Part 13 (1/2)

Reilly comes up behind me. ”Reece said she needed the room to herself for like an hour after school.” She shrugs and heads up for the attic, her backpack still on. Typical Reilly, I'm guessing she's planning to get a jumpstart on her homework tonight, so she doesn't have to think about it for the rest of the weekend. Odds are, Rhiannon is already up there.

Which leaves me to my usual routine of City of Ages and trying to figure out what I'm going to say to Reece the second she gets out of the bedroom. I have no clue what she could be up to in there, and part of me suspects I don't want to know. But she couldn't have picked a worse moment.

I make my way upstairs to the attic as well, being sure to leave the door open so I can hear when Reece makes her reappearance. As I suspected, both of my sisters are already hunched over their desk and working. If I were smart I'd do the same, but taking on a quest or a boss in the game might be the only thing that can distract me right now.

I log in to find Nadine already in game and almost log off immediately.

All week, I've been avoiding thinking about Nadine. And she hasn't exactly reached out either, leaving me to wonder if this wasn't just a best friend break up but her telling me she didn't want me in her life at all. I mean she's the one who did this to me. So she should be the one to make it less weird.

But I'm also not going to let her scare me away from my favorite game.

A minute later, she messages me a quick h.e.l.lo and I mentally exhale. She's not trying to avoid me completely, but that also means I have to deal with this now.

Kinsey: Hey. Didn't think you'd be online.

Niddles22: Sorry about the disappearing act. Just had a busy week.

And just like that we decide to take on one of our favorite quest lines together, teaming up to help the Allied army storm the castle on Mount Flaimver. We both throw ourselves into it, staying as a group of two while we work with others to take on the horde of trolls. While I'm sure we're both thinking about it, neither one of us brings up the last weekend or any of the things that happened. I almost feel bad for not reaching out sooner. Almost.

And just when it seems like things could be normal again, I stick my foot in my mouth and ask her what she's getting up to for the weekend.

Niddles22: Laney's mom is taking us to this craft show in the suburbs. She has a table there, selling a bunch of crochet stuff. We're going to help out for the morning, and she'll pay us a little money. Which we'll probably use pretty much right away, buying jewelry at the fair. Laney has all this great stuff from going last year, and there's already a bunch of things I want to get.

Right, Laney. Nadine's new best friend. And of course Laney's mom has a cool job and will pay Nadine to help out. And I'm not even surprised that she has this awesome style, and great jewelry that Nadine wants to. She probably even likes Laney's mom more than she likes me.

All the bitterness I've been trying to push back over the last week comes right back up. But the game keeps moving and I'm forced to push back the response I'm already trying to craft in my head, somehow getting in a subtle dig. It's just enough time for me to take a breath and decide not to be an idiot after all. Because I know if I say something harsh now, there's not going to be any coming back from it later. This is the first time I've hung out with my oldest friend in a week because things have been so weird. If I make it weirder, then there will be no one to blame but myself. Well, I'm sure I could still blame her a little.

But I can't help but pretend that I have more interesting weekend plans than I actually do, claiming I'm going out with Rosie and Jen to do some shopping for Christmas presents. Hopefully she just doesn't ask me about it again later.

The quest ends, and our side is victorious. Just as a message from Nadine pops up on screen, asking me if I want to go again, I hear a door shut down stairs.

Kinsey: BRB, first. Have to go check something.

I should log off completely, but I'm already busy going back over all the things to ask Reece as I charge down the stairs. She's not in the hallway, but the door to her bedroom is now wide open. I peek my head inside. Still no Reece.

I find her in the bathroom, staring at herself in the mirror. But she can't be looking at herself half as hard as I am looking at her. Because something is very, very different. It takes my brain a second to catch up, to figure out what part of this picture doesn't belong.

Reece turns and looks at me, and for the first time I don't see someone who looks like a near identical variation of me. Still mostly identical... The face is all the same, but Reece's hair is blond. Gone is the light brown color that looks just like mine. Just like Rhiannon's and just like Reilly's.

Her hair is blond. How is that possible?

My gaze finds the box of product still sitting on the counter and I piece together what she's done.

”Do you like it?”

”Uhh...” I've forgotten how to form words.

”I thought a lot about what you said to me the other day and realized I needed to make a change. This is a new town, so why not throw a new Reece into the mix? Please tell me it isn't awful.”

”Mom and Dad are going to kill you.” It's not the compliment she was looking for, but it's all I can come up with. Whether or not it looks good is way beyond what I am capable of in this particular moment.

Reece frowns but then squares her shoulders. ”You're right. The first thing is going to be dealing with them. Do you think I should just come out and tell them? Or do I wait for them to notice on their own?”

”Well, they're going to notice the second they see you. You can't exactly hide this.”

”Okay, so I'll face this head on. This is happening. No going back.” The slightest quiver in her voice is the only thing to betray that she's not quite as confident as she's acting.

And with that, Reece sidesteps around me and makes her way toward the stairs heading to the first floor. I sprint up the stairwell in the other direction. First things first, I tell Nadine that I need to log out for a few minutes.

Kinsey: Gotta go. Donovan apocalypse is incoming.

I shut down my computer and turned to my sisters. ”You guys are going to want to give the home work a break. There's about to be a Donovan showdown of epic proportions.” I don't bother explaining to them what Reece has done because I don't want to miss whatever's coming next. My parents gave up on trying to get us to dress similarly years ago, but they've never once budged on our dying our hair until we get older. Sure, it would have given us a quick and easy way to differentiate ourselves, but they didn't care.

A second later, I hear the sound of both Reilly and Rhiannon following after me.

Chapter 20.

We crowd together at the bottom of the stairs. The main floor of our house consists of a fair sized hallway leading from a foyer at the front of the house. If you go straight down the hall, it leads to the kitchen or you can hang a right and go to the living room which connects to the back of the house by the dining room. From the sound of it, my dad and, I a.s.sume, Reece are in the living room. I didn't hear my mom come home yet, but it's possible I missed it. So I'm not sure what to expect when I take a breath and step through the hallway to the living room.

It looks like my dad had been watching TV, but he's now standing up in front of the couch with Reece ten feet away from him. She's also standing, with her hands in her back pockets and her newly colored blond hair hanging down loose over her shoulders. I wish I knew what she'd said when she'd walked in the room, but the aftermath is impossible to miss.

My dad inhales a sharp breath fueling himself to start yelling at Reece, it's a stance I know well. But instead his eyes lock on me. ”Reagan, not now.”

Reece turns around to look at me and I can see plainly on her face she has regrets about the last few seconds. If she'd taken even a second to think things through, she wouldn't have announced it like this. Or maybe she knows she shouldn't have done it at all without talking to all of us. Because this affects all of us.

I'm about to back out of the room and retreat to Reilly and Rhiannon who still don't even really know what's going on, when we all hear the rumbling of the garage door being opened from outside.

Mom's home.

”Do you want to tell her what you've done, or shall I?” My dad asks pointedly.

”Pretty sure she will figure it out on her own.”

I move back toward the hallway and find my sisters waiting for me. I c.o.c.k my head toward the kitchen and the three of us make our retreat. It would be just as easy to watch what's going on from the other side of the room, but none of us wants to be anywhere between Mom and Dad for whatever happens next.

Rhiannon spots Reece for the first time from the kitchen. ”She actually did it? Her hair is blond!” She stammers out, and I nudge her to get her to be quiet.

”Yup,” I whisper. ”There was a highlighting kit in our bathroom. That's why she wouldn't let any of us in.”

”That is a lot of highlights,” Reilly points out. And she's right. While, looking closer at Reece, who can see us staring at her, I can tell that her natural color is still the base of her hair, but the top is almost entirely streaked with a natural looking blond.

”You guys would not believe the day I had,” my mom's voice cuts through everything else as she enters through the front door and dumps her stuff in the hallway.

Usually, I'd shout out a h.e.l.lo but today I stay silent. I don't know who will speak first, but it won't be me and it looks like Rhiannon and Reilly have the same idea.