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three

There was some sort of law of the universe that an outfit that looked perfectly cute on any other girl looked horrendous on me.

As I stared at myself in the mirror before going downstairs that night, I knew that this outfit was one of those examples.

The jean mini-skirt and corset top should have been cute, but instead, it just accentuated how much I lacked any curves at all.

No matter which way I moved it—pulling it higher, pulling it lower, tightening the ties, loosening them—nothing ever made it look good. But it was the only cute top I owned. I hadn’t even bought it either; Clementine had just left it behind one time and told me I could keep it.

As if the top wasn’t bad enough, when I went to pull on some shoes, I realized that the skirt was so short that it showed my underwear if I leaned forward at all.

I guess that was my fault for wearing a skirt I’d gotten in middle school.

So now, not only did I have to worry about the fact that my top made me look like a potato sack, but I also had to make sure that I didn’t bend over at all at this party.

If I dropped something, that was it. The end. I would never get it back.

I groaned as I stood back up and looked at myself in the mirror, deciding that this was as good as it was going to get. A skirt from middle school, a borrowed shirt, and my brown hair held back from my face with clips that made me look like I was in kindergarten.

“Leaving in five, Nora!” Dean yelled from down the hall. “If you’re not with me, I’m telling Sebastian you changed your mind!”

I was surprised he was even giving me a five-minute warning instead of just leaving me behind.

Just in case that idea occurred to him too, I grabbed my phone and a coat to cover up my outfit so Mom wouldn’t realize I wasn’t going to a sleepover, and ran downstairs to meet Dean.

He was pulling his shoes on as I walked up and didn’t look impressed that I caught him before he left.

Mom materialized out of nowhere, with crossed arms and suspicious eyes. “You two are leaving together?”

I couldn’t blame her for wondering, since Dean and I never willingly went anywhere together.

The only reason he even agreed to pick me up after swim practice every day was because that was Mom’s stipulation for him getting access to the car—and even then, he was flaky at best. Us leaving together on a Friday night was unheard of.

I should have planned for this interrogation.

“Yep,” I said, as if I could convince her this was normal. “Bye.”

We both dove for the door and Dean got it open a crack before Mom said, “Wait!” We knew better than to ignore that voice, so neither of us moved but we didn’t look at her, either. “Where are you going?”

“I told you,” I said, keeping my eyes on the door. “I’m sleeping over at Clementine’s. Dean and Sebastian are just?—”

“Why is Sebastian coming with you?” Mom asked sharply. “I don’t see a reason for him to go along to drop you off at a sleepover.”

“Why not?” I asked, trying not to let the impatience I was feeling seep into my voice. It was too easy to upset Mom and make her pull the plug on me going out at all. I had to tread carefully.

“Sebastian is…” Mom sighed as she took a step closer and I tensed up. “He’s older than you, sweetheart. And more experienced. I would hate for him to have different expectations?—”

“We’re just dropping her off, Mom.” Unlike me, Dean didn’t try to hide his annoyance. “Sebastian won’t even be getting out of the car. Can we go now?”

There was a long pause before Mom said, “Okay. But Eleanor, do you need me to pick you up in the morning?”

It didn’t escape my notice that she didn’t ask Dean what his plans were for the night.

Sometimes, I got the sense that she preferred not to know.

She was happy to turn a blind eye to whatever he got up to, as long as he didn’t end up in the back of a cop car or embarrass the family somehow.

Me, though? She would have locked me up in a tower like Rapunzel if she could.

“I’ll walk,” I said quickly. My plan was to come back late tonight and tell them that Clementine wasn’t feeling well so I’d come home, but on the off chance that I ended up sleeping somewhere else, I didn’t need her showing up at Clementine’s house in the morning looking for me.

If her parents opened the door, they wouldn’t lie for me, and then I would be grounded for a century.

Dean seemed to take that as the end of the conversation and finished opening the door, letting us step outside.

I waited until we were off the porch, and therefore out of sight from the window, before I took off my jacket and left it in the small bin Dean and I kept outside for this exact purpose.

Even though I didn’t go out much, I was very used to wearing outfits my mom didn’t approve of, because her standards for my outfits were basically me looking like I was going to church.

“You need to get better at lying,” Dean muttered to me as we crossed the lawn to Sebastian’s house.

“I got us out of it, didn’t I?”

He snorted. “Barely.”

I thought I’d done pretty well, but I wasn’t going to argue with him.

Even though it was Sebastian who had invited me here, I knew Dean held a lot of control.

If he decided he didn’t want me anywhere near his friends, he could end this night easily.

Sometimes it was better not to rock the boat, and I’d learned when to pick my battles.

I didn’t know the Novaks well enough to walk right into their house without knocking, but apparently Dean did because he didn’t hesitate to throw open the door and walk straight into the chaos.

With four teenagers in the house, their house was always a bit of madness but it was especially bad tonight, with most of them planning to go to this party.

Lavender was running upstairs as we walked in, but she yelled a hello over her shoulder before disappearing on the landing.

Imogen was just past the foyer, yelling for Ainsley, her twin sister.

Ainsley either couldn’t hear her over the music that was blasting from upstairs or she was choosing to ignore her.

The whole house had the suffocating air of too many hair products and perfume mixing together, and I barely managed to hold back a cough.

And in the midst of it all, Mrs. Novak appeared from the kitchen, looking tired but smiling brightly in the way she always did.

“Nora!” she exclaimed, pulling me into a hug. “I haven’t seen you in forever. How are you, honey?”

Mrs. Novak was the sweetest woman I’d ever met and acted like a mom to every one of her children’s friends. It made me so sad how everything had gone with her husband, because I couldn’t imagine how anyone could hurt such a kind-hearted person.

“Sebastian is just upstairs but he’ll be down in a minute,” she told Dean. “Or you can go up, but I can’t promise you won’t get trampled by the girls.” She looked at me curiously. “Are you here to see Ainsley and Imogen?”

I understood why that would be her assumption, even if I never really hung out with the twins.

The idea of me being here to hang out with Sebastian and Dean was so laughable that it would have been much more believable that I was here to see one of the girls.

At least they were all on the swim team with me, so I had some connection to them.

“She’s coming out with us,” Dean said flatly. Clearly, he had not warmed up to this idea at all in the couple of hours since Sebastian suggested it. But Mrs. Novak didn’t seem to notice his tone as she beamed.

“How nice! Isn’t it nice to have a sibling so close in age? A built-in best friend.”

She was speaking from experience, I knew, because all her kids were born incredibly close together.

Sebastian and Lavender were Irish twins, born in the same year with Sebastian being a January baby and Lavender a December baby.

Then Ainsley and Imogen were literal twins, who were born almost exactly a year after Lavender.

The times I’d been out with them, people frequently asked if Lavender, Ainsley and Imogen were triplets.

Sebastian had told me that because of their birthdays, they were all in different grades back in the UK, but because grades were based on birth year here, he and Lavender got put in the same class instead.

He claimed they hated it growing up but now they seemed really close, so I wondered if Mrs. Novak’s comment about a built-in best friend was accurate for her kids.

“I think so too,” I said, even though Dean and I were the furthest thing from being close siblings like she was describing. But it was the image that we put out to the world because, of course, a perfect family meant perfect siblings who got along at all times.

“Sebastian!” Dean yelled up the stairs, apparently over this conversation. “Hurry up, I want to get going.”

I wasn’t sure why he was so desperate to get to this thing.

I mean, wasn’t it a rule of parties that you didn’t try to get there early?

I was still only going off movies, but I was pretty sure that rule was accurate.

And since none of Sebastian’s sisters were ready, I had to assume we were going earlier than everyone.

I wondered if there was some ulterior motive for him.

Maybe he was meeting a girl? I couldn’t imagine any girl who could put up with his arrogance, but then maybe that was just me.

I was probably a little biased against him.