Every curse word in his vocabulary flew through his mind as his dad glared at him. The pizza lay all but forgotten on the table in front of him as he floundered. "I, uh..." he stuttered.
"Abby, honey, did you know about this?" Their mom asked, a dangerous edge in her normally sweet voice.
Finn glanced at his twin and the two of them had a quick telepathic exchange. It went something along the lines of:
FUCK!
SAY SOMETHING!
THEY'LL KILL ME!
YOU'RE ALREADY DEAD!
AHHHH!
HURRY UP BEFORE IT GETS WORSE!
WORSE?!???!!
Dad coughed. "An answer sometime today would be nice."
Abby stuffed the next slice of pizza in her mouth, effectively excusing herself from answering. He couldn't really blame her.
"I, well, I—" Finn cleared his throat, quailing under the combined stares of both parents. "I hung out with some of my teammates last night."
"That still doesn't explain where the hickey came from. Unless there's something else you want to tell us?" Dad raised an eyebrow. "Last I checked, you were into girls."
Abby swallowed and stood up. "This has been lovely, but I think I'm going to just—"
"Sit down!" Dad snapped. She sat.
Mom shook her head. "I'm sure we can guess the rest of the story. And to think, we were going to un-ground you today." Abby slouched in her seat when she turned her steely gaze in her direction. "Clearly you knew about this, since you tried to help him cover it up."
"I... yeah." She winced. "Sorry."
"You'll be sorry," Dad growled. He crossed his arms. "Both of you are grounded for two weeks."
Abby gave Finn an accusatory look.
"And," he continued, "we're putting tracking apps on your phones. Both of your phones."
Abby's jaw dropped. "What? I wasn't even the one who snuck out of the house!"
"This isn't meant to be a punishment," Mom started, but she had already stood up angrily.
"Forget it," she said. "Look, you can ground me for as long as you want, but I'm not letting you guys stalk me 24/7."
"It's not stalking, it's for your safety," their father countered.
"Safety, my ass!"
"Watch your language!"
Both Abby's and their father's faces were steadily darkening in color, the tips of their ears flaming red.
"This is unreasonable," she continued emphatically. "Look, I understand you guys wanting to keep tabs on Finn—" he shot her a dirty look, which she ignored "—but I didn't even do anything to warrant this."
Mom's face was uncharacteristically serious. "Your father and I have been talking about this for a while, and we were planning to bring it up sometime later this week. It's not that we don't trust you, we just want to make sure we know where you are in case something happens. That's the only time we will track you guys, okay?"
Finn scoffed. "Yeah, right."
They bickered back and forth for the rest of dinner, with the twins on one side of the argument and their parents on the other, but the outcome had been decided long in advance. The result was Abby storming furiously upstairs, their mom heaving a deep sigh, their dad frowning at the leftover pizza, and Finn glaring mutinously at the table.
Deep down, he understood his parents' motivation, but the unfortunate timing of their announcement had made it seem like it was just another part of his punishment for getting caught. He stood silently and threw his plate away, heading upstairs to talk to Abby. Might as well try to minimize the tension.
Abby had locked and barricaded the door, something he found when her doorknob refused to turn. He had tried knocking, with no response, and then he tried to open the door, also with no success.
"Look, I know you're pissed," he called. "Can we just not make this awkward?"
Silence.
He rolled his eyes. Whatever, then. He went back to his own room and updated Kieran on the unfortunate status of his sentence, to which the other boy simply said, "Shit, that sucks."
Finn sprawled across his bed, no longer in the mood to work on homework. Not that he was ever really in that mood, anyway, but his motivation to get ahead had completely disappeared.
His phone buzzed on the nightstand where he'd set it down. He picked it up and read the notification.
@edensayed has requested to follow you.
He grinned. Well, his punishment sucked, but at least one good thing had come out of this weekend.
————
I glared at my reflection in the mirror on Monday, hating the white polo and pleated skirt combination that was my mandatory school uniform. While I had nothing against wearing skirts, I just had a fervent dislike for this skirt in particular. Its plaid pattern was unflattering to all who dared behold it with their own eyes. Looking at it worsened my still shitty mood from the weekend, and I cursed it under my breath as I clomped downstairs.
Finn was seated at the kitchen island, scarfing down leftover pizza for breakfast. I gave his blazer-clad back a poisonous look as I grabbed a banana and my keys. Why couldn't I wear a blazer and pants to school? My mood soured further.
My early departure from home meant that I'd secured a decent parking spot. I sat in my car and munched on my banana angrily, the brick exterior of The Claremont Hill School looming imposingly in front of me as I ate.
A sharp knock on my car window interrupted my death staring at the school. I turned the laser eyes on them.
I was expecting Rose or Felicity, but to my surprise, Kieran's dark eyes were staring at me. He gestured for me to roll down the window.
I cracked it about an inch.
He rolled his eyes. "Very funny."
"I thought so," I said, opening the window further. He rested his forearms on the windowsill and leaned in. The scent of his bold cologne immediately wafted into my car, pine and citrus mingling in a delicious cacophony of Mediterranean notes as he grinned crookedly at me. I had to resist the urge to inhale deeply.
"Finn told me about this weekend."
I rolled my eyes and resumed glaring at the school building.
"Sucks that you got involved in the punishment," he said dryly.
"Whose fault was it that he was out in the first place?" I countered.
"Touché," he acknowledged. "But I have an idea for how you can get back at him."
Finn and I had pulled our fair share of pranks on each other, but those almost never involved other people. Curiosity piqued, I glanced at him and noted the dangerous sparkle in his eyes. "Spit it out."
"It's kind of complicated. I'll explain the details later; meet me at my car for lunch?"
"What if I wanted to eat in the cafeteria?" I muttered rebelliously.
Kieran gave me a deadpan stare. "No one wants to eat school food." He stepped back from my car. "I'll see you at lunch."
I watched him go in confusion, the entire conversation having taken place in less than a minute. Not the strangest thing I'd seen the boy do before. There was that one time I had walked in on him and Finn trying to do one of those Pinterest couples yoga poses in our basement, at which they were failing terribly.
With a sigh, I slung my backpack over my shoulders and left the comforting presence of Charlie the Jeep as I trudged toward the school building. Uniform-clad students swarmed the halls around me as I made my way to my first class of the day and sat in my unassigned assigned seat.
Despite the fact that I needed to keep my GPA up this year if I wanted to be a top recruit for college soccer, and especially for UNC, my attention kept wandering back to the cryptic conversation from earlier as I went through my morning classes. I wondered what Kieran had meant by getting back at Finn. I was still upset at him, sure, but I was wary of what his devious best friend was planning.
I scowled at the copy of Don Quixote that Señora Hernández had just placed on my desk. Beside me, Felicity groaned. Thank goodness I had a friend in this class. A few of my teammates attended Claremont with me, Rose and Felicity included. I didn't think I'd make it through the year without them.
"My babysitter used to tell me this story all the time," she grumbled. "I hated it."
"But you know it, so you can summarize it for me!"
She grinned. "No, your lazy ass needs to learn how to read."
"En español, chicas," Señora Hernández reminded as she walked by.
Felicity immediately smoothed her expression. "Lo siento, señora."
I just grunted.
By the time class got out, I was pretty sure I had forgotten how to speak English, let alone any Spanish. On the bright side, it was now lunchtime, and I was finally going to get some answers.