they had sex in my car I was going to friggin kill Danny Harper.

I looked back at Autumn, her expression was priceless, she just stood there with a mixture of fury and shock on her face. Probably due not so much to the fact that her best friend had just abandoned her without so much as a goodbye but to the fact that Danny had just chosen another girl over her. And if I knew Autumn which unfortunately I did, she wasn't going to take this one lying down, even if the girl in question was her best friend.

"Pizza?" I asked holding a slice under her nose.  

"Uh...no, thanks." she replied. "I know its clichéd and all but I don't do carbs. And I know everyone's all into Atkins these days but carbs just really bloat me, you know?" 

"Okaay." I shrugged. "Well, Kelly and Aaron are still fighting and then their gonna make up and that's probably gonna take a while, so if you're leaving, do you wanna give me a ride home?" 

"Yeah, sure. C'mon." she said with a half-hearted smile.

"So what did you do last night?" Autumn asked me as we got into the car.  

"Oh...uh...just...um..." I stammered. Why couldn't I think of something, anything, to say except we had a little incident with a condom and spent our Friday night in Santa Maria Emergency Room. "We just watched a movie." I eventually got out. 

"Oh." said Autumn wrinkling her nose, as if to say why would anyone want to do something so dull and ordinary as watch a movie. "Well, Jen and I stayed at my parents place in LA and we went to this totally awesome club, you know the one where they go in The Hills?"  

"Yeah?" I say excitedly, actually interested. 

"Well its right across the street from that."  

"Oh." I nod, not so exciting after all.  

And then she continued to prattle on about how wasted they were and how many D-list actors were hitting on them the rest of the way home as I tried to block her out by staring out the window of her car.  

One of the only good things I could say about Autumn was that she drove a seriously sweet car. It was brand new and still had that new car smell. In fact the smell probably wouldn't have even faded by the time she'd traded it in for a newer model. 

If I had my Mustang I'd be happy to drive it forever. Seriously.