The Stark Trap

~8~

Melissa was woken up the next day by her phone ringing. Groaning, she grabbed the phone and clicked the answer button without opening her eyes. 

“Hello?” 

“Fucking finally. I’ve been texting and calling you all night!” Andi yelled at her. 

Melissa pulled the phone away from her ear and checked her texts. Sure enough, she had twenty-five unread texts and thirty missed calls from her. “I’m sorry, I passed out. California is three hours behind New York so it was midnight by the time you first texted me. I’m not used to staying up that late so I was exhausted.”

“That’s beside the point! We have an emergency! Mom wants me, well actually you, to meet John”

Melissa shot up, eyes wide. “What?! But she said that she wouldn’t let me meet anyone unless…”

“Unless she was serious about him…” Andi finished. “That’s why I was calling you… What do we do?”

Melissa ran a hand through her hair. “Maybe they’re just friends… Mom would have told me if she was seeing someone…” Melissa skimmed through her texts and then realized something. “Andi… We should have switched phones…”

“Why?”

“Mom doesn’t have your number, if she tries to text it’ll go to me and not you…”

“Shit… I didn’t think of that… What should we do?”

Getting out of bed, Melissa went into the bathroom to take a shower. "I'm not sure…" She went to pull the shower curtain aside but stopped. "You have a phone pocket on your shower curtain? That's so cool"

"Yeah I know but can we get back to the problem at hand?" Andi said, slightly annoyed.

"Yeah sorry." Melissa said, turning on the shower. She put her phone into the little phone pocket, then undressed and got into the shower. 

While she was showering, she and Andi were trying to figure out what to do about both the phone problem and the John problem. 

"Oh my god I got it" Melissa said, turning off the water and getting out of the shower. "Every Friday mom takes an extra long shower since she doesn't have to leave as early as normal. When she takes a shower, she plays music really loud on her phone and she isn't really aware of her surroundings, she always tells me that she never remembers showering, she just remembers the music. She always gets in the shower at eight." Melissa checked the time on her phone. "It's 9:30 my time which means it's 7:30 your time, so she'll be getting in the shower in half an hour-"

"Why can't I just do whatever your plan is now while she's asleep? Wait if it's 9:30 then why aren't you at school?"

"Cause I thought it would be typical Andi to show up fashionably late" She said sarcastically, rolling her eyes. "We had a two hour delay for some reason. Jarvis woke me up a few hours ago to tell me. And you can't do it now because Mom is a light sleeper, you'll wake her. I've woken her up just by pouring cereal in a bowl. When she gets into the shower, sneak into the bathroom and change the number in my contact to your number. She will be in her weird daze and won't even notice you" She set her phone down onto the bed so that she could get dressed. 

She heard Andi sigh. "Okay, but if she catches me then I'm throwing you under the bus"

"In order to do that then you'd have to tell her who you really are and that we switched, then the plan would be ruined." 

Andi was quiet before she sighed again. "Fuck you're right."

Melissa finished getting dressed and picked up her phone. "Okay I have to get to school, so when mom gets into the shower you sneak in and change my number to your number. Then, after school you need to question mom about how she and Dad broke up"