Creatures Of Habit

5 {Margot} 5

Caitlin liked to think of herself as the leader of our little mismatched group. I didn't think we had one but if I ever mentioned it, I'd probably get voted out. Maybe Lily would follow me out but sometimes I wondered if that were true. There's always that one friend you're closest to, and I didn't think Cait liked me very much to begin with, so it wasn't really that much of a reach.

Lily and Caitlin were the only two of our group who had their own cars, so Jesse and I were at their mercy—and thus, timing— every morning. They rotated shifts to pick us up like divorced parents who liked to pretend they were on good terms, but Caitlin always freaked when it was Lily's turn because, Cait, ever the punctual one, liked to pick us up like clockwork. For me, she was always waiting at 7:15 am on the dot. Lily had gotten us into trouble one too many times for Caitlin's sanity, always unpredictable. I thought that maybe Caitlin got angry at Lily because they'd drifted apart since I got there.

"I just want to know why it's so hard for her to listen to her freaking alarm clock and get up!" It was one of her usual complaints whenever it was her turn to drive and she picked me up first. Caitlin didn't have siblings, so she hadn't quite developed the forced patience we've all had to whenever the world we used to know as revolving only around us imploded as soon as our parents decided we weren't quite enough for them. That's how I used to feel about Fernanda, my younger sister. She was born when I was five, when I was still brand new, shiny and precious. Then Mom had her, and everything sort of stopped for me and shifted into her focus. I love her. Sometimes, though, I wish I'd been older when they had her.

"Like, do you know what I mean? I bet when I get to her house, she's still going to be applying her twelve layers of makeup." Cait snapped me back out of my reverie as she continued her little rant. I had learned to tune her out.

Thankfully, Lily was already on the front porch waiting for us looking like she'd just ran out of the house, red cheeked and slightly out of breath. Next was Jesse, who lived in a huge six bedroom house three blocks away from school. "I hate walking, it makes me look poor," she said once when I asked her why she waited for us to pick her up.
"Well when you talk, it makes you look stupid," Lily snapped, and Jesse quickly shut up. Lily could be pretty polarizing, but we all loved her. Jesse often said dumb shit like that, but I knew that she had grown up in her little bubble of privilege and I tried to remember it wasn't really her fault. Lily made sure she remembered it daily. She was getting better at keeping her thoughts to herself, or she was learning not to be so snobbish.

The day dragged on too long. I watched the clock tick by slowly, every second lagging longer behind than the previous one, until finally, the bell rang to go home. We never drove home together unless we had the afternoon totally free. Most of us were in different after school programs though and today, Lily had dance. Caitlin and I rode the same bus but since she'd been elected president of the Student Council, her afternoons were busy. I had been in yearbook the last three years, and though I liked the class, I didn't much like Mr. Grubber's roaming eyes and the way his hand always found the smalls of our backs. To not lose me completely, and so that my college applications could still include the program, I was allowed to create from home. I'd given the excuse that I had a lot of homework, since most of my classes were AP and that I needed to start my new job. Only one of those was technically true.

My classes had started to consume most of my time but I needed the credits and the grade boost to qualify for the scholarships I wanted to apply for. Today, my priority was O'Connell's English project so I made a beeline for the library when school was out, hoping to quickly check out a book I needed for our research project. The reference books I needed weren't easy to find and I had to ask the librarian—a thin lipped woman of about thirty, who always looked like she had had one too many espresso shots in her morning latte—for help. It took her a few minutes to dig the book out from the back, and when she finally came back, her lips had all but disappeared into an annoyed pout. I ducked out of there before she could scold me and tell me to just use the computers next time. The truth was that I preferred tangible text when doing my work. The computer screens always hurt my eyes and I didn't have the money to print out all the info I needed.