The Way She Makes Me Feel

Chapter One

♡ Evelyn ♡
. . .

"Mom, have you seen my socks?" I ask, scrambling around the living room with one sock on and my pair of shoes dangling from two of my fingers.

Mom, who's enjoying our new kitchen island a little TOO much while drinking coffee from a pink Hello Kitty mug, shrugs and says, "I thought you packed them."

"I did," I groan, plopping down on the soft teal rug in the apartment's living room. I'm nowhere near being a toddler, but between the settling noise of the apartment-hearing every conversation our next-door neighbors have-and stress this early in the morning after a lack of sleep, I'm about to burst into tears.

I'm completely and utterly emotionally overstimulated.

As if she can sense this, Dawn-my fifteen-year-old cousin who's been helping me look for the past ten minutes-comes out of her new, too clean-smelling room with a pair of socks.

"Here," she bends down and holds them in front of me.

"Thanks," I take the socks and release a breath I didn't even know I was holding.

"Where'd you find them?" Mom asks.

"In the duffle bag... with the kitchen utensils," Dawn answers with a sigh. I put on my socks as my younger, darker-haired blonde cousin puts her hair up in a ponytail.

"God, why did I even pay those dimwits when I could get you guys to put the boxes in the wrong place for free?" Mom rolls her eyes and, as usual, pours the remainder of her coffee into the sink.

Dawn and I have basically agreed Mom can't handle coffee, but she drinks it anyway to feel like a real adult. Mom's 34-she had me at 17-and I guess neither of us have really felt like a whole lot of "anything."

Mom and I have never felt like mother and daughter, and Dawn and I have never felt like cousins. Dawn's an army brat, which means her father's in the army and her mom died after childbirth, so she's lived with Mom and me for as long as I can remember. Dawn and I have never felt like cousins as strongly as we've felt like sisters.

I tie Dawn's tie-which we've never had to worry about because at my old school, we didn't have uniforms-but Summerville's different...

I guess.

I kind of miss Lakeshore-not that I have anyone there that I liked particularly. I was a wallflower, fitting in and never standing out-nobody even knows I left about a week ago.

Dawn, on the other hand, had friends in Lakeshore-two best friends to be exact, Nicky and Adeline. But trust that in the few days we have been here, Dawn's already made a friend or two.

Meanwhile, I've barely been able to look the brown-haired girl in the apartment across from ours in the eye.

What a great start I'm off to.

I tie Dawn's tie while Mom looks down at the message she just got on her phone. "Tony's here," Mom announces.

Tony Davis is a "family friend," or as close as you can call someone your mom was best friends with in high school.

We were introduced to Tony and his mom Natalie the day we moved here.

Tony has a car, and because of our moms, an arrangement to drive Dawn and me to school even though he doesn't attend Summerville Academy. He takes classes at the community college down the road.

"Okay," Dawn rushes to grab her bag while I make my way over to Mom, give her a quick hug, and say:

"Bye!" as enthusiastically as possible. But in all reality? I don't want to go.