I wasn’t sure what compelled me to do it, but I answered, “As soon as I can get a ring on that finger.”

I put my arm around Taylor’s shoulders. Her face and ears were red again, but I was confident it was the kind of color that didn’t hurt her essence.

10

TAYLOR

I started sketching out the rough draft of what I was thinking for Mike’s present on the number five. It was a cardboard, hollow character. I was hoping I could get something decent done in time to gift it to Mike at the party.

I tried to block out that Austin had seen my house. Met my dad. Met my dog and sister, too. But most importantly, he saw where we lived.

The Burathons were not rich, but they didn’t ever want for anything either. They had new cars, and all the kids got cars. Their holidays were ginormous displays of affection and spoiling.

I had it different. We were living in the house that my mother’s parents gave to her when they went into a retirement home together. It was in poor condition. There were so many things wrong with it that getting started seemed fruitless. My room was spotless for as long as I could remember. I didn’t know when I got obsessed with keeping my space “normal,” but it was a clear decision I made very early. Mom liked to joke that the nurses switched me at birth for someone else’s kid before she left.

Having the house be the way it was gave me enormous stress. Living there was pretty rough. If I tried to move my need to clean outside my room, my father would have a fit. He would say I was ungrateful when I scrubbed the kitchen counter cabinets free of their years of slimy grim.

Dad seemed to buy into the delusion that if we didn’t have people over, or no one saw how we lived, that we didn’t actually live that way.

Raven did her best. She was not a clean freak like I was. She was also content to stay home while I had the exact opposite response. I tried to get away as often as I could. I noticed she liked to spend downtime in my room. Maybe the lack of chaos soothed her.

Peaches entered the room, back from her jaunt with some of the boys to secure alcohol. She tossed her bag onto the floor and did a flying belly flop onto Teddi’s bed with me.

“I saw you and Austin left together. How did that go?” Peaches leaned over me to grab a green ink pen. I really enjoyed trying to draw, but Peaches was talented at it. She was doing a quick sketch of Mike with a birthday crown on in the zero.