Raven's Song

Party On

Tylor made it to school for the rest of the week. He took the reigns on the actual dissecting after I realized I didn't have as strong of a stomach as I thought I did, especially when we moved to the internal organs. My handwriting was neater than his anyway, so it saved me from having him decipher it in our tutoring sessions.

Amber, however, was not so lucky and passed out on the second day. Tylor caught her before she hit her head on the corner of the lab table. She got a pass on dissecting for the rest of the year but still had to take the tests by studying the handouts. Dove was pissed that she was on her own and even more pissed that I had Tylor as my partner. We would have been able to pair up if he had disappeared again after that first day.

He managed to make it to his tutoring sessions, too. I bailed on him once because my dad was going to be home at a decent time, but Tylor still insisted on driving me. I'd accepted. I wasn't a big fan of the bus anyway, and he didn't have too bad of a taste in music.

The weekend, however, dragged by without his snide comments, or his inappropriate additions to my doodles on my government notes. When Dove messaged me to see if I wanted to go to a party with her, Amber, and "the guys", I'd only hesitated for a moment before I responded that I would go with them.

While I was standing in front of my closet, I was regretting it. I wasn't sure how public school kids dressed for a party. At the prep school, it'd been where people either brought out their slutty outfits they couldn't wear to school or crop tops and pants that were a step up from jeans.

I finally pulled out a pair of jeans and a cropped T-shirt. I'd throw a jacket and sneakers on, then call it good enough. By the time people got the alcohol in them, no one would care what people looked like. That was something I was sure the two groups had in common.

When Dove pulled up, I was sitting on the front steps waiting. She whistled as I climbed into the cramped backseat of her SUV with two strange boys and Amber. A boy in front was fiddling with a phone and clicking through songs, only letting the first chords play before moving on.

"Damn, girl!" Dove exclaimed as she pulled away. "I thought you were poor like the rest of us!"

I should have had her pick me up somewhere else. "We are technically. Messy divorce."

"And he didn't sell that place to make a fortune?" The boy next to me was doing his best to not squish me, but there wasn't much shifting he could do to stop it. I hoped it was just a short drive.

"My dad didn't want to because it's our home, and if we can make ends meet without giving that up, he wanted to try. So far so good," I told Dove. The boy's elbow was digging into my side.

Dove shrugged. "Makes sense. Anyway, these are the guys. Alec is beside you. He's a former baseball pitching star before he fucked up his shoulder. His brother Ross is beside him. He asked Amber to homecoming today. Exciting!" There wasn't any sarcasm in her voice that I could detect. "And Clint is up here with me. He's going to eventually ask me."

"We've been together for almost a year, Dove. I thought it was implied that we were going together," Clint said. He'd finally settled on a throwback rock station.

Dove tossed her hair over her shoulder. "No, honey, it is not. I want a cute proposal!"

"She won't get one," Alec muttered to me. "He's such a procrastinator that she'll be lucky if he doesn't show up in a button-down and jeans."

"Hush, Alec!" Dove snapped. "He's got his shit together!"

"Since when?" Ross asked. "We've been friends since preschool and not once has he had his shit together!"