The perfect storm in a quiet room

Chapter 16

"Perfect," Casy says, forcing a smile. I reply in kind.

I don't like the "forget-about-everything" agreement we've reached, but it's the best for both of us—at least, for the moment.

"Do you want to do something? I have the afternoon off," she proposes, while playing with her hair, as she always does when she's nervous.

I mull over the question. Is it a good idea? I mean, whenever we do something together, something goes wrong. At least that's what these two days have shown me. Anyway, I do want to go out with her—if we don't go out together, how are we supposed to get to

know each other and become friends?

"Yeah sure, let's do something. What do you have in mind?"

"I was thinking maybe.... you could come to my house. We can watch a movie together, you can even stay over," she proposes, this time smiling her usual smile.

Stay over? I don't know if it's a good idea... my mom will surely go crazy and start asking me millions of questions if I tell her that I finally made a friend—or a kind of friend—and that she invited me to stay over. I know what she's going to say: you've known her for two days, you can't go to the house of a person you've known for such a short time. What if something happens to you? What if the parents are drug dealers? What if you feel uncomfortable? What if she does something to you? I roll my eyes at my mom's paranoia. I can't blame her, though. Last night when she wasn't home, I started thinking that she might have been hurt or robbed; things that a person who isn't paranoid or exaggerated would think. Sometimes my mum and I are more alike than I allow myself to think.

I'm still debating whether or not to go to Casy's house. The plan appeals to me and I really want to go, but what do I tell my mom? I could tell her I have a study group and that we need to study for a test and if it gets late I could sleep there...no, that sounds lame. I could tell her about the study group, but I'm not staying over and we'll leave that for next time. I'll think of an excuse for that later. Plus I have to think of an excuse for this Friday... The party! Okay, I know Casy and I just agreed not to talk about any of that a few minutes ago, but this is a topic we need to discuss and it has nothing to do with her personal life... right?

"Yeah, I can go to your house, but I can't stay over, I've... things to do," I lie. I don't want to tell her that my mom is so strict that she won't let me go to her house and stay the night—she might think I'm a "mommy's girl" and I'd already create a bad reputation at school. Again.

"Okay, perfect. We'll take a rain check on

the sleepover, don't worry," she smiles at me again and we leave the ice cream shop.

Come to think of it, we never ordered an ice cream, and no one from the ice cream shop came to tell us anything either. Weird.

We walk through downtown, both of us in silence, eyes fixed on the cement that covers the streets. I debate whether or not to bring up the subject of the party. After a few minutes, I decide it's better not to. I don't want to ruin my first chance to do something typically teenage. I can't afford to do that. I'll bring it up later—I have until Friday for that.

***

I bite my bottom lip as I stare at my closet, deciding what to wear. I don't have that many clothes and I'm not really into fashion and all that shit either, but I do like to look relatively nice. I'm just more into classic colors and simple, plain clothes, without any extravagant designs.

I rummage through shelves, drawers, hangers and still no luck—I have absolutely nothing to wear. I really never cared about this shit because I never went out with friends, so I didn't care how others saw me. I just wore my school uniform and a simple casual outfit to run errands with my mom, but that was it. Now I see that that was a problem, because now that I'm finally going out with someone, I have nothing to wear. This is so frustrating.