Sometimes

Chapter two

I shook my head.  “This is Cassie we’re talking about.”

    “Well you better go and text her back before she thinks you’ve died or something.”

I waved a hand lazily at Leanne before heading back to my room.

    Throwing my hair up into a pony-tail, I gazed out of my bedroom window at the next door neighbor’s cat.  Arnie was stretched out along the three foot high brick wall, basking in the last of today’s rays of sunlight.  Leanne had joked numerous times that the tabby cat and I shared the same hair colour and it was only now, with the sun shining down on him, that I could see the resemblance.  Cassie had been adamant when she had first met me that I dyed my hair to get it both light and dark brown, but now after six years of friendship, she seemed to have dropped the idea that it wasn’t natural.  Besides, she was the one who dyed her hair blonde every other week.

    My phone bleeped again and I realised that I hadn’t text Cassie back yet.  I hurried over to my desk to reply; the last thing I wanted was her mad at me because she thought I was ignoring her.

    “Hey, Harriet.”

I spun around, phone in hand, to see Leanne standing just outside my bedroom.

    “Do you want this?  I was going to give it to you the other day but forgot.”

A smile stretched across my face as I saw what she was holding out in front of her.

    “You’re giving my your ‘Haunted Vegas’ t-shirt?  Really?”

Leanne nodded.  “It’s too small for me.  Besides, they’ve got a new line of merchandise coming out soon.”

    “Thanks, Leanne.”

She smiled before throwing the t-shirt at me.  “Just don’t wreck it.”

    “I won’t,” I replied, shaking my head.

Leanne disappeared from view and I heard her footsteps descending the stairs, just as I held the t-shirt up in front of me.  I’d fallen in love with this top ever since Leanne had come home from a gig with it almost two years back.  It wasn’t as vibrant a blue as it had been back then and the logo was a little faded, but it still seemed to make the jealousy I’d been feeling disappear in a flash.  And that was why I could never, ever, hate Leanne.

                                                 ***

    “Is it supposed to hurt like this?”

I lifted my gaze from my History assignment for what felt like the hundredth time since class had begun half an hour ago.  I shrugged.

    “Because it really hurts.  It stings and burns and I think it’s infected.”

    “Don’t touch it then.”  I raised my eyebrows pointedly at the sight of Cassie’s hand on the plaster that was covering her piercing.

    “I can’t help it,” she replied.  “It’s like when you get a giant zit and you can’t help but pick it.”

I grimaced at the image Cassie had just forced into my mind.  “Maybe if you picked up your pen and did some work, you’d be less likely to touch it.”

She pouted.  “Get you, Miss Stroppy.”

    “I’m not stroppy,” I insisted.  “I’m just bored of hearing how much pain you’re in.  Have you told your mum yet?”

Cassie gaped at me as if I were mad.  “Of course not.  I don’t want my head bitten off.”

    “Well what are you going to do when she finds out about it?”