I was so close to finishing this chapter when I accidentally closed Microsoft without saving it. Not only did I finish this chapter today, I had to re-write two-thirds of it.
2. Is That A Dare?
"Put it on speaker," Chelsea bleats over her friends shoulder. The two of them are lying on Spencer's very blue bedcovers which match the walls of Spencer's very blue room. Spencer despises the color; she likes to think of it as hospital scrub blue.
"Why are you even here?" Spencer growls back irritably.
She rolls her eyes before replying. "To make sure you don't back out of this. Now, put it on speaker."
"Stay quiet." Spencer snaps. She focuses on the slip of paper with 7-digits on it, and, taking a deep breath, dials the number.
She presses speakerphone too.
"Hello?" says the voice on the other side, rough and scratchy through the connection.
"Hi." Spencer picks at the lint on her comforter, wondering what her own voice sounds like on the other end.
"Uh, who is this?" The voice asks sounding very confused. Chelsea quivers with silent giggles. Spencer turns to glare at her.
"It's Spencer Carlin."
"Who?" Spencer rolls her eyes.
"Spencer Carlin. You know, the girl you randomly walked up to yesterday, informed her that she was going to prom with you, and told you to call her."
"Oh."
By now, Chelsea is positively hysterical. Great heaving breaths blow out from her lungs, and she gasps uncontrollably. Even on the other side of the call the girl can hear it. "Is everything all right over there?" she asks nervously.
"Yeah, it's just my stupid friend who I'm about to kick out of my house if she doesn't get ahold of herself," Spencer answers rather loudly. For starters, she kicks Chelsea off the bed. With a thump, Chelsea lands on the hardwood floor.
"Okay, then," the girl says with air of someone who doesn't really understand what's going on but is just going to play along with it. Spencer is about to say something else when a no longer laughing Chelsea whacks her with a pillow.
"Chelsea!" Spencer shrieks.
"What?" Two voices ring out simultaneously, one sounding conspicuously more alarmed than the other.
"Just stay on the phone for a second," Spencer mutters to the girl. Whirling on Chelsea, she drops the phone on her bed and yells, "What the heck did you do that for?"
"You pushed me off the bed!" Chelsea accuses.
"You were making ridiculous noises!"
"That doesn't give you the right to shove me off the bed!"
"That doesn't give you the right to hit me with a pillow!" The minute the words leave Spencer's mouth she knows she's going to regret it. Immediately, Chelsea launches into a full-blown rant about exactly why does have the right to hit Spencer with as many pillows as she wants after all these years of friendship, and having to put up with moody Spencer is not fun at all, and it was impossible not laugh at the conversation they were having, and do you how hard the floor is?
Spencer slaps a hand to her forehead and drags it down her face. If she doesn't stop the torrent now, all three of them are going to be stuck here for several hours. "Alright!" she bellows. "I'm sorry. I get it. Can you just stay there and shut up?"
Chelsea considers it. "Possibly."
With a sigh, Spencer collapses on the bed and asks, "Are you still there?"
"Amazingly, yes." The girl now sounds amused and a lot more confident. Spencer hopes a squirrel attacks the girl next time she walks outside. "Anyways, I'll pick you up around seven on prom night, okay?"
"Wait, you want me to go to prom with you without ever getting to know you?" Spencer's eyes narrow.
"Well, yeah..." the girl says
"I am not going to prom with someone I haven't even been on a date with, much less someone I haven't even actually met."
"A date?" the girl repeats apprehensively.
"Well more than one," Spencer clarifies. "A few dates so I can get to know you."
"A few dates?" the girl stutters.
"Yep."
"I'll, um, figure something out."
"Wait what's your—" the line clicks off, "—name?" Spencer stares at the phone, trying to decide whether or not to call her back.
"That went well," Chelsea remarks brightly. Spencer ardently hopes a squirrel attacks Chelsea too.
"Do you realize what you've dragged me into?" Ashley bursts into her sister's room, yelling at the top of her lungs. The mirror quivers as she slams the door shut behind her. On the other side of the room, fluffy curtains rustle anxiously.
Having long since acclimatized to her sister's dramatics, Kyla is only mildly startled by the sudden intrusion. She reaches for another bottle of nail polish from where she is sitting on the bed before asking, "What?"
"She wants to go on dates! Multiple dates! This was supposed to be a one-time thing. I'm not going out with her!" It doesn't take much to get Ashley storming through the thick carpet of Kyla's room, throwing her hands wildly around her. Her sister pointedly ignores the display. "I don't want to go to prom with her."
"Well, you need to go with somebody," says Kyla placidly once she works out what Ashley is ranting about. She puts down the bottle and brush, wishing that her nails weren't wet so she could fold her arms sternly across her chest. Instead she settles for sounding like her first grade teacher Mrs. Askenazi. "I'm not letting you back out of this now.
"She's crazy. She's one of those people who read math textbooks for fun!"
"I can assure you that nobody reads math textbooks for fun, Ashley," Kyla interrupts, still unruffled.
"Nobody I know reads The Complete Writings of John Winthrop for fun either!" Ashley's voice is shrill with fervor.
"How do you know she was reading that?" The reasonable tone remains firmly in place.
"I saw it on her table."
"How do you know that she was reading it for fun?"
"Because she's just the kind of person who would do that!"
"So you do know someone who reads The Complete Writings of John Winthrop for fun then."
In the intervening silence, Ashley marvels that there can be anything in the world as irritating as Kyla's logic. Strategically, she entirely disregards their last exchange. "What am I supposed to do for a date with her?"
"Why don't you take her out to a nice restaurant?" her sister suggests.
"That's the stupidest idea I've ever heard!" Ashley proclaims.
Not even Kyla's unfaltering patience can survive any longer against her twin's absurdities. "How hard is it to drive her out to a restaurant and eat dinner with her?" she demands.
"I don't have to do any of this. I don't want to do any of this. Why am I doing any of this?" Kyla rises and begins to splutter angrily, her face becoming redder by the second, but Ashley merely bulldozes right over her. "Why the hell do I care about your goddamn reputa—"
"Because," Kyla shouts, arms wind-milling around, splattering nail polish everywhere probably. Not that she cares at this point. "Because we're family, Ash! Why the hell do I jump off goddamn airplanes with you? Because I care about you're safety and I'm trying—"
"Okay, first of all, it's a freaking helicopter. And at least sky-diving is fun. Going on a date with that girl is going to be—"
"Do you really not care about me that much? You can't possibly know for sure that you're going to have such a terrible time, but you won't bother to find out. You won't even risk a bad date for me? Doesn't my happiness mean anything to you?"
After that, Ashley realizes she's won't be winning this argument. She cares about her sister too much. She loves her sister so much that she'll even go on a date with Spencer Carlin. Probably. Well, "a few dates" in reality. "A few" is like— three, right? Ashley ponders whether or not she can whittle this down to two. It's all for her sister's sake though.
But maybe, just maybe, that phrase you won't even risk...
Risk. Risk?
Is there anything Ashley Davies wouldn't risk?
And an unsuspecting Spencer Carlin is about to find out that the Ashley Davies definition of "nice restaurant" does not involve candlelit dinners and fine wine.
It kind of sounds like one of those murder shows right before the commercial break, doesn't it? Luckily, Ashley is not a homicidal maniac.
I bet you'll never guess where they're going for their date.