Page 10 of Ask No Questions

“It was perfectly boring before! And a girl does live here now. I couldn’t handle all of the white. I felt like I was living in a mental institution!”

“You are being overly dramatic. It wasn’t that bad.”

He walked into the living room from the kitchen, taking in all of the details. After inspecting every new item, he sighed. “I guess it isn’t too awful. I mean navy and gray are okay colors.”

I caught a small smile and took it as my cue. “You love it, just admit it!”

“The L word is a tad strong, but maybe it will grow on me.”

“Perfect because I was thinking we should add another color to really make the room pop! Maybe green, like a kiwi green, not a gross forest color, or maybe coral?”

“Coral? As in pink? No way! I draw the line at pink, and kiwi green? I think you just made that up.”

“Maybe I did, but you’re considering it, I can tell!” I thought about fighting it out for a second then decided to accept a compromise. “Fine, we will go with green, and I will use coral in my room!”

He smiled, maybe it was a grimace, and then walked into his room shaking his head.

Feeling somewhat victorious, I went back out to the balcony to catch the last few minutes of the sunset and called Mckayla to let her know we had won. Since she left my place less than an hour ago, I was confused when she answered her phone after the first ring, yelling at me.

“Aubrey! Thank heaven you called! I need your help pronto!”

“What are you talking about? Help with what?”

“Ava Howard, my neighbor, canceled her end-of-the-summer bonfire because she has some crazy flu or something, and now it’s all on me to put it on!”

There were several key pieces of information missing, but I let it go. She was in full on panic mode, and I immediately began thinking of how to fix it. Mom screwed me up in a lot of ways, but proper party planning was something she drilled into me from a young age.

“Calm down, we can figure this out!” I paced along the windows. I’d never been to a party with her friends, but how different could they be from the ones back home? The basics were the same. Venue, food, drinks, entertainment. We could handle this. “Your mom had bonfires for us every summer growing, it can’t be that hard.”

“This isn’t s’mores and music for two preteens! This is the final party before school starts. It has to be huge and perfect, especially if I’m hosting it! My name cannot be attached to a disastrous––or worse, boring––party!”

“Well, Ava’s your neighbor, so was she planning on having it on the beach in front of your guys’ houses?”

“Yeah, that’s what she told everyone.”

“Well perfect, the hardest part is over if the location is picked out. Next?” I was feeling so mature taking control of the situation rather than relying on my mom or her staff to figure out every problem that emerged.

“There’s the food, firewood, music, seating… everything!” I could tell she was too stressed to be thinking clearly since these were all minor details that would take minutes to solve.

“Does Ava have anything ready that we can just get from her? I can’t imagine she left everything to do on the day of.”

“Oh, uh, good point. Let me think… between the two of us, we should have plenty of chairs and blankets. I’ll ask her about the wood. Maybe we can just use the speakers off the patio for music, plus at least one person always shows up with a guitar. I guess that just leaves the food.”

“See, that's totally something we can handle. Everything else is already taken care of. I will pick you up tomorrow afternoon, and we can get everything else we need before we set up.”

“You are a lifesaver, Aubrey! How did I ever survive with you halfway across the country?” She paused, finally releasing the breath she had been holding. “Oh, I just realized you called me! Unless you're psychic and knew I needed you, I’m guessing you wanted to tell me something.” She and I both laughed, and I remembered Brandon’s reaction.

“I forgot too! I wanted to tell you that Brandon actually liked what we did! He said I can add some green in too, so we need to go back for that and more accents and color for my room!”

“Sounds like a plan, if we can survive tomorrow, we’ll hit the mall this weekend.”

If we survive? How different were parties here? A flutter of nerves took up residence in my stomach. Things have been going so smoothly, I should have known it wouldn’t last.

Six

My mind was racing, and it only felt right that I got my heart racing too. Having access to a gym without having to even leave the building was one of my favorite things about living here.

As I ran on the treadmill, I tried to clear out the remaining images from my nightmare. I was so sick of reliving what happened back at home over and over again every night. I thought the move would be enough to help me forget and let it go, but apparently overcoming trauma wasn’t that easy.