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Chapter 9

"Uh, uh, sleeping..." Mary stuttered to a stop. The look on Dominique's face told her that she was so dead.

"You weren't here last night, and you were not here at six this morning. I want to know where you were."

"Um..." Mary hesitated. She didn't want to get her friend in danger, but Tami wouldn't mind... she hoped. "I was at Tami's last night."

Dominique wrinkled her nose. "A sleepover? Did I tell you you could have the night off?"

You never give me a night off, thought Mary.

"No," she said.

"Well. Then I'll just take your phone, and, by the way, the twins' rooms need to be cleaned."

Mary almost groaned.

"And then, make sure to do the laundry and the list I left for you on your bedroom door last night when you weren't here."

Mary nodded, but before she could make an exit, Dominique totally stopped her in her tracks. "And you'll need to organize the twins' sixteenth birthday party."

"Didn't... didn't they turn sixteen last year? And their birthday isn't for a week!"

"They will keep turning sixteen until I tell them to stop, and this is a big party. With your non-existent brain, you'll need a week, won't you honey? Just add that to the list. And make my breakfast. NOW!"

Quickly, trying to hide her extremely annoyed face, Mary ran off to do as she was told.

It was mid afternoon and under pretence that Mary was going shopping for the party Dominique had let her out. Of course Mary wasn't shopping for the party – she was shopping for herself, with Tami.

She had currently purchased five items a pair of blue three quarter length sweatpants with the word dance up the side with that some pink zebra pinked converse, a black hoddie with the words Dance Swag on it in orange and red. A turquoise short sleeve t-shirt that read Dance Your Heart Out in pink and white. Finally a black tank top with pink words that read dancing like nobody is watching. Of course Tami was encouraging her to buy more and she would but she was having a hard time trying to hide Joey's credit card. The black centurion card stood out and showed Mary had wealth or was close to someone who was rich.

With purchase of a few more hoodies, t-shirts, new dance trainers, two pairs of jeans, leggings and a coat. Mary was done. Tami insisted she need some accessories so Mary let her talk her into buying some as well as a purple silk mini dress, as well as some purple heels – Mary knew Joey would love if she'd ever allow him to see her in it.

This time, Mary was going to get back to the house by five in the morning, but after telling Dominique that she'd had a sleepover with Tami (something she hardly ever did), the idea had stuck in her head.

So now she was on her stomach in Tami's room, looking over an old photo album. It was a bunch of their middle school pictures, and Mary thought they looked a little surreal. Nothing was as simple now as it had been then.

Tami came into the room then, holding a couple cans of root beer, for some reason she loved the stuff, and sat next to her. "Oh! I remember that one!" she said, pointing to one picture, which had been when they were in seventh grade, actually their first sleepover. Mary's hair was messy and tangled, and her eyes were closed, she'd blinked during the picture. Tami had had a fit of giggles when she'd seen it the first time.

"Yeah," she muttered. "It was fun, huh?"

Tami looked at her sideways. "What's up?" she asked.

"What do you mean?"

Tami sighed. "You're distracted, and you keep looking like you're gonna cry. I mean sure our lives suck, but they don't suck all THAT much."

Mary sighed. "It's nothing Tami. Just school and home interfering constantly."

"Mm hmm. No boys catch your fancy?" Okay, now this was getting into dangerous waters. Time for the ultimate subject changer.

"No, but I've been wondering, what new outfits have you been designing?"

That did the trick. Tami beamed. "Thought you'd never ask!" she said excitedly, and jumped to her closet, which was filled to bursting with random bits of outfits that Tami would put together in a hodge-podge that actually didn't all look too bad on her. But Mary knew that if she tried to pull any of it off, she'd fail pretty epically.

She came out of the mess, dressed in a pink and orange plaid dress that went to just above her knees with teal leggings and brown combat boots. But what made it really Tami, was the belt. It was black, inlaid with rhinestones, and so long that once she'd fastened it, the excess trailed off down the side of her dress, almost reaching the hem.

"How is it?" she asked, twirling.

"You look... quite dashing." Mary

The girls were soon dressing up, eating junk and watching movies. Tami's mind firmly away from the subject of boys. While Mary had her mind, as always, on Joey.

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Gabriella Somerfield and musicalgirl4474