"Better?" Natasha asked.
My breath was shaky. "Yeah. Thanks."
I got up, grabbed a tissue from my desk, and blew into it. Hard. I sucked in a few broken breaths and blew again. "Did you know that Thomas had a brother?" I asked her.
26
"Yeah. Blake. He graduated last year," Natasha said. "Why? Didn't you?"
I sniffled. Toyed with the soaked tissue. "He never told me."
"Wow. Maybe everyone has someone in their lives they can't talk about," Natasha said.
She was referencing Leanne Shore, her girlfriend, but I instantly thought of my mother. My mother, who was probably passed out in her bed drooling right now, even though it was four o'clock in the afternoon. An open bottle of pills would be on her nightstand and some bad Court TV reality show would be playing in the background. I wondered if my father had even told her what had happened. That had been a fun phone call. It had taken me twenty minutes to convince him not to pull me out of school. When he'd finally agreed I had felt relief beyond anything I'd felt before. I did not want to go back to my dung-colored life in Croton, Pennsylvania. Even if there was, potentially, a murderer running around campus. Easton with a murderer was far better than Croton High without one. It was an indisputable fact.
"Was Blake there? Did you talk to him?" Natasha asked.
At that moment, the door was flung open, and Noelle and Ariana burst in, followed by Rose Sakowitz and the Twin Cities- London Simmons and Vienna Clark. They had all changed out of their funeral drab and into much more colorful outfits. In their arms they carried a half-dozen bakery boxes and various bottles of champagne.
"Reed Brennan! Welcome to your first Fat Phoebe party!"
27
London squealed, holding up two bottles of champ
agne. Her ever-pushed-up breasts nearly spilled out of her tank top, and her dark hair was done in two low ponytails. One look at her in that getup and half the guys I knew would have orgasmed on the spot.
"You guys--" Natasha said, rolling her eyes.
"Come on! It's the perfect remedy for whatever ails you," Vienna said, opening one of the boxes. Inside were at least a dozen perfect-looking chocolate eclairs.
"What's a Fat Phoebe party?" I asked.
I noticed that Kiran and Taylor were suspiciously absent, but upon arrival at the Easton gates each had been catatonic for different reasons. Hopefully, they were both already sleeping it off.
"It's an age-old tradition with a highly inappropriate title," Ariana explained.
"It all started, like, ten years ago when this manic-depressive girl got into Billings," Vienna explained.
"Phoebe Appleby," Rose put in.
"Unfortunate name," Noelle said with a shudder.
"Really slipped through the cracks, that one," London said.
"Anyway, whenever Phoebe got depressed--"
"Which, according to legend, was every day--"
"She ordered up a bunch of pastries from the local patisserie and broke out a bottle of Cristal--"
"And threw a Fat Phoebe party! Whooo!" London cried, lifting the bottles again.
"Though I don't think that's what she called it," Ariana put in.
28
"Basically, it's champagne and chocolate," Noelle explained. She walked over and hooked her arm around my neck. "Obscene amounts of both."