Seventeen

TESSA

Tessa was sitting in her bedroom, on the second floor might she add, when Dale slid open her window and started screaming.

"AH! Dale, what the hell?" Tessa yelled out, letting her book drop to the floor from shock. The Peruvian girl was still screaming, literal screaming. She crawled through Tessa's window and that's when Tessa remembered it should have been pretty hard to get up to her window. "How did you get up here?"

Dale stopped screaming for a minute. "There's a tree right there," she pointed out the window. "And you expect me not to use it?"

"Okay, point taken!" Tessa held her hands up. "What do you want?"

"MARK AND ADHARA KISSED!" Dale yelled.

"WHAT!" Tessa yelled right back. "WHEN? WHERE?"

Dale took a deep breath from all her screaming. "They kissed at his party the other night when Adhara was outside petting a cat!"

"We're going to see Mark right now." Tessa said, springing off her bed. "Where is he?"

"Hold on, I'm going to FaceTime him." Dale held up a finger and grabbing her car keys out of her pocket, swinging them around on her finger.

Mark picked up almost immediately and barely said hello before Dale started asking questions. "Where are you? Because I was just at your house like twenty minutes ago in your kitchen and I'm pretty sure you weren't there. I mean, I didn't look for you, but I'm pretty sure your dad's chefs would have told me if you were there. Maybe."

"What? You were in my house? I haven't been home since last night." Mark furrowed his eyebrows together.

"Where the frick are you?" Tessa butted into the view of the screen, surprising Mark a bit.

"Um, you two clearly want something and I think that something involves a lot of questions about our favorite Nepalese girl, so no. I'm definitely not going to tell you guys where I am. No freaking way." Mark looked like the girls had asked him to help them hide a dead body.

"Well fine then, Akagi." Dale rolled her eyes and clicked the button to hang up.

"Dale!" Tessa smacked her friend lightly on the shoulder. "Now we have no idea where the stupid kid is. He was just sitting by a blank wall, and that could be anywhere!"

"Yes," Dale held a finger up. "But, before you looked at the screen, I saw Kaden's family picture on the wall. You know the one with him, Kassie, Landon and his dad."

Tessa knew the picture that Dale was referring to.

"Then, what are we waiting for?" Tessa wore her signature smirk.

And soon enough, Tessa and Dale were pounding on Kaden's front door, but apparently the emerald-eyed boy wasn't home, because Mark peeked out the curtains of the front window. And then he locked the front door.

Dale quickly grabbed the doorknob, trying to see if she could get in the door a second before the Japanese boy got to the deadbolt.

"Damn you, Akagi!" Dale yelled, pounding on the door. "Come on, Tessa, let's go."

The pair walked back to the driveway of Kaden's house, but Tessa knew they weren't leaving. "So, how are we getting in?" The brunette girl asked.

"The same way I got into your house." Dale quipped, leading Tessa to a tree that was poised near Kaden's bedroom window. The Peruvian girl scaled the tree quickly first then looked back down at Tessa.

"Come on girl, up and at 'em." Dale clapped her hands together. Tessa laughed and wrapped her hand around a bough from the tree, pulling herself up.