The Sleeping Arrangement

Chapter 2

I hated the rafting activity the second we were told we had to wear life jackets in order to take part. I pulled the padded fluorescent thing on over my head with a heavy sigh—and I made sure that Hayley heard it as she walked past us all with her ridiculously large grin spread across her face.

"Don't you all look great!" she enthused, clutching her hands to her chest and knitting her eyebrows together as though she were performing the works of Shakespeare.

"No," was the reply of a guy standing behind me. A few people sniggered. Apparently, the rest of the group of over-achievers had taken to Hayley as warmly as Thomas and I had. In other words, everybody seemed to dislike her.

A hand landed on my shoulder. I turned my head and, to my surprise, Thomas' was right there beside mine. "I look," he said, tugging at his orange jacket with a frown, "like a tangerine. A really fat, glowing tangerine."

I laughed, and I felt myself blushing. Thomas was funny, I knew that. Back in school, he was the class clown; people loved him, and he was always joking around with teachers, who also seemed to love him. I often found myself laughing hysterically at things he said, even if I hadn't been directly involved in the conversations he'd been having. The ability to eavesdrop was one of my greatest traits, it seemed. The ability to respond to his jokes when they were aimed directly at me, however, was not.

"Yeah," I said, laughing still. "And I'm like a really fat lemon, or something." I pulled at my own yellow jacket.

Good reply, Sophie. You absolute tit...

"Hey! Are you guys even listening to a word that's being said?!" From a few metres away, Hayley was calling to Thomas and me, exasperation painted on her flushed face as she fought for our attention. "This is important information," she sighed, as we both whipped our heads back in her direction. "If you don't listen to this, how do you expect your raft to win the competition?"

If Hayley hadn't got her eagle eyes on the two of us still, I might've laughed. The competition? Ha. This was the sort of thing eleven-year-olds would turn their noses up at, so why Hayley and the rest of the staff at Sunnybrook Youth Activity Centre believed that a group of sixteen-year-olds would be interested, I didn't know. The aim of the activity was for each group to build a raft using the materials they'd given us: an old barrel, a few pieces of rope, four planks of wood and a large sheet of plastic. According to Hayley, the team that managed to fashion a raft which floated in their outdoor swimming pool in the quickest amount of time won the competition. The prize would be fifty points for our school, and at the end of the week, the total scores would be counted and the highest scorers would receive a trophy. It wasn't exactly a desirable prize, and I doubted anybody in the group particularly cared about winning.

"Now, will every pair team up with another, please? You need to be in groups of four to do this activity!" Hayley called out now. She began to arrange the teens at the front of the group into sets, and I turned to Thomas.

"Who should we pair up with?" I asked him, my eyes scanning the people around. Everyone was looking each couple over, weighing them up before making the move and pairing with them. My eyes followed Thomas' gaze and landed on a tall boy with brown hair, and a girl the same height as me with straight blonde hair and brown eyes.

"How about we go with those?" Thomas asked, just as the pair locked eyes with us. The boy gave a warm smile and lifted his hand into a wave. The girl scanned her eyes across Thomas' body without taking a second glance at me, and her mouth lifted into a grin.

Warning signals sounded in my head. This girl was pretty—much prettier than me—and had the perfect figure, all athletic and toned. She wore makeup, unlike me, and everything about her, from the way she made a casual outfit look glamorous, to the highlights in her already perfect hair, screamed that she knew exactly what she was doing when it came to boys. And she had her eyes on Thomas.