"It's your turn."
Erica Reyes looked up from her nails and batted her eyes at her childhood friend, Sabrina. She hung her hand in the air, cautious to not brush her freshly painted nails.
"Already?" she scrolled her eyes over the table. Her game token, shaped like eyeglasses, was ten spaces behind Sabrina's fedora. Erica reached for the two dice and shook them in the palms of her hands. With a quick twist of her wrist, she let them tumble to the surface of the table.
She kept her eyes focused on Sabrina who watched the dice intently enough for both of them. Her blue eyes looked large and doe-like behind her wire-rimmed glasses. Erica couldn't understand why she insisted on wearing them every day. Glasses were unnecessary, everyone over the age of 13 had undergone laser eye surgery, leaving them with perfect vision.
Sabrina whistled beneath her breath, "You rolled two sixes, that's sheer luck." Erica offered a small smile as she moved her token to its new home, two spots past her friends before turning away and picking up the nail polish bottle again.
She waited to hear the tumble of the dice and prepared to look interested. It never came. When she looked back up, Sabrina's attention was on her. She set the dice down and they clanked against the table.
"You don't want to play," Sabrina concluded, reaching up and pushing her glasses up her nose. The motion irked Erica more than it should and she found herself tapping her fingers against her leg, the motion fed by every rude thing she wanted to say. She wasn't sure how to respond. Not without offending her closest friend.
Though Erica knew they weren't as close as they liked to pretend and she wouldn't mind cutting the girl loose. She couldn't quite pinpoint the moment the genuine feelings turned into a clever charade. But there was a time, a long time, where Erica would have entrusted her friend with every secret in the entire world.
Blaming moments like this would be easy. Board games are only one of things that they didn't agree with. Where Sabrina could dedicate hours to sliding tokens and rolling dice, Erica had to force herself through more than four turns.
"Fine then," Sabrina quipped, her jaw tight. The two words spoke volumes of annoyance that Erica could only acknowledge with a frown. "What would you prefer to do?"
Her initial reaction was to ask to go for a walk. To get out of the house, but Erica smothered the thought in an instant. To suggest going for a walk is to suggest going shopping or socializing. In the walls of Creyton, there's not much more to do than that.
Before Erica could come up with an acceptable response, there was a harsh knock on the front door. She jumped to her feet and strode towards it with no hesitation. Thankful for the distraction, she didn't cast her friend a glance. Though, out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Sabrina's tight grip on the edge of the wooden table.
As she slipped out of the living room and down the hall toward the front door, the knocking came again. The severe banging rattled the hinges and Erica almost imagined the person smashing their way through.
She swung the door open, revealing a short woman. They kept their head bowed to face their feet, a curtain of long blood red hair blocking their features. The strands were tangled and greasy, the dye clearly cheap and home processed. They brought their hands up and shoved Erica back. She stumbled away, more from shock and uncertainty than the girl's force.
They rushed past her and slammed the door behind them. They stopped at the end of the hall and snapped their head in every direction, a halo of hair flying around them.
"Who are you?" Erica yelled. She heard a commotion in the living room and for the first time in months, she was glad Sabrina was around to help her. The blond girl appeared on the other side of the stranger, her eyes wide and her lips parted. She looked as flustered as Erica felt.
