-Flashback #1-

She sat in the middle of the floor, occasionally tracing the pattern in the tiles with her shiny, black pinky fingernail. Her hair wasn’t glossy or mousy, fair or dark; and not quite in the middle, either. It was the color of October, and it shone like a lake, even though it was piled into a disheveled plate of spaghetti and tied with a sparkly purple scrunchie.

From the back, you could’ve mistaken her for one of those emo guys who hung out on the other side of the 7-11 every other Tuesday, but from the front you could tell she was clearly a girl. Even though her figure was mostly hidden by a baggy, dark brown hoodie embellished with swirls brighter than a thousand glowing suns; her bright green eyes seemed to give away her gender. Behind the square-rimmed glasses, they seemed eerily shiny: Not wet-shiny, like she had just been crying, but shiny like you’d imagine the scales of dragons to be.
Those eyes shone like a brilliant plan: Like confidence on toast, like a seasoned adven-turer hiding behind a trench coat, like a jala-peño lurking in a white cardboard carton of leftover Chinese. This brilliant plan occasionally pulled one corner of her chapped lips up into a sort of smirk as she traced the pattern on the grungy floor, where who-knew-what had taken place. From blood rituals to scandalous dares to the dark, hidden secrets spilled to the floor like the vomit we all knew had last year, when… Well, you know.

But that didn’t matter then, and I wasn’t even thinking of that when I first spoke to Victoria Rosalind Malone, who eventually became known to me by various other names, even though I never called her by half of them in person and have never called her “Malone” to her face.

I couldn’t help but feel sorry for her, sitting cross-legged like a demented yoga in-structor gone anarchist in the middle of the floor, running the perfectly-painted fingernail over and over the disgusting rectangles on the abyss of the second-floor girls’ bathroom with that crazed expression.

“You too?” I asked, not knowing what her answer would be.

Her eyes widened; the over-applied eyeliner made her look like an anime character. She stood up. She pointed at me, and her finger quivered in the air for barely a millisecond. Then it grazed my cheek as it was yanked from the air and into a pocket. The other hand was extended like an intended handshake; but then that, too, was withdrawn before I had a chance to fulfill its purpose. Then, without so much as a word to me, the intruder of her peaceful trance, she bolted out of the room in a blur of canvas sneakers, insanity, and a thousand unanswered questions.

I returned to class after those five minutes, feeling a strange twinge on the back of my shoulder blade, like I needed to turn around and look behind me. Like she’d be there. That girl from the bathroom. I felt that twinge for the rest of the week.

-One-

Let me tell you - I don’t like people. Espe-cially other girls. This is because it is a well-known fact that all girls are bitches. Some just put more effort into it than others. I can get along with guys okay, but they’re hard to relate to because they’re not girls. This is exactly the reason I don’t have a best friend.

I spend most of my time alone. I’ve never really been in a “relationship” that lasted for more than two weeks. But, kissing is fun. A lot of fun. You should try it some time.

My weekends usually consist of a date and a lot of time spent walking out alone because my family kind of irritates me. I love them dearly, but I am unfortunately an antisocial teenage girl, and I need many hours alone. I’m not old enough to have a job yet, but when I am I think I’ll just have a summer job. I’m not bored, there’s not a ton of stuff I want to buy for myself, and I like my life the way it is.

Speaking of boredom, I’m getting pretty bored of listening to the Ramones right now. I like the occasional song every now and then, but on account of the fact that they all sound the same, I am dying of boredom. I’m furiously shaking the slim green contraption, trying to get it to shuffle, when I feel a tap on my shoulder.

That’s not something that usually happens when I’m on a walk alone. I try to stay away from people, on account of my unadulterated ir-ritation of humankind. I yank out one hot pink earbud, letting it lightly whack my left shoul-der blade as I spin around.

I don’t know why, but for some reason or another I’m not totally surprised when it’s that girl. That girl from the bathroom. I probably should be surprised; it’s not like I really have a reason to be expecting her. This fact alone should put me in a bad mood, but I’m surprised when it doesn’t.

“I don’t wanna walk around with you,” screams my left earbud.

“Hey,” I say, not totally sure what comes next. “You’re that girl I found sitting on the bathroom floor like an idiot the other day, who for some reason I cannot stop expecting to walk up behind me,” briefly makes the headlines in my poor, confused brain.

“Hey,” she replies. “My name’s Malone. But, um… If you call me that, I’ll probably tear you limb from limb. And you are…?”

In the left side of my brain, the Ramones are getting angrier. “So why do you wanna walk around with me?”

I ignore them and try to carry on a conversation… For some reason completely unknown to me, this is actually an appealing choice.

“Megan. And, um, you can just call me that. So, um,” I feel like I’m the crazy one, all of a sudden. “What do you want me to call you, if I’m not allowed to call you… Um, you know…” I feel her glare soften when she realizes I wasn’t actually going to say it.

“You can call me whatever you want,” she proclaims, as if this is the answer to all of my problems. Not like I even had any until she magically appeared in my life like a fairy godmother headed for a padded room. She flashes a crazed smile. “So,” she says. “Where exactly are we going?”

It takes me a few seconds to realize that we’ve been walking down the beach together. My earbud swings past my pocket as the song ends. I keep the other one in, just in case I feel the urge to act like I have never met my walking companion; which is becoming more and more likely with each passing second.

“I don’t know, exactly,” I reply. This seems like a safe answer with Malone. I’m still thinking of a name for her when I feel my right arm yanked out of its socket. “Run to the hills,” exclaims my left ear. It’s good advice, but something tells me that I’m already running far, far away from my sanity. “Run for your life!”

But I don’t say anything in protest. I just kind of go along with it, breaking into a mind-blowing run beside her. The iron claw on my right forearm loosens its grip. Our matching grey high tops turn into a whirlwind blur of insanity, and I realize that I’m still caught in the tornado thrown in my direction last Monday.

“So,” I echo her question. “Where exactly are we going?” I realize that I really don’t care where we’re going. We’re going, that’s all that matters.

“My house,” she replies.

“Is it close?”

“Relatively. But, then again, everything is relative. So maybe I should just tell you that it’s far away. Then you’ll be surprised when we get there early.”

She’s crazier than I thought. But, then again, I’m starting to like this insanity. I think back to the whirlwind I seem to be swept into whenever she appears on the scene.

“Twister,” I say.

“Huh?”

“I’m calling you Twister from now on.”

“Cool,” she says. “That’s my favorite game. I used to have parties…” her voice trails off. She gets this completely miserable look in her eyes. We stop running and sit down on a rock. “If you’re lonely you can talk to me,” says my left ear.

“What’s the matter?” I ask, strangely in-spired by the dulcet tones of John, Paul, George, and Ringo.

“I just moved,” she says. “From Indiana.”

“Oh,” I say. How do you reply to something like that? “Um,” I falter for a second, begging my powerless mind to think of something. “So, like, you miss your friends and stuff?” Wow. I really love it when grammar fails to infiltrate my sentences. For the millionth time in my life, I’m cursing myself for being born in an English-speaking country.

“Heh. I might miss my friends, if I’d had any.” Her face twists into a strange grimace that seems to be begging me to ask another ques-tion.

“Um… So who went to your parties?”

“My friends.”

“Ah. So, like, what happened to them?”

“They died.”

“Really?”

“No.”

“Oh. So, um… You just don’t want to talk about it, then?”

“No. I can explain it better at home.” And just like that, the normal, crazy Twister is back; pulling me to my feet, leaping across rocks, bouncing along the sandy sidewalk that hugs the beach to our left. I feel like Dorothy, pulled into a tornado and coming out in Oz. But then again, I wasn’t really pulled into it. I realize that I had a choice, and I took the yellow brick road instead of clicking my heels and retreating to my cave of isolation.

Twister comes to an abrupt halt in front of me. “This is it,” she says.

“This is your house?” Not like there’s anything unusual about it. It’s a cute little beach house, painted a warm grey. The door is dark purple, and the porch and gables have a Victorian look to them. A small space to the right of the porch steps is home to a patch of tall green stalks, exploding into bright yellow blossoms at the tops.

No, the only unusual thing about Twister’s house is that I was there exactly a month and two days ago. Only, Twister wasn’t living there.

“Yeah,” she says. “This is my house. We moved a couple weeks ago.”

“Oh.” Suddenly, I feel sick to my stomach.

“What’s the matter?” Her eyebrows knead the center of her forehead, creating a dimple in the middle.

“Nothing.” She pulls a skull out of her pocket. It dangles outside the doorknob as she jiggles her key, and the door opens. I peer in-side, not knowing what to expect.

To my great relief, the inside of the house looks completely different. There’s one of those wok-shaped bamboo chairs in the left corner, with an orange cat curled in a ball of contented napping occupying the center, like the egg yolk of a sunny-side-up. The bamboo egg sits of the edge of a red oriental rug that looks like you could sink into it. This rug is bordered by the all-too familiar tan boards that jigsaw into a dizzying pattern of flooring. I tear my eyes from the boards and onto the off-white walls engulfed by windows whose size I hadn’t noticed until now; probably a result of the new paint. Resting precariously against a staircase at the other end of the room is a futon that matches the egg chair.

I follow Twister up this staircase that I probably shouldn’t know so well. The vivid memories come floating up the stairs, and I start to feel dizzy and nauseous again. I breathe a sigh of relief when a tan door with a painting of a sunflower on it emerges from the right. I’ve never seen this door before, I remind myself. This is a different house.

Twister opens up the door, and I step into a room that looked different last time I was here.

No. I force all thoughts of that night out of my head. This is a different room. This is Twister’s room.

There’s the same wine red carpet that now covers the hall on the second floor. I guess they (whoever “they” are, seeing as I haven’t met Twister’s parents) had finally removed the years of blue carpet memories. The wine red sea was a pleasant break from those blue shadows. Until, of course, I remembered Pokémon.

-Flashback #2-

I sat in the middle of the blue carpet. Tom sat across from me, trying to explain the game for the catillionth time.

“So,” he said; his voice the pleasant nasally soprano only boys under the age of ten can muster. “Look at your card.” I looked at the glossy piece of cardboard in my small, seven-year-old hands. It had a shiny picture of a yellow creature on it. The cute little thing had zigzag ears and giant anime eyes. It had scary-looking lightning bolts surrounding its body in a godly halo of terror.

“What’s this one called?” I asked the wise guru of Pokémon.

“That one’s Pikachu.”

“Why is it getting hit with lightning?” I was terrified of lightning. To my horror, Tom started laughing. “What’s so funny?”

“You don’t know anything about Pokémon, do you?”

“Hey!” I was suddenly mad at Tom for know-ing more than I did; mad at my parents for not letting me watch Pokémon; mad at Pokémon for even existing. It wasn’t fair. I started crying.

When my mom came to pick me up, I didn’t talk to her.

-Not Quite Chapter Two Yet-

I’m sitting across from Twister in the same place I sat so many times with Tom, finishing the Pokémon story.

“Wow,” she says. “You were showing signs of antisocial teenage rebellion at such a young age?” We laugh. I can’t remember the last time I laughed with a girl. Actually, I can. But that just sounds more dramatic.

“Hey,” I giggle. “Like I’m such a rebel?”

“I barely know you,” she realizes. “You could be. But as for the antisocial part… Don’t try to tell me that’s not completely apparent.” We laugh some more.

“So… What happened with this Tom charac-ter?” She’s suddenly curious.

“Your story first.”

She sighs. “Fair enough…”

-Twister’s Story-

This all happened last year. So it’s in the past, right? But for some reason, I can’t let go of it. I’m far away from these people, but I still can’t forgive them. I know that I should, but I can’t. I’ll just give it some more time. Maybe the festering wounds will go away by then. Emo, huh?

So, last year I was living in Indiana. My parents were starting to fight. My sister and I were pretty sure they were going to get a di-vorce. But that’s not important until the end of the story, so just kind of… Keep it in the back of your head.

I grew up in the same town, with the same kids, in a suburb outside of Indianapolis. I was always the weird nerdy kid. I hid behind my long hair and glasses and read fantasy books. I had friends, though. They were kind of on the cool side, I guess. In middle school, we would have parties. I always brought Twister. I think it’s cool that your named me that, by the way.

On my fifteenth birthday, my friends all came over for a party. I got my first kiss that night. I kind of wish I hadn’t, in retrospect. That’s because I guess everyone else liked him. I didn’t know that then, though.

The day after my birthday, I went to school and I didn’t have any friends anymore. Everyone was talking about how, apparently, I’d forced it out of Connor. How I’d asked him to kiss me, because it was my birthday. And how he had, just because we were friends. I tried to explain how that didn’t happen, but of course nobody would believe me.

I came home, and my parents were fighting again. The next week, I trudged through school, keeping my head down. Hiding again. I came home from school one day to find a lawyer at my house, talking to my parents. He asked me if I wanted to stay in Indiana, with my mom; or if I wanted to move to Connecticut with my dad. I chose the move. So, here I am.

-Still Not Quite Chapter Two-

“Wow,” I say when she’s finished. Somehow, in the course of her story, we’ve gone from sitting on the floor to hanging upside-down off of her lime green bedspread, heads grazing the carpet below.

“So,” she says, cutting to the chase. “What happened with Tom?” My words from last Monday come rolling back into my head with my sarcastic eyes. “You, too?”

I guess that, even though I hadn’t known it then, our stories were pretty much the same…

And our reasons for hiding in the bathroom on the first day of school were pretty much the same, too.

-Flashback #3-

Tom was having a party that night, because he was moving. I was kind of excited about it, not like I was happy my best friend was leaving, but because it was a party. He wasn’t moving to a new town or anything, anyways; but that didn’t mean that I wouldn’t miss him being within walking distance from my house.

He’d always been my neighbor, a couple streets down from mine. Our parents had known each other since before we were born, and we had known each other since we were. We had the same birthday; November 8th, 1994. We were born exactly five minutes and twenty-nine seconds apart. Weird, huh?

We were always in the same grade. We were just about always in the same class, even in high school. We would probably keep being in the same classes, because he wasn’t changing schools or anything. He was just moving into a bigger house, because there wasn’t enough room for Sara, his newborn baby sister, in their tiny little beach house.

On the night of the party, I actually tried to look like a girl. I cast aside my baggy jeans and t-shirts that didn’t do my figure justice, straightened my short brown-and-purple hair, and put on more makeup than the usual slight trace of eyeliner.

I looked in the mirror. Had I succeeded? I wasn’t totally sure. But I actually felt pretty, for once. My eyes were lightly surrounded by light blue eye shadow, bringing out their deep blue puddles, and my lips were lightly frosted with pink sparkles. My neck was encircled by the same black leather choker with the peace sign on it I’d worn every day since I turned eleven. The pink tank top I was wearing magically hugged curves I hadn’t known existed until that moment, and the same could be said for my ripped black skinny jeans. My grey Chucks remained the only other constant in my outfit. I felt like a different person.

I walked down the stairs, feeling as much like a fairytale princess as a fifteen-year-old girl possibly can. I was Cinderella, transformed into a beautiful princess.

When I arrived at his house, he looked surprised to see me.

“Hey,” he said. “You look…” His voice trailed off. “Beautiful?” hinted the fantasy-voice inside my head. “You look like a girl!” He smiled. Well, at least it was something…

“Thanks,” I said, still not totally at ease with the idea.

The party was just as fun as I’d expected. All the friends we’d made over the years were there, in the same backyard I knew better than my own. I spent most of my time with Tom, though; dancing like a maniac and reminiscing over a bowl of Doritos.

“Come on,” said Tom, gently taking hold of my right fingertips. He led me to the edge of his backyard, where it was almost completely dark.

We stood by the white picket fence I’d known since forever. We didn’t talk for a bit, just stood there looking at each other. For the first time, I noticed that his eyes were made of light blue ice. His dark brown hair fell in front of them as he leaned forward and kissed me.

“I love you,” he said.

“I love you too,” I said, and we kissed again, this time for longer.

I really, really, really wish I didn’t love him. I really wish I hadn’t kissed him. I really wish I hadn’t gone to his party. I really wish we’d never met.

Because, after we went back to the party, after it started raining and we had to go in-side, he disappeared. I went looking for him, hoping he was waiting for me somewhere.

I found him in his room, kissing someone else. I ran out. I started crying. He didn’t even notice.

No, he didn’t even notice exactly how much he’d hurt me until I stopped talking to him. He tried calling me, he tried throwing rocks at my window, he tried following me around in the halls.

I’m actually glad that he was following me around in the halls, because otherwise I wouldn’t have run into the girls’ bathroom and met Twister. I’m glad that he kept calling me, because I purposefully started dating like a maniac; started walking past his house with other guys. Actually, I’m even glad that I went to his stupid freaking party, because then I wouldn’t have started dressing like a girl.

I wouldn’t have become me.

-Two (Finally)-
I stand outside Tom’s - No, Twister’s house. We wave goodbye, and I go home. It’s time for dinner.

For some reason or another, the dinner topic is my day.

“How was your day?” asks my mom, passing me the green beans. I hate green beans.

“Good.”

“Did you skulk around alone again?”

“No.” When will she realize that my one-word answers are not an invitation for more questions?

“Did you and Tom finally start talking to each other again?” She never loses hope, does she?

“Nope.”

“Who did you walk with, then?”

“Twister.”

“Who’s he?”

“She’s a girl. She just moved here from Indiana.”

“Oh, you must mean Victoria! I met her dad a couple weeks ago. He said she wouldn’t come out of her room.” She laughs. This doesn’t sound at all like something Twister would do. “He said she was taking the move pretty hard.” So she hadn’t told her parents about the kids at school? Sounded more like something I would do, but whatever. “They’re living in Tom’s old house, you know.”

“Yeah, I do. We went there after the walk.”

“That’s nice… How does it look?”

“Nice,” I say. “Different.”

I finish my dinner as quickly as I possibly can, putting my napkin over most of the green beans when nobody’s looking. I head over to the kitchen, letting the dog follow me. I slip her my green beans before I put my plate in the dishwasher. I learned that trick from Tom.
 

-Flashback #4-

Tom came running up the street, obviously ex-cited about something. It was our eleventh birthday, so I wasn’t surprised.

I hurdled down the stairs and opened the door, excited too. Whatever it was, I figured I would have just as much fun with it as he would.

“Come see what I got!” he explained, his voice cracking a bit on the end.

I followed him out of the house, running down the street. It was one of those clear, crisp November days when you can smell the leaves crunching under your feet in dusty orange excitement. The sun shone brightly overhead as we barreled down the street.

When we arrived in his backyard, his mom was standing there, a huge grin on her face, holding a tiny leash. Bouncing from the end of the long red ribbon was a tiny puppy.

“Aww!” I exclaimed. We ran over and started petting it. “What’s its name?”

“Um… I don’t know yet…” His voice trailed off. “What do you think I should name him?” I looked down at the cute little dog, uncertain.

“I don’t know…”

Tom’s mom glanced at her watch. “It’s time to go, guys!” We followed her out, the puppy yipping and yapping behind us. Every year, we have a “family party” at one of our houses. Every other year, it’s at my house. Every other year, it’s at Tom’s. That year, it was at mine.
We came in the front door to see the whole place buzzing with the essence of Birthday.

There was a cake on the kitchen counter, and I could smell spaghetti cooking on the stove.

We always had spaghetti. It was our favorite food.

After we finished off the spaghetti, it was time for cake and presents. We sat down at the table again. We’d both already gotten presents from our parents in the morning. I’d gotten my first skateboard. He got the puppy, of course.

No, at the family parties, we opened our gifts from each other and from each others’ fam-ilies.

When we were really little, they were basically the same thing; but as we got older, we would pick things out for each other.

One of the first years we started picking them out, I got Tom the My Little Pony I’d really wanted, and he’d gotten me a Pokémon action figure set. We were secretly planning to trade, but our parents caught on and gave us the same things. We weren’t allowed to exchange them, either. So Tom ended up with a My Little Pony and I ended up with a Pokémon action figure set. After that, we picked out things that we thought the other would like.

This was the first year that we had actually paid for the gifts ourselves - Tom was old enough to rake peoples’ yards, and I was old enough to babysit. My nervous hands trembled at the edges of the bright red wrapping paper. I hesitantly tore open the present as parents took pictures. Tom and I glanced at each other when we got down to the bare boxes we’d taped together for each other.

I opened the box to find a black leather choker necklace with a silver peace sign that glittered in the camera flashes. I hugged Tom, like I always had.

“Thanks!” I exclaimed as I clasped the necklace. “It’s perfect!”

“Thanks!” he said back. I’d gotten him a new set of wheels for his skateboard. “They’re perfect!” We laughed at our identical reactions.

A few days later, I was eating dinner at Tom’s house. I saw him put his napkin over his green beans. “Shh!” he mimed.

I followed him out into the kitchen. So did Bean. Tom crouched down, letting the puppy eat the beans for him. I laughed, but not loudly enough for his parents to hear me. We headed outside to skateboard in the few golden hours of light we had left.

I miss Tom.

-Two Point Five-

I lay down on my bed, breathing out a sighhh. I really do miss Tom, no kidding or sarcasm there. I look at the shelf of Stuff I’ve had since forever. The Pokémon action figures stare back at me. Pikachu looks happy to be eternally tied to the back of a pink My Little Pony with a twist tie that came in one of the packages. A rock hits my window. I don’t even bother glancing outside anymore.

Another rock hits my window. And another. And another. I put on my headphones to tune it out. Yeah, Tom’s still within walking distance from my house. Just a farther walking distance before. As Twister would say, it’s all relative.

My phone vibrates on my desk. I glance at it, letting it ring. I hear the front door open. This is very unlike Tom. He usually just goes away. But, whatever.

I turn down my iPod, curious about the conversation he’s having with my mom.

That’s when I realize that it’s not him. It’s Twister. I hurdle down the stairs, a thou-sand apologies on the tip of my tongue.

That’s when I realize that Tom’s with her. I narrow my eyes and grip her left arm, dragging her into the next room.

“May I ask,” I say as rudely as I possibly can. “Exactly what you are doing with my ex-best friend?”

“Hey, calm down,” she says, in the way only someone as insane as Twister possibly can. “He has some ‘splainin to do.” I have to admit, even in my cloud of angst, that she has a pretty good Ricky Ricardo imitation. I glare at her and lean against the stairs.

“I think you have some ‘splainin to do first.”
 

-Another Story by Twister-

When you left my house, I knew exactly what I had to do - I had to track down the dumbass who ruined your beautiful friendship. I wasn’t totally sure what I’d do after that, but then again, I’ve always been much more of an action person than a thought person. My philosophy: Act first, plan later. Sure, this usually ends in some disaster or another, but life is much more interesting that way.

My dad came home from work around five, and I immediately asked him a myriad of questions about the people who had lived here before. He said that they were very nice people. He didn’t ask why I was asking where they lived, but he told me not to do anything dangerous. I promised I wouldn’t, slipped on my Chucks, walked a few blocks, and knocked on a purple door. These people really liked their purple doors. I would know. I inherited one.

A nice-looking woman opened the door.

“Hello, Victoria.” She only knew me by my first name, because I hadn’t been talking when she first met me.

“Hey. Um, I was just wondering if Tom was home - I just met his friend Megan, and I’m trying to save their friendship.”

Tom’s mom laughed. “That’s a very noble endeavor of you,” she said.

“Thank you.” She called Tom downstairs.

“Hey,” he said. We stepped out onto the porch. He wasn’t quite as cute as you had de-scribed. You must really like him if you thought he was worth all that heartbreak for.

“Hey,” I said. “My name is Malone, but if you ever call me that, it will probably end in disembowelment. For you, that is,” I added. “Not me.” I wasn’t totally sure if “disembowelment” was a word, but hey, it worked.

“Okay. What do you want me to call you, then?”

“I don’t know, but Megan calls me Twister.”

“Megan?” I enjoyed watching his eyes light up when he said your name.

“Yeah. You know, the girl whose heart you recently tore to shreds.”

“Huh?”

“Anyways, I think that you are both in desperate need of a conversation.” I thought for a second about the most dramatic way to bring him to your house. I decided on the usual arm yank.

-Two and a Half-

“So that’s how you ended up throwing rocks at my window with my ex-best friend?” I ask suspiciously.

“Um… yeah. You’re welcome, by the way.”

“Welcome for what? I finally trust someone enough to tell them the whole story, and you immediately go and drag the person I currently hate most in the world to my house at seven o’ clock at night to try and get me to talk to him?”

“I’m sorry. Would you have preferred seven thirty?”

Despite my hatred for my current predica-ment, I find myself laughing. “Why do you have to try to cheer me up?” I ask. “You know it’s not going to work.”

She smirks. “I know. Just… All I’m asking is that you try to talk to him, okay?”

I cast her an evil glare out of the corners of my eyes. “Okay.”

We walk back into the kitchen, where Tom is petting Sophie. I hate him for petting my dog. I also hate him for looking cute while doing so.

“Hey,” I say. Then I turn to Twister. “See? I tried. Oh, well. What a loss.”

“Since when did you have the smart mouth?” asks Twister.

“Must be contagious.”

“Want some ice for that burn?” Tom joins in on the insult contest. I try to give him an icy stare, but his smile prevents me from doing so. I end up halfway with a pained-looking grimace.

My mom comes down the stairs. “It’s nine o’clock, there are three loud teenagers standing around in my kitchen, and I have a nine-year-old boy who just finished a chapter of Harry Potter and wants to go to bed,” she says. “Please, get out of my house and go do something for once. It’s Saturday night. If you want me to drive you somewhere, let me know.”

We discuss this for a bit.

“Let’s go see Star Trek,” suggests Twister.

“We already did,” says Tom. “Besides, I don’t think it’s running anymore.”

“I missed it?”

“Hey, I’m not the one who didn’t leave my room for two weeks.”

Twister sticks out her tongue at him. “We could see Harry Potter…”

“Saw it,” we reply together this time. I shoot another deadly glare at Tom.

“So? It’s Harry Potter. You can see it more than once… Besides, I think it’s playing in IMAX now.”

We decide to go see Harry Potter in IMAX. We all sit in the back of my mom’s minivan; me on the left, Tom on the right, and Twister in the middle. I glare at Tom the whole ride.

When we get to the movie theater, Twister goes off to buy popcorn, leaving me and Tom alone together. I stand on my tiptoes, trying to find a cute guy to flirt with. I choose a guy who looks like he skateboards and walk over to him. Tom follows.

“Hey,” I say to the guy.

“Hey,” he says.

“What the hell are you doing?” asks Tom.

“Talking,” I reply.

“Is he your boyfriend?” asks Skater Boy.

“No.”

“Oh, of course! I’m not your boyfriend, but you kiss me and tell me you love me the day be-fore I move, and then never talk to me again while maintaining a status as a desperate flirt? Do you do that to all the guys you date now?” Tom’s getting really mad. I’m more furious with every word he says.

“Oh, and you expected me to talk to you again after I walked in on you making out with another girl only an hour later? And, by the way, you kissed me. And you told me you loved me first, by the way.” I fully realize that I’m ranting, but I don’t care.

Skater Boy calmly sips his slushie, watch-ing us with interest. “Sounds like you two have a lot to talk about. Mind if I pretend to be Dr. Phil?”

“Sorry, that position’s already taken.” Twister’s back with a giant bag of popcorn. “You could be Oprah if you want, though.”

“Do I get featured on your show?”

“Was that a pickup line?”

“No, that was a joke.” Skater Boy turns to me. “What’s your friend’s name? I’m afraid she’ll
think I like her if I ask,” he stage-whispers.

“Oh, shut it!” Twister jokingly slaps him across the face.

Skater Boy rubs his right cheek in false pain. “Was that a love hit?”

Twister laughs. “My name’s Malone, but if you ever call me that, I’ll give you fifty mil-lion
more ‘love hits’.” Her fingers scratch the air with quotation marks.

Skater Boy raises one eyebrow and gives her a half-smile. “See, that just makes me want to call you… Malone.” He says the last word in a half-whisper.

Twister narrows her eyes, smiling in spite of herself. “You asked for it!” She takes off her brown hoodie and starts attacking him with it, laughing.

“My name’s George, by the way,” he says between “love hits.” By this point, we’re all laughing.

“I think the movie’s gonna start soon,” says Tom. We all walk into the giant theatre.

Even the previews manage to look utterly epic on the giant screen. Then, as if by magic, we’re swept into the movie. This has to be one of my all-time favorite Harry Potters.

I’m sitting in between Twister and Tom, partially because George wants me and Tom to sit together, partially because Twister wants me and Tom to sit next to each other, and partially because George and Twister want to sit together.

When we get to the scene where Hermione sends a bunch of birds to attack Ron in a fit of rejection, Twister leans over and whispers to me. “See? That’s just like you and Tom!” she ex-claims.

I roll my eyes. “No, it’s not. Hermione and Ron eventually make up.”

“…So who says that you and Tom won’t?”

“Me.”

She sighs. “Suit yourself, then.”

When the movie ends, everyone stands up and claps. I’m about to call my mom and ask for a ride home when Twister and George decide that they want to go to the Shiny Diner. Actually, George decides that he wants to go to the Shiny Diner. Twister decides that she wants to go too, because she’s never been before; and since Tom and I are her ride home, and since it’s only across the street, how could Tom and I be so cold and heartless as to deprive her of a chance to go to the Shiny Diner for the first time?

So I call my mom and ask her if we can go to the Shiny Diner before she picks us up. She rejoices.

“So,” says George, leaning back in a slip-pery green seat with his hands behind his head. “Why haven’t we met before? I mean, we all go to the same school, right?”

“Well,” says Twister thoughtfully. “You haven’t met me yet because I just moved from Indiana. I don’t know about those two, though.”

“Actually…” George scratches the imaginary stubble on his chin and squints his eyes a bit, the picture of deep thought. “No. Never mind.”

“What?” I want to know.

“It’s nothing… Just, you know how you get those déjà vu moments? It’s just one of those, okay?”

I still feel like he’s hiding something as I order my grilled cheese, but I ignore it. I’m never going to find out if I keep pushing. Be-sides, something tells me that Twister would love to try and find out for me.

I actually have a lot of fun for the rest of the night. I’m actually reluctant to leave when my mom picks us up. I actually kind of want to be friends with Tom again.

I'm going to move this thread to the main Lit Spot forum, since it is not so much discussion-oriented, but is actually literature.

Alright, thanks Super Sizz! I wasn't totally sure where to put it... :/

You're quite welcome! :D