The Player & The Pauper | ✓

1 | Don't Know What You've Got 'Til Its Gone

"What's up?" Nat asks, her attention completely absorbed in her phone screen.

"Nothing," I shake my head. "Just my mom playing jailer. Mia, can you drive me home now? She's pissed, for some stupid reason."

"Sure," she says, throwing on her signal light as she turned down the street that lead to our apartment building. "But I don't see why you're so worried. I mean, it's probably just Jayden getting suspended again or something."

Processing her words for a second, I realize Mia is probably right. The last time my mom had been so short with me on the phone had been because she had just found out my younger brother, Jayden, had gotten in a fist fight at school and gotten suspended for a week.

As Mia pulls up in front of our building, Natalie lets me out of the backseat and passes passes me my shopping bags. "Yeah, Mia. You have a point," I tell her as Natalie climbs back into the car.

"Let us know!" Mia calls and before I can even wave, her Porsche is squealing off into the afternoon traffic.

"Bitch," I mutter to myself, now that I know she can't hear me. Mia, Natalie and I have been friends for nearly fifteen out of our seventeen years of life, but it was more a friendship maintained out of necessity and social status than common interests. Mia Walker is the daughter of my father's business partner, which meant we had always seen a lot of each other. As my father would say, by staying friends with her I was making his work life easier. It didn't seem to matter that she had always stolen my things and treated me like shit. She's the Blair to my Serena, if that helps. We're both queens on the social pyramid, but where she is manipulative and cruel, I actually have a heart. You just wouldn't catch me slumming it with the Brooklyn kids anytime soon.

Natalie Drake, on the other hand, is someone I actually enjoy being friends with. She's stuck up, sure, but welcome the the Upper East Side of Manhatten. We're born and bred with our noses in the air and Louboutins on our feet. At least Natalie and I have the same tastes in clothes and movies. But the way she just lets Mia walk all over her is absurd. Beyond that, there isn't really much to say.

With a sigh, I turn and walk towards the front door. The door man lets me in with a friendly smile and an offer to help me with my bags. I decline, heading determinedly towards the elevator in the lobby. The ride up is quick, despite the fact we live in the penthouse. More than likely that's due to the fact we have a private elevator, one that isn't required to stop on a million floors before reaching your goal.

When the doors slide open, I freeze mid-step, as my eyes go wide and my mouth pops open.

Scattered around our once elegant and luxurious penthouse are cardboard boxes and men in jumpsuits loading our belongs into them. It takes a minute of me looking around in shock before I can speak. "Mom!" I yell as I get off the elevator, abandoning my bags at my feet. "Mom! What the hell is going on!"

My mother finally rounds the corner, and I'm overcome with more shock as I take in her appearance. My socialite mother is dressed down in yoga pants and a tee shirt, her chocolate hair thrown up in a messy bun. Her face is as bare and her feet, and it almost looks as if she forgot to moisturize last night.

"Well, it's nice of you to finally join us, Peyton," my mom snaps, crossing her arms over her chest.

I throw my hands up in the air as I wave them in the general direction of chaos that is our living room. "What. The. Hell. Mom."