expired

Chapter 4, Part 1

After the text from Jason's mom last night, I fell right asleep and almost slept in until noon the next day but Tia ended up waking me up. If the world's sleepiest teen has to wake you up, you know you're a little bit of a mess.

    "Your phone's been buzzing nonstop for, like, two hours," Tia informed me after jarring me awake by dumping half a glass of cold water on my face. It was absolutely lovely.

    I rolled over, grimacing at the feeling of the moist sheets underneath me as I looked at my phone. A string of texts from Clay greeted me on my lockscreen, among them questions such as "did you hear from Mrs. Freeman?" and "don't worry she's not a stalker she's just my neighbor" and "I still want to know how you knew, that was insane". Ignoring the last one I put my phone face down on the nightstand and peeled the wet sheets away from my skin before tackling Tia to get my revenge.

    Just as I had pinned Tia to the ground and had gotten a fistful of her hair in one hand and a pair of shears in the other Mrs. Das came into the room, pretending to scold us at Tia and I laughed until our stomachs hurt. By how much my core hurt every time I left Tia's house I thought that she and I should have rock-hard abs, but it was not so.

"Do you girls want breakfast?" Mrs. Das called from downstairs thirty minutes later, but by the strong smell of waffles ascending the staircase to our noses, I thought that she had already assumed our answer.

"More of a brunch," Mrs. Das said and nodded to the clock, which read 1:30, as she spooned a heavy dollop of strawberries

in a sugary syrup onto my stack of waffles.

    Eagerly I moved onto the powdered sugar, shaking it onto my mountain of berries. "There's never a wrong time for breakfast," I said.

    "Yes there is," Tia cut in, swiping the sifter of powdered sugar from my hands. "And it's called 3 am on a Tuesday night," she glared at her mom.

    Mrs. Das froze, thumb in mouth, licking off excess from the tower of whipped cream that was toppling over on her waffles. "I was hungry!"

    Tia merely rolled her eyes in response, grabbing a knife and fork for herself and joining me at the island bar. Mrs. Das stood on the other side of the counter, happily munching on her waffles. Even though it was silent (they were really good waffles), it was peaceful, and that's what made me so happy for any amount of time I got to spend at the Das house.

    "Well," Tia said, wiping the excess sticky sugar on her sleeve. "Your late night cooking practice has really been worth it."

    "Thank you," Mrs. Das said, her voice as sappy as the syrup the strawberries were soaking in. I stood and moved to clean my plate in the sink before Mrs. Das stopped me, saying, "Don't worry about it," as she took my dish from my hands and handed it to Tia, "I'm sure Tia won't mind."

    "Why do I have to do it?" Tia protested.

    "Daughters who diss their mothers do dishes," Mrs. Das said. Tia stuck her tongue out at her mom who returned the favor, waving her fingers goodbye as she sauntered out of the room.

    "What a cool cat," I said, moving next to Tia and picking up a dish sponge.

    "The coolest," Tia huffed, blowing a piece of hair out of her face as her soapy hands scrubbed away at the batter bowl.

After Tia and I finished the dishes we went back up to her room and spent the next hour and a half scrolling, because what else would two teenage girls do on a summer day? We then settled in for a Friends marathon, flying through 8 episodes without moving until I realized it was 6:00 and I ought to be on my way home before my parents beat me there. They'd been gone for over two weeks, and it was better if I was in the house when they got there to cover for Matt, whose breath was probably tainted with alcohol.