NOT MY FAULT | Mean Girls

01.

: * • ✧ everette ✧ • * :

"Cady! Evie!" My mother's voice called up the stairs. "Come downstairs, please! Breakfast is ready!"

I could hear the muffled groaning coming from my twin sister's room as I put the finishing touches on my makeup, running my nail around my lips to get off any excess bits of lip gloss.

I gave myself a once-over in the mirror again before I nodded, satisfied with my appearance, and headed downstairs, grabbing my new backpack from where it sat on the floor of my bedroom, right next to my door. I headed downstairs, running my fingers through the ends of my straightened blonde hair, hoping that the products that I had put in it would allow it to stay for the day.

When our parents had first told Cady and me that we were moving to the U. S., my twin sister and I had very different ways of taking the news. Cady tried to take in every last bit of life in Kenya, but as soon as the words "high school in America" came out of my mother's mouth, I was getting ready for all of it. I'd watched every single high school movie in existence, browsed every possible corner of social media to try to figure out what American high school was like, and made sure that I wasn't setting myself up for failure upon entering North Shore High.

I smoothed out the skirt of my sundress as I started eating my breakfast—fruit salad and a piece of toast that my mom had prepared, as I scrolled through my phone, making note of my schedule one more time before I left for school. Everything needed to be perfect today; after all, I was about to be starting my first day of real high school. I'd be at this school for the next two years, and if I screwed up today, who knew what sort of year I would end up having?

As I finished the last strawberry in the small bowl in front of me, Cady finally made her appearance in the kitchen, dressed in her usual plaid flannel and cargo pants, despite it being early September. Seriously, I had no doubt that she was going to be sweating by the time we got to our second class.

"Look who rolled out of bed and decided to come celebrate her first day of real high school," my dad remarked, nodding towards the place at the table that was set for my sister. "Your mother made you breakfast, Cady Jane, so if I were you, I wouldn't wait much longer to start eating. She wants pictures."

As if on cue, my mother walked into the kitchen, waving her phone in our faces. "Evie, are you done eating?" she asked.

I nodded. "Yep."

"Good! Come on," she said, pulling on my arm. "We need to take your individual pictures. I'll do your sister's once she's done eating."

I resisted the urge to suppress a sigh and followed my mother outside to the front porch so that she could take pictures of me to commemorate this day. Most parents would have this sort of enthusiasm about their kid's first day of kindergarten, but since my first day of kindergarten was spent observing a herd of rhinos in the savannah of Kenya, her excitement was shining through on my first day of my junior year of high school.

Not that I'd really had other first days of high school before. I'd done school year-round, whenever my parents weren't too busy working to teach me. But now that my mom had gotten a job at Northwestern University teaching biology, we were living in Evanston, and Cady and I were minutes away from starting our first day at North Shore High School.

"Smile, Evie!" my mother cheered as I posed for the camera, feeling slightly awkward and hoping that no one who would be at school with me was able to see me in that moment.