Margalo, Lauren, Luke and Emily sat on Lauren’s living room floor. Emily changed the channel to the crappiest reality TV show she could find, and Lauren brought a bag of Doritos in from her kitchen.
“God bless ‘Murica,” Margalo joked.
“So what time is your flight tomorrow?” Luke asked.
“Eight-fifteen in the morning. Lauren’s parents are dropping me off—do you want to come?” Margalo couldn’t say she was exactly looking forward to having Will say goodbye to her at their airport, seeing as it could and probably would result in some sort of dramatic confession. But she did love Luke, in a little-brother-best-friend-absolutely-platonic-I-don’t-like-you-like-that-and-it’s-kind-of-weird-but-you’re-lovely way, and she wanted to see him before she went.
“Sure,” said Luke, trying and failing to hide his excitement.
“You wanna come too, Emily?”
“Yeah,” said Emily through a mouthful of Doritos. “That’d be cool.”
Margalo sighed. “You know what sucks?”
“What?”
“Normally, we’d be planning what we were going to do on the weekend. You know, whether we were going to go to the movies, or go into the city, or screw around in the neighbourhood or whatever. I mean, any of it, even just doing this again, would be a million times better than you guys taking me to the airport. It’s just such a crappy situation, you know what I mean?”
“I know,” said Emily, hugging her knees to her chest. “I hate it.”
Feeling guilty for making her friends sad and wanting to do something about it, Margalo spoke up. “Hey, Lauren, didn’t you want to ask Luke something?”
Lauren blushed and tucked her dark hair behind her ears nervously. “Um, yeah. Luke, did you want to get lunch or something this weekend? Just me and you?”
Luke stared at Margalo for a minute, and Lauren looked crestfallen. She was sure he was going to say no, but at the last second, he seemed to think better of it.
“Yeah, sure. That sounds fun.”
“Oh, great,” Emily laughed. “So now I can just third wheel, right?”
“Don’t worry,” Lauren said, giving Emily a hug. “I’ll get you a boyfriend.”
There it was again—she hadn’t even left yet, and the shift was already happening. Of course, Margalo was happy for her friends, but it was strange. Why hadn’t these things happened when she was here? Was everyone just waiting for her to leave so that they could get on with their lives?
She looked at the TV screen, where a heavily bronzed woman in a long, poufy white dress was yelling at a wedding planner over the shade of yellow roses she had ordered.
“And if not, at least we’ll always have reality TV,” Margalo said.
YOU ARE READING
Haunting Margalo
Teen Fiction{NANOWRIMO} Margalo and Violet are rivals. They have been since the second grade, and they will be until the day they die--which, for Violet, is a little sooner than expected. After Margalo almost burns her house down, she's sent to stay with her au...
