Behind Closed Doors // Billie Eilish

Chapter 11

"Please?" I asked again.

"No," Starlit said. "I don't need to embarrass myself in front of a bunch of really good skaters."

"They're not even like that, dude. They're not gonna pay attention to you unless they're trying to help you out. Plus, you need to scrape up your skateboard some so that you don't look like a newbie anymore and you wanted to learn how to do a rail slide."

"Fine." She rolled her eyes. "Let's go."

"Yes!" I dropped my skateboard and started riding, looking behind me. "You're so slow. Come on."

"I'm gonna die."

"No, you're not." I sped up to mess with her.

"Camilla!" I looked to my right to see Billie rolling down the window to her car.

I lifted the nose of my board up and turned to the side, sliding to a stop. I snapped the tail and caught the board, sighing. "What do you want, Billie?"

"I just—"

Starlit finally came up and drug her foot on the ground to stop. She's gonna murder her shoes. "You what?" I pressed.

She shook her head and bit her lip, a look of disappointment crossing her face. It was quickly replaced with anger. What the fuck was her problem? "Never mind."

I was hoping she was going to apologize. "Oh... okay."

She furrowed her eyebrows. "No... yeah. Where are you going?"

Getting a little agitated with her indecisiveness, I shifted my weight. "To the skatepark."

"Can I come?" she asked. I bit the inside of my cheek. "Please. I just wanna talk. It'll be fast."

As annoyed with her as I was, I couldn't say no. I wanted things to be back to normal. "Okay. Come on. It's right here."

"Okay." She pulled up on the curb.

"I'll be over there." Starlit hurriedly walked away.

I got into Billie's car and looked at her expectantly. "What's up?"

"Uh—so, I'm really sorry." Her eyebrows knitted together and she scratched her head. "I don't—I... I'm..." Her eyes glossed over and I really just wanted to hug her. "I really am sorry. I'm very scared and confused. I don't know what's going on and I'm trying to understand. I was really frustrated and I just took my anger out on you and I shouldn't have. You're my best friend and—sorry, I didn't mean to... listen, I'm not trying to replace anybody, okay? I'm just saying that you're a really good friend of mine and you didn't deserve that."

"What do you mean? Is everything okay?"

She laughed and wiped her eyes. "Everything's fine. Am I forgiven?"

"Yes." I leaned over and hugged her. I didn't really get an explanation but I do the same thing to her so it's just something we'll have to work on. "And for the record, you are my best friend and I know you're not trying to replace anybody."

She looked out the window. "Can you actually do any of that cool shit?"

"Hell yeah!"

"Sick. I wanna see."

I examined the area. There were only a few people out. I knew them. They were cool and kept to themselves. It was fairly dark. "Pull your hood on and you should be fine. Let's go."

She pulled her hood on and we made our way over to Starlit. "I don't believe this shit. There's no way you can do that." She nodded towards a dude going over a ramp.