Page 16

twelve

I’d been a student at Parkhurst Prep School for just over two years now, but in that time, I’d never been to a sporting event outside of a swim meet.

So Ainsley’s offer for us to go to the soccer game together was unusual for me, to say the least, and when I showed up at her house that night, I really had no idea what to expect.

Mrs. Novak was the one to open the door today, unlike when I’d come by the other evening. She smiled warmly at me, the way she always did.

“Oh, hi, darling,” she said, in her posh British accent. “Are you here to drop something off for your mum?”

“No,” I said carefully. This whole situation, being friends with Ainsley, still felt like uncharted territory to me. “I’m actually?—“

“Nora!” Ainsley called, coming barreling down the stairs. She appeared by her mom’s arm a second later. “She’s here to go to the soccer game with me, Mum.”

Mrs. Novak’s eyes widened in surprise, probably not realizing that we were friends, which was completely fair because until Monday afternoon, we had barely spoken.

“Well, isn’t that fun,” she said.

Ainsley grabbed my wrist and pulled me inside the house with her. I smiled at Mrs. Novak one more time and said, “It was nice to see you again,” as Ainsley tugged me upstairs.

I’d never been in the upstairs of the Novak house.

I’d actually never been anywhere other than the main floor, so walking into Ainsley’s room felt like walking into another world.

Multiple people’s music seemed to be playing from the various closed doors in the hallway and like when I’d come by last Friday for the party, the air seemed thick with the smell of perfume and hair products.

Ainsley led me to a room at the end of the hall and flopped down on her unmade bed, sinking into the pile of fluffy pink pillows strewn across it.

As I looked around, I realized that everything—down to the walls and the desk covered in textbooks and makeup—were shades of pink and white.

“You can sit anywhere,” she said, gesturing vaguely around the room.

The place looked like a closet had thrown up on it, with clothes covering every available surface, so I looked for the spot that seemed the least cluttered.

That came in the form of the desk chair, which only had two sweaters laying on it that I pushed aside so I wouldn’t sit on them.

Seeing her room like this, I could understand how she had left her clothes in the back of Sebastian’s car on her way to dance practice.

“I’m so glad you decided to come with me,” she said.

She sat back up and started digging through the mini makeup bag that was sitting on her nightstand.

I glanced at the even bigger makeup bag on her desk, as well as the various mascaras, lipsticks, and other products thrown haphazardly across the flat surface, and wondered just how much she owned.

Was I supposed to wear makeup to this thing?

I’d just come dressed in the first outfit I found after getting home from school.

I picked at my shirt—it was an extremely thin knit shirt from the ninth grade that didn’t fit me right, but Clementine claimed that was what made it cute.

It was a little too short, so it showed off a bit of my stomach when I wore it with jeans, and was just the right level of tight.

But was that the look I should be going for?

“Want some face paint?” Ainsley asked, spinning around to face me.

She had what looked like blue eyeliner in her hand.

It hadn’t even occurred to me that I should probably be showing some sort of school spirit at this thing.

The closest I’d come was wearing a white shirt, so it looked close enough to our school color of silver.

“Sure.”

She crouched in front of me, biting down hard on her lip as she drew something on my face.

The eyeliner pen was cold and a little ticklish, but I did my best to stay still so she wouldn’t smudge it all over the place.

She took a while on the first side, not just drawing on my cheek, but adding lines that went up by my eye too.

I thought she was just going to draw something on the one side, but then she spun the chair to move me enough for her to be able to draw something on the other cheek as well.

This side took much less time and when she held up a mirror, I realized why.

On my first cheek, she’d drawn a paw print and some swirls coming out of it, which was why it came up so far. But on the other side, all she’d drawn was a 10. I frowned as I looked at it, trying to place what that meant.

“Sorry!” Ainsley said. I guess she misread my confused frown for an angry one because she grabbed a makeup wipe and held it out to me, like she thought I wanted to wipe it off.

“I should have asked if you were okay with me writing Sebastian’s number on your cheek.

We just always do it, so I didn’t think. ”

It hadn’t even occurred to me that the number could be that. My face flushed a little as I thought about the idea of sporting his number on my cheek at the game, but I pushed away Ainsley’s hand with the makeup wipe in it.

“I like it,” I said. “You said we —are you all going?”

“Well, I’m not sure if Lavender is coming.” A look of sadness crossed her face and she backed up to sit on her bed again. “She’s been acting a little weird lately and not coming out with us much. I think she took what happened with Dad really hard. But Imogen’s coming. She’ll sit with us.”

I was a little surprised at that. I figured that Ainsley only asked me because she had nobody else to go with, but if her twin was going with her, why did she want me there? She looked at me curiously as she started putting her makeup away. “Do you and Imogen know each other?”

I could understand why she wouldn’t be sure, since Imogen was definitely extremely outgoing, but I couldn’t say that I’d had more than one or two conversations with her.

Even though more people probably knew Imogen than Ainsley, I thought I knew even less about her since she wasn’t even on the swim team with us .

“Not really,” I said.

“Well, she’s great,” Ainsley said. She stood up again and started walking toward the door. I wondered if I was supposed to get up with her, but she just threw open the door and yelled into the hall, “Imogen, we’re leaving in five minutes, okay?”

I heard a muffled “okay” through the wall, so I figured Imogen’s room was next to Ainsley’s. She closed the door again, muffling the sound of the other music in the hall.

“Have you two always had your own room?” I asked. I didn’t think the Novak house was big enough for all the kids to have their own rooms, but if there were any to share, it would be Imogen and Ainsley.

“Only since we moved Sebastian down to the basement a few years ago. We shared growing up, but it’s a tight space, you know?”

I didn’t realize Sebastian had moved down to the basement, but now that she said it, it made sense.

With four kids, they were probably all tripping over each other here and I could see why Sebastian would want to have his own space and leave the girls up here.

But then I remembered when I’d come by a couple weeks ago and saw Sebastian pulling Tiffany to the basement stairs, and started to feel a little queasy.

I always assumed their basement was the same as ours, with an extra TV and space to hang out, but if it was his bedroom instead…

“So, I did some extra research for the public speaking project since we didn’t find much at the library,” Ainsley said, forcing my thoughts away from what Sebastian and Tiffany might have been getting up to.

“Oh, sorry, I didn’t realize you were so on top of it. I would have done some.”

She brushed her hand dismissively. “Don’t worry about it.

We had a free period in my art class and I figured I might as well do something productive if I was stuck at school.

” She dropped the folder on the desk with a loud thump.

She must have printed out every article she found.

“Anyway, I found some arguments for and against. I figure our argument will be mostly against school uniforms, but it’s good to know both sides. ”

I nodded and started thumbing through the evidence she had found, but I only got through a couple before the door was pushed open again and Imogen stepped inside.

If I thought Ainsley was dressed up, I wasn’t prepared for Imogen’s short mini dress and a way-too-big denim jacket that covered almost to her mid-thigh.

She looked like she was planning to go to a modeling photoshoot instead of a high school soccer game.

Ainsley glanced at her sister’s outfit briefly and said, “You might be cold, you know.”

Imogen shrugged. “Small price to pay for fashion.” She glanced at me. “You coming with us?”

“Oh yeah, Imogen, this is Nora. She lives next door.”

Imogen laughed. “Yeah, Ainsley, we’ve met.”

Ainsley shrugged. “I just wanted to make sure. I didn’t want you to spend the whole night wondering what her name was because I didn’t introduce her.”

Imogen shook her head at her sister, then came up to me and stuck out a hand. “It’s nice to officially meet you then, I guess.”

I laughed a little too and shook her hand. “You too.”

“Alright, one last touch,” Ainsley said, walking over to her vanity and grabbing her perfume.

Once again, something that hadn’t even occurred to me to do.

I’d barely even done my hair or anything.

At least I had some school spirit on my face now with the face paint, but that was it.

She spritzed herself lightly and then glanced at me.

“Did you want some?” she asked.

If anybody else had asked that, I might have thought they were trying to tell me something, like I needed the perfume or something, but she sounded genuinely just curious. Strangely enough, I found myself nodding. “Sure.”