Lie Until You Laugh

16- Lost Phones

“Where’s Mason?” I ask Stella when we leave the food court after breakfast on Monday morning.

“She’s with Brian of course,” She giggles. “They’re probably making out behind one of the buildings or something. I appreciate that they do their business in private instead of out in the open.”

“That is very nice of them,” I agree with a laugh as we walk into the practice room. We have about seven minutes until practice starts, so almost everybody is already in here and some are stretching but mostly, people are just standing around talking to each other.

“It is,” She nods. “Anyway, I found this black shirt that matches those shorts and then I found some shoes too. I’ll order it all after practice today and it should be here tomorrow because I purge on overnight shipping.”

“Okay,” I laugh. “Do you think we actually have a chance at winning this? I mean, it’s not a very big deal if we don’t, I’m just wondering.”

Stella and I sit down on the hard floor with our sports bags sitting at our sides. “With Mason choreographing most of it, I think we’ll be amazing. Especially with the song that you chose and the remix that I’m getting together. We like, complete each other.”

I laugh again. “That’s interesting. Anyway, because this weekend didn’t go exactly as planned, I’m thinking we need a beach day this weekend. Hopefully, I won’t get threatened with expulsion this time though.”

“Yes!” She agrees enthusiastically. “This needs to happen.”

“What needs to happen?” Mason wonders, coming into the room with Brian by her side. They both share the same glazy-eyed look with swollen lips, so it’s obvious that Stella was right about them finding a private corner for a pre-practice make out session.

“A rescheduled beach day,” Stella explains as her eyes land on Penn, who is sitting in his metal chair across the room, and she glares. “Because SOMEBODY ruined our first attempt at going to the beach.”

I nudge her shoulder to get her to stay quiet so that we don’t attract his attention. I don’t want him looking over here because I don’t want anything to do with him. “Stell, don’t be loud about it, please.”

“Fine,” She huffs. “Only because you said please.”

“Have you heard anything from Gianna yet?” Brian asks. “I figure that when or if her mom actually gets fired she’ll come at us hard.”

“Well, probably just me,” I shrug. “But no, I haven’t heard anything.”

“Gianna won’t do anything,” Stella says. “She’s afraid of you now that she knows how high you are up on the food chain. And hopefully, she realizes that we’re higher up on the food chain too, since we’re your friends.”

“That will be boring,” Mason informs us with a sigh. “That means that we won’t be able to fight back.”

“People who are high on the food chain can fight whenever they want,” Stella grins.

“Why do you guys hate each other anyway?” I wonder curiously.

“That is simpler than you might think,” She informs me. “Gianna stole my brother.”

“Don’t say it like that,” Brian laughs. “You sound like you’re in love with the guy or something.”

Stella fakes a gag, making me laugh. “Okay, well Anthony was actually a really good guy and like, the best brother ever until we came here freshman year. He met Gianna and then she turned him against me for some reason. I think she figured that he spend too much time with me, so she wanted to eliminate that so that she could mean the absolute world to him. So yeah, that’s how it all started.”