Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
🍒
Eliana should have known something was up when Grace texted her.
It wasn't extremely out of the ordinary for the two girls, but it was that Grace was asking for advice. Now, Eliana felt that in no way was she qualified to be handing out advice, especially for what Grace was asking. And Grace was asking something confusing.
"What do you do when you know something but you don't want to insert yourself into more drama?"
Eliana had stared at her phone screen in the dark of her room, her clock illuminating the numbers "1" and "34" AM. "What do you mean?" Eliana had texted back. She waited for a long while before Grace had texted back a "NVM".
Now, what Grace had seen between Jules and Elliot had almost zero correlation to what Eliana was going through with Cassie and Maddy, except that Jules and Elliot were clearly making decisions that would impact how Rue's day was going to go. Because Rue was determined, and she knew that she needed to start a riot if she wanted to slip away from the chaos that she started the moment she knocked on Lexi Howard's door.
"Hey," Rue said from the Howard's front porch.
"Hey, are you okay?" Lexi asked, her hand still on the doorknob.
"Mm-hm," Rue hummed. "I think I just have, like, a cold or something."
"Okay, well, don't get me sick 'cause I have rehearsal," Lexi said with a chuckle.
"I can't, I can't get you sick."
"Okay, well, colds are contagious, so..."
Eliana looked up from her phone as she heard the two converse from the other room. She was wearing a baggy light grey hoodie, her hair down in natural waves, donning distressed jean shorts and some Nike shoes. Really, she hadn't been doing much except accompanying Cassie, Kat and Maddy in their usual. Besides, her sisters, the twins, were wreaking havoc on her home life currently as they were going through awful stages of puberty, so Eliana definitely didn't want to be there. "Is that Rue?" she whispered.
"Yeah, I realize that, but it's just... It's not that kind of thing," Rue stood around, wavering slightly. "Can I use your bathroom, please?"
"Hey, Rue!" Maddy outstretched her arms for the curly-haired girl in the doorway first, Eliana following, her own curls bouncing as she jumped in excitement.
"Oh, hi."
"Hey girly pop," Eliana grinned. "Whatcha up to tonight?"
Even under a dumb blonde facade, Eliana liked to think this was her way of checking in on Rue ⎯ even if it was at a distance. "Hey, oh. Oh, yeah. Hey."
