Page 64 of A Vicious Rumor

I sucked in a deep breath as the driver closed the door behind me. I'd been basically escorted to my first sleepover. It was hosted by the Zoo, which at the moment consisted of five girls, two of them being myself and Kitty.

Scissors had given me an entire pep talk about how to behave, what to say, and what not to say. All of it was extremely stressful. I really just wanted to sit in my room and draw or even just do my homework, but Scissors had insisted that I go.

It felt like the houses I visited just kept getting bigger and more grandiose. This house wasn't as large as Scissors', but then again, basically no house was as large as his. It was around the size of Tyson's, but much more garish. There were large marble columns in the front of the house and the big front doors had two large gold knockers on the front.

Before I had the chance to knock, one of the doors swung open. "Hey bitch!" Kitty said in an all-too-cheery voice.

"Hey," I said, doing my best to put on my ditzy girl face and make it through the evening. "Thanks for having me."

"Oh my gosh, shut up," she said, ushering me inside. I stepped inside the foyer and it looked straight out of a movie. Two big spiral staircases stretched out on either side and it was just marble as far as the eyes could see accented by gold, well, everything.

"Take off your shoes if you don't mind," Kitty said. "My dad flips out about dirt tracking in the house, which is weird considering we have maids, but whatever," she said, shrugging.

I still didn't get how all of these people could afford staff. It was totally insane to me that they had the expendable income to pay someone to clean up after them, when my mother and I struggled to pay our electric bill in the winter time.

"Do you want anything to drink?" she asked me.

I shook my head. "No thanks."

"Mkay, well the rest of the girls are upstairs. We're gonna have dinner delivered in a little bit."

"Sounds good," I said, following her up the large staircase. We made our way through the house, which was just as ornately decorated as the foyer. One thing I always thought was so interesting about rich people's homes though, was the fact that they never had any family photos up. Sure, they had really expensive vases and pieces of artwork to hang, but I'd never seen one family photo in a rich person's house. Not in Tyson's, not in Zachary's, and not in Kitty's.

My house was covered with pictures of me and my mom. It made the whole place feel far more like a home. This just felt like a really big house.

"Hey girls! Look who's here!" Kitty said. I bit back a sigh and plastered a smile on my face. The other three girls of the Zoo were Jessica, Alicia, and Bianca. They were exactly the sorts of girls that I avoided before all of this started. Not because of me, but because of them. I just found that these sorts of girls were highly judgmental, and they were never really your friend. When I was younger, I tried to be friends with everyone. I thought then, as I did now, that everyone on this earth was equal. One soul could never be worth more or less than another soul.

But girls like the girls of the Zoo really acted like they were worth more than anyone else. I'd tried making friends with that sort of girl when I was younger, and I'd been hurt really badly. At the time, my mother was really struggling with alcoholism, and I'd confessed this to her. She'd gone and shared it to the entire school in a really embarrassing way. Ever since then, I'd been nervous about telling people too much, even though I hated keeping secrets.

"Hey Lily," Jess said to me.

"Hey," I replied with a forced smile. "What are you guys up to?"

"Oh, nothing," Alicia said, looking bored and annoyed, but I knew that she just had the worst resting bitch face of basically anybody.

"Not true," huffed Bianca. She flipped her chestnut brown hair over her shoulder. "We were trying to find out if Alicia likes anyone."

"And I told you that I didn't," Alicia said, looking down at her nails.

"That's not what I heard," Jess teased. "I heard that you were into Brad."

"Ew, really? Alicia, he's like, kind of fat and a huge dork," Bianca said with a mean-spirited snicker.

"I'm not into Brad," Alicia said, turning around and throwing a pillow at Jess.

"Don't throw things at me!" Jess exclaimed.

"Don't spread rumors about me that aren't true," Alicia yelled back.

"Oh my God," Kitty said, sitting between the two. "You two are worse than an episode of the Real Housewives of Sydney. Calm your pussies, mkay?"

"Bitch," Alicia muttered under her breath.

Jess was about to say something, but Kitty held up her hand. "I have an idea," she said. "Why don't we play a game of truth or dare while we wait for dinner to arrive?"

"That's so childish," Bianca said with a roll of her eyes.

"Too bad," Kitty replied. "Besides, you're just saying that because you're scared about what I'm going to ask you."

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