onze. les garçons

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"So," I said as I swirled my ice cold pink lemonade with a straw casually, "it's been a while since we've, like, actually hung out."

Pause.

I leaned back in my seat on Lila's bed. Well, then. Next to me, Lila was lounging back on a couple of pillows, and Olivia was sitting across from us at Lila's desk.

I cleared my throat and took a sip of my lemonade. All right then. If they weren't going to talk, I might as well give up since I was not one to talk to unresponsive objects such as walls. I raised my eyebrows at my companions. "Well?"

Lila looked up from her phone. "Yeah?"

She'd been distracted for the past few (awkward) hours we had been together—probably with texting someone since she'd been typing away furiously the whole time. I wondered if it was a guy. No, it probably wasn't. Maybe Lila was trying to arrange something (a mass group meeting, perhaps), and things weren't going quite as she expected. Or...I needed to stop thinking; I was really trying to work on that not-jumping-to-conclusions-about-other-people thing ever since Luc mentioned it.

I exchanged a glance with Olivia, who shrugged with her hands crossed as she spun around in Lila's desk chair. She was reminding me of myself (especially during my last book club session with Luc), which was definitely kind of funny. "I dunno," she offered unhelpfully to answer my unspoken question.

I set my lemonade down between my legs. Downstairs, just underneath Lila's room where we were all hanging out, the TV was blasting away (with the glorious sound of video games, no doubt). Every once in a while, some shouting cut through the TV. For ten minutes, even, there was some much needed silence (relatively) when the people down there had a snack break. I was seriously considering joining them...

"Yo," Lila said suddenly, stuffing her phone in her pocket. "How about we do something now?"

"You're saying that? Seriously?" I hoped she knew that I was joking when I said that. Seriously. To make it clearer, I elbowed her in the side and smirked.

She rolled her eyes back at me (she was so fun to poke around, just like her brother). "Sorry. I had a couple of problems with my community service club. Some of our club members couldn't get rides."

I picked my lemonade back up. "Well, let's actually do something now. Are we headed to the mall, or...?"

Olivia shook her head. "Nah. We went there last week."

Woah. Was she actually telling me that she didn't want to shop? Damn. "All right then..." I said slowly. "What are you hinting at?"

"The guys seem to be having a jolly good time downstairs," Lila noted. "I mean, I wouldn't mind going down there to steal some food from them."

Olivia nodded, her expression innocently complacent. "That's not too bad of an idea," she said, placing her feet on top of Lila's desk. She put them back down on the ground when she caught Lila's eyes though.

"You're kidding me, guys." I finished my lemonade and placed it on the ground next to the bed. "They're probably already finished with their pizza. There are, like six guys down there."

Lila shrugged. "They probably ordered ten pizzas."

"Ugh." I rolled my eyes. "If you really want to, I guess we could go..."

Both Olivia and Lila stood up so quickly that I nearly fell off the bed. Their enthusiasm was a little scary, to be completely honest. Sulkily, I picked up my lemonade glass again and joined them in going out of Lila's room.

The Merciers had a great house, if I had to say so. Their huge staircase was to die for (made of mahogany, it curled down the main hall where the entrance like it was something out of a fairy tale—it would be perfect for taking prom pictures next year, actually). Unlike my parents, they decided to go for a light cream color scheme throughout the entire house (my parents thought it would be cool to paint every room in the house a different color). Also, they had an indoor swimming pool and an elevator, for whatever reason. What more could a kid ever want?

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