Truth, Lies, and the Space Inbetween

Chapter Two

The weekend flew by after the Friday night party. My family came home begrudgingly and all of a sudden the house wasn't so empty.

We were reasonably well off, and my parents tended to flaunt it; our house was a mammoth of a building, with high ceilings and huge rooms. On the outside it had a gabled roof with dark brown tiles complimenting its stone façade with white accents. Bedrooms upstairs left the bottom story for living rooms and the kitchen and study, connected only by a sweeping staircase in the entry.

Aubree's parents were friends with mine, and equally as vain. Her house was around the corner, a white and light grey mansion with an awful lot of glass, especially on the front. You could see right in through the highest window to their chandelier and polished marble staircase. While our house's roof was gabled, Bree's was flat, with a slight pagoda style about the front door. Both had pillars and façades were made of stone, theirs lighter and blocky and neat compared to our smaller, random layering of slightly different coloured pieces. Their house was more modern, and reflected their lifestyle, as did ours. Bedrooms were also upstairs, and the downstairs was open plan at Bree's - perfect for throwing parties, not that we did – too much effort.

Living around the corner from each other and our parents being good friends basically set Aubree and I up for life as best friends since we were babies. It gave us so much free reign to join the other's family for vacations, like this summer.

I made an effort to go to Aubree's house as often as I could in the weekend before school because it was quieter - my six-year-old brother made quite a ruckus for such a tiny body, meaning that only child Bree's house was much calmer than my own. It's one of the reasons I'd opted to not vacation with my family this year - he had recently become more annoying than cute, and I wasn't really up for a whole couple of months of being bugged by my sibling, especially without my best friend to wingwoman parties with.

By the time Monday rolled around we were more than prepared to face our peers. The little bit of social interaction on Friday had geared us up for the fashion show that would be the first day of school.

I picked up Bree in my black convertible to head to school together. It wasn't that far to walk from our houses but it was a reputation, image and laziness thing.

The car park at school was clogged with students meandering around trying to catch up with old friends before class started. I nudged my car in through the students, looking out at them through designer shades just like Bree next to me. Parking my car, we sauntered off towards the school together, flashing smiles and throwing greetings to friends. A couple of football players waved us over so we went to say hi, having a good ten minutes before school started.

I could see the boys checking us out, and I couldn't blame them – the first day of school was a statement, and we were here to make sure we maintained our social status. Aubree wore her designer pale blue jeans with a pink off-the-shoulder t-shirt and matching converse. I wore my ripped black jean shorts and a flouncy white singlet, paired with brown heeled sandals and a black suede biker-style jacket.

There were five footballers in the group; Caleb, Mason, Luke, Aaron, and Josh. All of them were quite attractive, but we were all friends and hadn't tried relationships with each other.