“I’m tired and I’m mad and I’m so incredibly tired of being mad,” I mutter to Brian after dance rehearsals on Wednesday as we leave the building. I don’t know why this Charlotte girl decided that she hates me or why she wants Andrew but all three days this week, starting with the elbow touch on Monday, she’s been making excuses to talk to Andrew and apparently, they have anatomy together too and they talk a lot in that class. I hate her. I hate her so much. Anyway, I’m not walking with Andrew because he’s a jerk and I refuse to talk to him today. It’s not that I’m giving him the silent treatment, I just want one full day where I don’t have to be mad and arguing for hours on end.
“I know,” Brian nods. “But once you get through this fight, you guys will be pretty much indestructible.”
“Yeah,” I sigh. “Are you going shopping with us tonight?”
“Shopping for what?”
“Party stuff,” I explain. “For the party this weekend and everything. We’re not even going to the mall so you don’t have to worry about carrying the bags or anything, we’re just going to go to the party store.”
“Sure,” He chuckles. “I’ll come with you guys.”
“Cool, so-“ I start to speak but when Anthony calls my name from behind me, I stop talking and turn to see him jogging towards me and Brian and then when he approaches us, he abruptly stops.
“Hey, can we talk?” He wonders.
“Yeah, I guess,” I nod and then look over at Brian. “Tell Mason to wait for me. I’ll catch up with you guys.”
He nods at me and then glances over at Anthony suspiciously and then starts to walk away. “Okay, I’ll tell her. See you soon then.”
Once Brian walks away towards the dorm building where we were supposed to meet Sienna and Mason to continue our party planning right after class, I turn to look at my brother. “What’s up? And can we make it quick? I have a thing.”
“Yeah, it’ll be quick,” He assures me. “It’s about Thanksgiving break. I just got off of the phone with Mom and she said that they’re going Tennessee for Thanksgiving and they want us to fly out there with them for break.”
“When’s Thanksgiving?” I wonder, trying to think of what day today is and what day our Thanksgiving break starts on.
“Next week, Stell,” He chuckles as if it’s weird that I didn’t know that. I’ve been so preoccupied with Andrew that I didn’t even realize that we didn’t have school for three days next week. “Do you want to go?”
“Yeah, I’ll go,” I nod. “Why didn’t they call me too?”
He shrugs. “I told them that I’d tell you about it. I’m sure if you want to talk to them, you can just call them though. Anyway, Mom said that you can bring Andrew if you want.”
“No,” I say quickly. “I’m not going to do that, a vacation away from him sounds nice right now.”
“Really? Okay then. Well we leave on Wednesday and that’s it, so you can go do your thing now,” He says before turning to walk away.
Without saying goodbye or anything, I just turn and continue on my pursuit to get to the dorm building so that we can go shopping.
Me and my brother used to be really close when we were little. We were like best friends because our parents were absolute workaholics so, being raised by a team of nannies, we naturally grew close to each other. We were really all each other had. Anyway, when we got into high school (we’re twins, so we are in the same grade and everything), our parents sent us off to a boarding school so that they could quit their jobs and buy an RV so that they can travel the country without the burden of having two kids to watch out for. Anyway, my best friend came with us to Vaughn and her name was Carmen. Anthony and Carmen were dating and I didn’t like that but they were both happy so I got over my hesitation and just let them be happy without any complaints. The first five months of my freshman year were pretty good. I had my best friend, my awesome brother, and I had an amazing boyfriend, James. He was in my biology class, which is how we met, and we’d been dating for a while and I was pretty in love with him. Anyway, around this time of year (November), he broke up with Carmen out of the blue. It broke her heart so terribly that she couldn’t even stand to be around him so she left and went back home to Maine, which is where I’m from as well. I knew something bad like that would happen if they dated but she never believed me but Anthony would never talk to me about it- he never told me why he broke up with her. Anyway, just a few weeks after that, he started talking to Gianna and she was like a vampire to him. She possessed him, made him a completely different person. She convinced him that if he wanted to continue to go out with her, he’d have to “prove his loyalty” and to do that, he had to get James to break up with me. I’m not sure why she hated me, but she did and she wanted me out of the picture. Apparently, I spent too much time with Anthony or something. So then, Anthony told James that I had the clap. James, being a ridiculously stupid person, believed Anthony against me and assumed that I’d cheated on him so he broke up with me. I was absolutely heartbroken. I had really loved James and then he was gone in the blink of an eye just a few weeks after I lost my best friend. So not only did I lost my best friend and my boyfriend, I lost my brother to. I stopped talking to him after that, which is exactly what Gianna wanted. Anthony wanted me to forgive him. He’d text me, call me, and try to catch me before or after classes, stop by my dorm. I wouldn’t have any of it though. He was so irritated that I’d stopped talking to him that he officially started going out with Gianna and they quickly became the power couple in school. I was mad at him for everything that he’d done to me and he was mad at me for cutting him out of my life so we just never got along after that. He’d been with Gianna up until last summer when a whirlwind of things began happening. First of all, Sienna showed up and Gianna decided to hate her for two reasons. The first one being that she was friends with me (we were roommates during the summer so naturally, we became friends pretty quickly) and the second one being that she’s a really, really good dancer and Gianna doesn’t like competition. After Sienna got there, Gianna and her goons attacked her at night, tied her up, and then threw her into the pool to leave her to drown. Anthony was there, helping them drown my completely innocent best friend. He claimed that after they threw her in the pool and everyone else left, he stayed back to pull her out of the pool because they just wanted to scare her but that’s still just not okay at all. Gianna and Anthony finally broke up after that, when he realized that Gianna was cheating on him with one of his best friends. Fortunately, Gianna and all three of her sidekicks or whatever got expelled after the incident with the firecracker, so they are obviously not a problem anymore and once Anthony got rid of Gianna and realized what a parasite she was to him, he started working harder for my forgiveness. I’ve moved on from all of the crap that he’s done in the past but we’re still not as close as we used to be and I don’t think we’ll ever be that close again after going three years just absolutely hating each other. At least we get along now, that part is really nice.
“Okay, so we have to get a list together of what we need at the store and then we can head off,” Mason says as I enter the lobby of the dorm building. Nobody asks me what’s wrong or why I came in late, which I appreciate, and we just start talking like normal.
“Well, we’re going to serve lunch, so we’ll need plates, plastic silverware, and napkins,” Sienna pipes. “And we definitely need a piñata.”
“I like the way that girl thinks,” I pipe, agreeing with her fabulous idea of having a piñata at the party. “And we will also need birthday balloons and streamers. Purple and black streamers because purple is Mary’s favorite color.”
“Candy,” Brian adds. “For the piñata and just to have around. She really likes candy.”
“Very true,” Mason agrees, writing everything down on a long notepad. “Anything else?”
“Not that I can think of for today. Should we plan out how we’re going to invite people without Mary finding out about it?” I add. “I mean, some people have a big mouth but they still should come to the party.”
“We will tell them about it on Friday that way, they don’t have enough time to talk to her and mess it up but I do know who you’re talking about,” She says. We’re talking about Lucas because he really can’t keep a secret worth his life so we won’t be able to tell him about it or he’ll blab to Mary about it pretty quickly. “But other than him, we can just keep it verbal and make sure people write down the information about it so that they remember but we can’t have an official invitation or anything.”
“Penn and I will be in charge of the cake,” Sienna offers up. “The bakery is just outside of campus.”
“Awesome, so then we need two people to do decorations and two people for food,” Mason speaks up. “Me and Stella can do decorations since we’re kind of awesome at that stuff and Andrew and Brian can get all of the food together.”
“Oh, and should I get a DJ?” Sienna pipes. “Penn has a lot of friends in fraternities so I’m sure he knows a few good DJs.”
“Yes! Oh my gosh, I totally almost forget about music,” Mason grins thankfully at Sienna. “That’s perfect. So are we ready to get to the store?”
The three of us nod so we all stand up off of the couches that we’ve been sitting on in the lobby and leave the building. The walk to the parking lot isn’t too long and when we get there, we take Brian’s car since it’s the biggest and we have to fit four people in it.
“Wait, I should invite Andrew,” I sigh. “So that he can reject me but at least he won’t yell at me for not inviting him. Give me a sec.”
I pull my phone out and call him. I would just text him but if he’s playing his video games, he’ll just ignore texts but he might pause the game or continue to play while talking on the phone if I call him.
“Hey, Babe,” He answers the phone, obviously reading the caller ID to be able to tell that I’m the one calling him.
“Hey,” I sigh, loving that he just called me ‘babe’ which he hasn’t done in a while. We haven’t spoken all day and maybe that’s what we needed- just some space. “So we’re going shopping for Mary’s party this weekend. Do you want to come with us?”
“Now?”
“Yeah, now,” I confirm.
“Uh, I can’t,” He mumbles, seemingly more apologetic than he usually is when he turns down plans.
“Yeah, I didn’t think so,” I sighed. “Well, I’ll see you later. I love you.”
“I love you too, Stella,” He assures me with more affection than he’s been using recently. He seems like he’s in a much better mood right now and it feels good. It definitely puts me in a much better mood knowing that we just had a two second conversation without it turning into a fight. That must be a first in the past two weeks or so.
“Okay, let’s go,” I chirp as I put my phone back in my pocket and we all file into the car.
“So he’s not coming?” Sienna wonders, sitting beside me in the backseat. “You seem a lot happier about that than usual.”
“No, I’m not happy that he’s not coming, it’s just nice that we didn’t fight about it,” I explain. “I swear, that’s the first conversation we’ve had in weeks that hasn’t turned into an argument.”
“See? It’s the light at the end of the tunnel,” Sienna grins at me, obviously almost as excited about the revelation as I am. “We told you that it would happen.”
“Yeah,” I sigh, looking out the window with a small smile on my face. Maybe Sienna is right. Maybe this is the light at the end of the tunnel. I sure hope so.
*I'm going to continue updating but there won't be an update schedule and the updates will be slow until I get more written. I don't want to feel stressed out about this because I have enough irl to be stressed about so I'm just going to take it easy, updating probably about every two weeks. Idk, we'll see. thanks for hanging in there tho. You're the best! <3
*Also, the picture to the side is Lucy Hale, who plays Sienna