Laugh Until You Cry

4 Party Planning

“I’m tired and I’m mad and I’m so incredibly tired of being mad,” I mutter to Brian after dance rehearsals on Wednesday as we leave the building. I don’t know why this Charlotte girl decided that she hates me or why she wants Andrew but all three days this week, starting with the elbow touch on Monday, she’s been making excuses to talk to Andrew and apparently, they have anatomy together too and they talk a lot in that class. I hate her. I hate her so much. Anyway, I’m not walking with Andrew because he’s a jerk and I refuse to talk to him today. It’s not that I’m giving him the silent treatment, I just want one full day where I don’t have to be mad and arguing for hours on end.

“I know,” Brian nods. “But once you get through this fight, you guys will be pretty much indestructible.”

“Yeah,” I sigh. “Are you going shopping with us tonight?”

“Shopping for what?”

“Party stuff,” I explain. “For the party this weekend and everything. We’re not even going to the mall so you don’t have to worry about carrying the bags or anything, we’re just going to go to the party store.”

“Sure,” He chuckles. “I’ll come with you guys.”

“Cool, so-“ I start to speak but when Anthony calls my name from behind me, I stop talking and turn to see him jogging towards me and Brian and then when he approaches us, he abruptly stops.

“Hey, can we talk?” He wonders.

“Yeah, I guess,” I nod and then look over at Brian. “Tell Mason to wait for me. I’ll catch up with you guys.”

He nods at me and then glances over at Anthony suspiciously and then starts to walk away. “Okay, I’ll tell her. See you soon then.”

Once Brian walks away towards the dorm building where we were supposed to meet Sienna and Mason to continue our party planning right after class, I turn to look at my brother. “What’s up? And can we make it quick? I have a thing.”

“Yeah, it’ll be quick,” He assures me. “It’s about Thanksgiving break. I just got off of the phone with Mom and she said that they’re going Tennessee for Thanksgiving and they want us to fly out there with them for break.”

“When’s Thanksgiving?” I wonder, trying to think of what day today is and what day our Thanksgiving break starts on.

“Next week, Stell,” He chuckles as if it’s weird that I didn’t know that. I’ve been so preoccupied with Andrew that I didn’t even realize that we didn’t have school for three days next week. “Do you want to go?”

“Yeah, I’ll go,” I nod. “Why didn’t they call me too?”

He shrugs. “I told them that I’d tell you about it. I’m sure if you want to talk to them, you can just call them though. Anyway, Mom said that you can bring Andrew if you want.”

“No,” I say quickly. “I’m not going to do that, a vacation away from him sounds nice right now.”

“Really? Okay then. Well we leave on Wednesday and that’s it, so you can go do your thing now,” He says before turning to walk away.

Without saying goodbye or anything, I just turn and continue on my pursuit to get to the dorm building so that we can go shopping.

Me and my brother used to be really close when we were little. We were like best friends because our parents were absolute workaholics so, being raised by a team of nannies, we naturally grew close to each other. We were really all each other had. Anyway, when we got into high school (we’re twins, so we are in the same grade and everything), our parents sent us off to a boarding school so that they could quit their jobs and buy an RV so that they can travel the country without the burden of having two kids to watch out for. Anyway, my best friend came with us to Vaughn and her name was Carmen. Anthony and Carmen were dating and I didn’t like that but they were both happy so I got over my hesitation and just let them be happy without any complaints. The first five months of my freshman year were pretty good. I had my best friend, my awesome brother, and I had an amazing boyfriend, James. He was in my biology class, which is how we met, and we’d been dating for a while and I was pretty in love with him. Anyway, around this time of year (November), he broke up with Carmen out of the blue. It broke her heart so terribly that she couldn’t even stand to be around him so she left and went back home to Maine, which is where I’m from as well. I knew something bad like that would happen if they dated but she never believed me but Anthony would never talk to me about it- he never told me why he broke up with her. Anyway, just a few weeks after that, he started talking to Gianna and she was like a vampire to him. She possessed him, made him a completely different person. She convinced him that if he wanted to continue to go out with her, he’d have to “prove his loyalty” and to do that, he had to get James to break up with me. I’m not sure why she hated me, but she did and she wanted me out of the picture. Apparently, I spent too much time with Anthony or something. So then, Anthony told James that I had the clap. James, being a ridiculously stupid person, believed Anthony against me and assumed that I’d cheated on him so he broke up with me. I was absolutely heartbroken. I had really loved James and then he was gone in the blink of an eye just a few weeks after I lost my best friend. So not only did I lost my best friend and my boyfriend, I lost my brother to. I stopped talking to him after that, which is exactly what Gianna wanted. Anthony wanted me to forgive him. He’d text me, call me, and try to catch me before or after classes, stop by my dorm. I wouldn’t have any of it though. He was so irritated that I’d stopped talking to him that he officially started going out with Gianna and they quickly became the power couple in school. I was mad at him for everything that he’d done to me and he was mad at me for cutting him out of my life so we just never got along after that. He’d been with Gianna up until last summer when a whirlwind of things began happening. First of all, Sienna showed up and Gianna decided to hate her for two reasons. The first one being that she was friends with me (we were roommates during the summer so naturally, we became friends pretty quickly) and the second one being that she’s a really, really good dancer and Gianna doesn’t like competition. After Sienna got there, Gianna and her goons attacked her at night, tied her up, and then threw her into the pool to leave her to drown. Anthony was there, helping them drown my completely innocent best friend. He claimed that after they threw her in the pool and everyone else left, he stayed back to pull her out of the pool because they just wanted to scare her but that’s still just not okay at all. Gianna and Anthony finally broke up after that, when he realized that Gianna was cheating on him with one of his best friends. Fortunately, Gianna and all three of her sidekicks or whatever got expelled after the incident with the firecracker, so they are obviously not a problem anymore and once Anthony got rid of Gianna and realized what a parasite she was to him, he started working harder for my forgiveness. I’ve moved on from all of the crap that he’s done in the past but we’re still not as close as we used to be and I don’t think we’ll ever be that close again after going three years just absolutely hating each other. At least we get along now, that part is really nice.