Karissa

Pressure

"No! Fagin couldn't let them! I mean, you're leads!"

"They said he could just recast," Dominic mumbled. He knew he'd let Jesse down -  the events of senior year musical had been one of their longest-running diatribes; they'd spent many a boring class period imaging the show and their respective roles. Jesse's lips were just as turned down as Dominic's were.

"Oh, Dom...." They stood there hugging (which was no longer weird to me) until Lavender totally lost it and started weeping hysterically, which started Jesse off, and that just cued everyone else. (Did I cry? Well, you're going to have to decide that for yourself.)

"Guys! That was the bell! School's over. We can go." Rosemary, brushing her eyelids with the back of her hand and blinking hard, reminded us in her usual manner that yes, we did indeed have lives.

"Lavender Ophelia! What inspired you to get up to that kind of trouble today?"

"Mom, they were, like,  touching me, and ew. You should, like, be, like, totally happy! Feminism!" 

"Smart Lavender has gone the way of Magic Scarves and stirrup pants," whispered Karissa with a giggle to Rosemary, and she just laughed and shook her head.

"Do you think I'm happy, young lady? Is this my happy face?"

We lost it. It was just too ridiculous - and maybe that was the point.

"I guess I should be happy, but don't think we won't discuss this. I'll wait in the car."

"Is it a bad sign that your mom's not here?" I asked Dominic, remembering the countless afternoons that followed our middle-school brawls where his mother would quite happily verbally slay him while the rest of us stood around and watched and snickered. One time I catcalled Dominic so hard he turned around and restarted our fight. We were wrestling on the ground, and it took two gym teachers and his mother (something you think it would be impossible to live down in middle school, but we were so used to Dominic's mom being around that it was not new) to break us up.

He shrugged.

"She'll show up...or else the entirety of Christmas break will be a giant scolding for me."

"Maybe you just need to stop getting in fights, and scuffing up that pretty face before it can make album covers." Gillian's cherry red wool coat was molded to an hourglass figure that stubbornly refused to make her look any older than thirty, max. She was probably older - too old to be wearing jeans that skinny, though they were black, which was slimming - but as long as her body lied about her true age, so would she. She and her high heels calmly clip-clopped across the pavement (I wished fervently for a giant patch of ice to appear in front of her, so she would slip on it, break her tailbone, and therefore be interrupted in ruining Jesse's life).

"Mother. To what do I owe this pleasure? So happy to see me you couldn't wait a couple of hours for me to pack and take the plane up?"

"Sarcasm doesn't endear you. Please don't be so clueless." She picked carefully through her large satchel and unfolded a crisp piece of paper.

"I have a D in AP U.S.?" I almost laughed at Jesse's wonderment; he had been so sure he was completely failing.

Gillian snorted.

"What, and that's good for you?"

"Oh, so you came down here to holler about my grades? That's really adult of you, though you've been doing it for years, so I'm not very surprised. Bad habits die hard."