"This outfit looked way different in my head." I tell Steph, looking at the outfit I had chosen for school the next day.
She laughs and grabs a pillow from my bed giving it a big squeeze, "I'm so nervous to start school here."
I don't know why but at the beginning of the summer before we got back to Washington, my mum told me a girl named Stephanie would be staying with us for the duration of senior year.
She arrived two days ago and I was astonished by how naturally pretty she was.
Dark freckles covering her light caramel skin and her nose pierced on its right side with her ring, even the red colour of her box braids interested me.
I had helped her unpack the night she arrived as she asked me to, I eventually I told her a bit of what happened to me.
Nothing too detailed though considering I wasn't sure whether I could trust her or not.
"I don't know how you could go back there, I'd jump into a well if it was me." She says.
I frown and twitch my eyebrows, "Not helping." I let out a laugh and she does the same, apologising.
"Not like that, I mean that you're stronger than me, I wouldn't be able to do it and I'm actually jealous you can to be honest." She smiles at me.
"Thanks." I manage to say.
Stephanie tells me about where she's from and her family background.
New Orleans, Louisiana. Born and bred she told me.
She shows me pictures of her three brothers and shares with me that they lived alone with their mum in a two bedroom flat.
Her drug addict of a father left when her little brother was born and she was eight, and I can't imagine what it'll be like not to have my dad around.
Stephanie lightens the mood but offering to help me prepare dinner when I notice it's already seven thirty.
And school is tomorrow.
