Friday night was marked the first readjournment of the kindergarten kids since my accident.
This was brilliant for two reasons. Firstly, it meant that I got to spend the evening hanging out with my wonderful friends. Secondly, I had hated Jace Hartley in kindergarten and he was, therefore, not invited.
The thing about every friendship group is there are always tiers. With a group of as many people as ours, there was always a few bonds that weren't necessarily as strong as others. I mean, Jonah loved McKenna, but I couldn't imagine them ever hanging out one-on-one. And while Kaelin, Jace, Daria, Holland, McKenna and few others were now part of our friendship group, the kindergarten kids were the originals. The OGs. The Krisler boys, Jonah and I had practically lived in each other's pockets from the first day of preschool, and somehow had managed to stay close ever since.
Which wasn't all that hard, really, since they hadn't changed much. Jonah's favourite part of kindergarten had always been nap time, and while we were no longer allocated a period for sleeping at the age of seventeen, Jonah had seemingly ignored this fact. Cady had been stunning even in kindergarten—tiny and blonde and beautiful and fierce—and even then, she'd been the most popular kid in the class, despite her horrid disposition and obvious penchant for playing favourites. Alex had drawn a dick and balls in every art class, despite being a year younger than us, and his big brother Chance had flapped his arms in stress because he thought Alex would get them expelled from kindergarten for his doodles.
"Do you remember when Ryan peed in Lena's sandbox?" Cady asked with a snort.
"Oh, my god, that was Jace," I insisted.
Alex shrugged. "I feel like it was Ryan. You know he offered to pee on the end of my penis painting to make it more realistic. He was four."
"I remember when Ryan drew a butt with his own shit," Jonah offered.
"Man, Ryan was a nasty little guy, wasn't he?" Chance said pensively. "I wonder where he is now."
"Prison," Cady chimed in.
I frowned, thoughtful. "I don't know that you can go to prison for poo art. It'd probably be considered super revolutionary in the modern art world."
Cady shook her head. "I refuse to believe that. What he did was an entry-level crime. First, it's weird poo art, and the next thing you know, he's a crack dealer."
"Ah, yes, the natural progression."
Alex deftly shuffled the deck of cards we were playing with, before laying them flat five neat piles that we all picked up and examined. My hand sucked ass. But I wasn't going to let them know that. I smiled brightly. "I'm going to kick your asses, my dear friends."
"That's okay. At least I will die full and satisfied," said Chance, rubbing his stomach.
The perks of hanging out at Chambermore, other than the size of the thing, was the access to my chef, Natia, and her cooking. Natia was a goddess, and I loved her. While she proclaimed that my constant requests for nuggets were insulting to her abilities, she still regularly threw batches into the air fryer for us to nibble on. But, since she was an angel, and just couldn't stop herself, she'd also made platters and platters worth of food; bruschetta and dips and fancy homemade breads. I liked her more than any of my friends.
We played a few hands of cards, in which I didn't quite kick their asses, but acquiesced gracefully as Cady cleaned us all out of our spare change.
I threw a cracker at her. "Stop being so talented. You're already hot, this is a crime."
Cady took the coins from my hand with a self-satisfied grin. "I'm sorry that you're inferior in all things," she crowed, flipping her blonde her over her shoulder.
"It's so unfair. Everyone is obsessed with you and you don't even like people," I grumbled.
Cady smirked at me. "Maybe people don't bother because you're already obsessed with Jace."
I blinked at her. "Well, I'm beating you so hard this game."
Jonah chuckled.
"Did you know we play this game," said Cady, who was quite fond of the Jace Hartley topic, because she enjoyed mocking me and loved my anger. "It's called bang or brawl. We look at you and Hartley, and we bet on whether you're thinking about banging or brawling."
I tilted my head inquisitively. "How do you win?"
Cady shrugged. "Everyone usually picks bang, so I guess we're on equal points, really."
Alex and Chance nodded in agreement. "That is true," Alex said.
"I usually pick brawl," Jonah offered. "If that's any consolation."
Cady snorted a laugh. "I mean, yeah, but that's just because—"
Jonah held up a hand and glared at her. I could practically see the daggers flying from his eyes and imbedding into Cady's gut. The only thing that ruined the vision was that Cady wasn't wincing in pain; she was just looking back at Jonah with an innocent and wily smile. So, unless she was the coolest badass on the planet, I was totally imagining the knives. But the look that was cast between them was one of a shared secret, and a warning. I brushed it off. Cady and Jonah were best friends, as they had been for a few years now, and I didn't quite mind.
Jonah and I had been closer once—practically inseparable from birth—but over the past few years a strange distance had come between us. Cady was probably his closest confidant now, but I didn't know that Cady was exactly the kind of friend you would lean on in times of trouble. She was incredible, but a little bit emotionally constipated.
I mean, I would still probably consider Jonah my best friend. Or Kaelin, but she was my cousin. Or Alex or Chance or Daria. Or, if you wanted to believe Cole, we had an impending best friendship of the ages.
Chance coughed awkwardly. Situations with secrets made him intensely uncomfortable. "So, uh, Alex?"
Alex looked up from his hand of cards. "Yeah?"
"Tell us more about the new girl," Chance prompted, poking his brother's leg encouragingly.
"What new girl?" I asked.
Alex didn't seem particularly keen to oblige our requests, but at Chance's look, he shrugged. "Oh, right, the new girl. Yeah, she's in my class. An exchange student from America. She's here for the next year."
"She has a real Southern accent," Cady said, in a rather poor imitation of the southern drawl. "I met her in the halls today. Real pretty. She looks like she would've been on their Homecoming Court, or the Queen of the Prom, or whatever titles they give pretty cheerleaders over there."
Alex smiled, but it didn't quite reach his eyes. "Yeah, but I mean, she's really nice."
"And hot," Jonah added. Cady winked at him, blowing a kiss towards Alex.
"Oh, shut up, it's not like that," said Alex, but he was blushing a little.
"Aw, Alex!" I proclaimed, ruffling his hair. "Do you have a cute little American girlfriend. Are you going to give her your—what is it called?—varsity jacket? Invite her to all of your football games? Be your prom date? Going to draw her a really nice penis, with nice and hairy balls?"
Alex was covering his face now. "Oh, my god. You're all the worst."
Cady and Jonah were sharing a grin, and I was laughing. Chance was rubbing his brother's back soothingly, but he couldn't help the smile on his face.
"We're just joking, Al, tell us about the new girl," Chance said.
"I don't want to now," Alex grumbled.
We all voiced our protests. Chance was apologising profusely, while Cady threatened violence against his person if he refused to tell and I muttered platitudes about how excited I was to hear about his girlfriend. Jonah just claimed he'd fall asleep if the waffling was going to continue any longer, and told us to wake him when Alex stopped being a wuss.
"Okay, fine," said Alex, relenting. "Her name is Callie. Yes, she was a cheerleader—" a glare in my direction "—but really a very cool person. A little bit like Daria and McKenna, personality-wise, but with slightly more of an edge and a raging competitive streak."
"Even just, a pinky fingers worth of edge is more edge than McKenna and Daria," said Cady.
All I could say was, "Oh, my god. I love her. Daria and McKenna are, objectively, the best people on the planet. Like, they easily smoke all of us." The others all nodded their agreement. "Plus, I love competitive streaks." I grinned up at Alex. "You have some competition in the race for our little Homecoming Queen's heart, because I'm throwing my hat in the ring."
"I don't even like her!" Alex protested. "If you're expecting us to believe that you don't like Jace Hartley, even as we watch you two mentally undress each other all day, then you have to believe me about Callie, who you have never met, okay?"
I mocked zipping my lips, even as Alex spread such blasphemous lies. Undressing Jace Hartley? Please, the only reason I would ever do that was so that I could string him up on a flagpole and embarrass him as people were forced to witness his weird body. And by weird, I mean, yes, okay, it was lean and toned and not a bad body by any stretch of the imagination, but they'd probably see the demon runes carved into his skin that marked him as the brethren of the devil.
I feel like that could be somewhat embarrassing.
"You should invite her to something sometime, Al," said Chance. He had picked up the cards and was dealing them between us again. "She seems cool, and it would be nice to meet your friends."
Alex was in the year below us at school, and while I knew he had plenty of mates in his classes, hanging out with the older students at lunch and on weekends meant that he wasn't as close to his younger peers. But Al had gone to kinder with us, and practically lived at my house since he was three. So, it was understandable that he'd always spent time with us. But I was still happy that he had a new friend his own age. It would be hard for him, I thought, when we all left next year.
Alex would be fine, because he was pretty and popular and funny. It wasn't really a question of whether other people would like him, just of whether he would like them, beyond the surface level.
But I supposed the Homecoming Queen would only be at his side for the rest of the year, as well.
"That would be cool, actually," said Alex, nodded slowly. "I might do that, sometime."
"And so, my quest for her heart begins," I proclaimed. "May the best suitor win."
Alex smacked me in the head with a pillow. "Oh, be quiet."
Cady picked up the deck that Chance had placed in front of her, and then looked up at us with a victorious expression. "Oh, you guys are going to lose so much money."