Page 19 of Choosing Her
“I assume you just want purple as well?” I asked. “Because I do also have silver. And a bit of blue but…” I held up the bottle and grimaced. It was old and was covered in various colors of dried nail polish, like they’d all spilled on it when I threw them in a bag to bring them up here. It was almost empty, anyway, and even if I could get it open, I was sure it was actually usable anymore.
“Let’s do silver on the thumbs and purple on the rest. Don’t want us to be too matchy-matchy,” she added to Poppy, sticking out her tongue.
Poppy sighed dramatically. “And here I thought we could wear the same clothes and have the same nails and you would dye your hair to?—”
“Why do I have to be the one to dye my hair?” Lilah demanded, cutting her off.
“It’s easier to dye hair brown than blonde,” Poppy said. She ran a hand over her brown waves. “I’d have to bleach mine and you know how damaging that is.”
“Don’t ruin your nails,” I warned her, eyeing how close they were to running through her hair. It would be so easy for her to get distracted and get her hair stuck to the nails, both smudging them and get polish in her hair that she would need to wash out. She immediately heeded the warning and dropped her hands, then sat down on the edge of The Couch, sitting as still as a statue.
“So, what about your parents, Saylor?” Lilah asked as I begin painting on the silver polish.
“What about them?” I muttered, hoping I was misunderstanding the question somehow. As if she would ask about my parents for any other reason than wondering if they were coming to family day. There was a reason I’d gotten away with telling my friends almost nothing about my parents—at boarding school, it just didn’t come up in conversation. Nobody came over to my house, meaning nobody wondered why they weren’t there. If the topic of families did come up, it was easy to pretend I was just homesick and talking about it made it worse. And being so far away from them meant that it wasn’t noticeable that I never mentioned spending time with them or included them in any stories.
“Are they coming to family day?” Lilah asked, sealing my fate. Maybe I should have just pretended I didn’t hear her. But no, that probably would have made it even more obvious that I was lying. She would have asked again and it would have been awkward.
I let out a long breath, trying to figure out the best way to word it like my parents wanted to come but couldn’t, so they wouldn’t be concerned.
“They’re still travelling in Europe,” I said. As far as excuses went, it was a god one. Better than saying they had to work or had another function to go to. Even though nobody ever argued those excuses, I did always see the sideways glances andquestions in people’s eyes—this is the one time they might see you this month and they couldn’t prioritize it?It would have been easier to fight if they visited at other times or if I went home to see them, but as it was, all my friends were very aware of how often—or infrequently—I saw my family.
“That’s too bad,” Lilah said. She sounded sympathetic, but I did wonder if she was also thinking I was a little lucky for not having to deal with siblings like she was right now. I knew Lilah loved her siblings, but it was also obvious that as one of four—three of whom were incredibly close in age—she could get sick of them sometimes too. “But they’ll be back from Europe soon, right? So they can come to the next ones.”
These family days happened once a month and my parents were only in Europe until the end of November, so they could feasibly come to the one in December or any of the ones next semester. I forced a grin and nodded at Lilah, even though I knew it wasn’t a question of whether theycouldcome, it was a matter of whether they wanted to—and they never did.
CHAPTER 13
saylor
Because of eachof our sports schedules, Crossy and I couldn’t do tutoring until late in the evening. Thursday was one night where his hockey practice went much later than my equestrian club, so I went back to the dorms to shower and change, instead of waiting for him by the stables. It was a rare day that Poppy and Lilah weren’t in my room, since Poppy was busy getting ready for a date with Bear, while Lilah was working on a group project. Of course, that didn’t stop either of them from texting constantly.
Group Name:Regrettable Decisions Inc.
Members:Saylor, Poppy, Lilah, Elodie
Lilah
I might actually kill my group members
Saylor
Do it
Poppy
No everyone will know it was you
Saylor
Every jury in the world will understand
Isn’t being on a jury basically a group project
Elodie
They would REALLY understand
I’d never met Elodie in person, but when Lilah made this group chat last month—previously named Operation Get Poppy and Bear Together—she’d added her. Apparently, she was in the group that Lilah referred to as their band sister-in-laws, a term she’d made up for everyone connected by their siblings being in the famous boyband Take Five. Or, in Poppy’s case, her sister’s boyfriend being in the band. Elodie went to our rival school, Westwood Academy, so we couldn’t meet up with her easily, but from what I’d seen of her in the group chat, she seemed very nice.
