“Rule number two: Don’t give each other shit about the things that we like or don’t like. For instance, you enjoy drawing and art and stuff, and I enjoy shopping. At least I think I’ll like it.”
I grinned at that.
“Rule number three: No liking the same boys. Friendship is more important than boys. That’s if you like boys?”
Considering my crush on Zion Reynolds in the sixth grade, and the way my heart still raced after the run-in with Jamie, I’d say so. I nodded.
“Cool. Though it would have been cool with me if you didn’t.”
I liked rule number three. Loyalty was important to me. I didn’t have a lot of experience with it, but I’d like the chance to prove I was capable of it.
“Rule number four.” Her eyes narrowed on me, as if she could see right into my soul. “And this is the big one because I’ve lost friends to this shit.”
“Okay?”
“You can’t crush on Jamie like every single one of my other friends, and you can’t become best friends with Skye. You’re my friend.”
I blushed. Could she see I thought Jamie was cute? Not that her fifteen-year-old brother would ever pay attention to me. As for Skye … I liked Skye, but she was older. I doubted she wanted to become best friends with her little sister’s best friend.
“Okay.”
Lorna grinned and clapped her hands together. “Sick!”
I smiled, feeling another flutter of nerves. This time I realized these were butterflies of nervous anticipation. Maybe my final year at middle school wouldn’t be so bad now that I had a best friend. And not just any best friend—a tough-talking Bostonian who seemed as fierce as she was determined.
2
Eighteen Months later
JAMIE
Sixteen years old
My phone buzzed, interrupting the Silverchair track I was listening to. Probably one of the guys. Pulling my cell out, I discovered I was wrong.
The text was from a girl.
Hey, Jamie, it’s Julie. Trewitt. Wht r u up 2 2nite? Xx
The plans I had for finding a girl to hook up with that night came to fruition in one text. Julie was a senior, and she’d been checking me out lately. Who she got my number from, I didn’t know. And I didn’t care. Everyone knew Julie was a sure thing, and she wasn’t interested in a relationship. The girl just wanted to have fun—who was I to stop her?
My fingers hovered over the keypad, about to tell her where to meet me, when something whacked softly against the back of my head. A cushion.
I spun around, ready to chew out Lorna, and instead found Skye standing in my doorway.
She mimed pulling earbuds out of her ears and I did as she asked, “Ana’s Song” fading into a murmur.
“What’s up?” I didn’t have much patience for my annoying little sister, but I had all the time in the world for my big one.
At first, it pissed me off to leave Boston. I was pissed about everything. My mom being selfish and bitter her whole life, my dad taking off because he couldn’t stand being around her anymore, my mom dying when I never got a chance to stop being mad at her, and then having to leave behind what I knew for California, of all places. LA couldn’t be more different from Boston.
However, the last year and a half in LA hadn’t been so bad. I joined the track-and-field team, something the guys back in Boston would’ve ripped me apart for. But my new buddies on the team were cool. Not cool enough to tell them I was a writer, but safer than the friends I grew up with who were already getting into seriously shiesty shit back in Dorchester. A couple guys back home had been good friends; the rest, not so much. All of them, however, were heading down a dark path toward prison.
I was glad to be away from all that.
Skye did that for me and Lorna. Gave us a safer place to live. Only a few years ago, I was so pissed at her for leaving us behind, but when Mom died, Skye stepped up.
Now she was doing so well as an actress, she’d moved us from the apartment into a three-bedroom house in Glendale, close to the apartment we first moved into.
A house.
None of us had ever lived in a house.
And this one had a pool and views of the Verdugo Mountains from the back deck.
“I hope you don’t have plans for tonight.” Skye looked apologetic.