For the first time in a long, long while, Michelle was hanging out with her friends without their boyfriends. All three of them couldn’t make it for various reasons—Jordan had soccer practice, Xavier got pulled away by his friend group that had apparently gotten increasingly irritated that he kept blowing them off, and Carter had detention for being te to school for a week straight. Everything lined up perfectly for this day.

  It was a beautiful afternoon.

  Sylvie had driven them to the skate park after school, expressing her desire to do some skateboarding for a bit. Even though the rest of them didn’t skate, Michelle didn’t mind as long as it was just her and her friends. As she put her hand in the small bag of chips she’d brought, she watched Sylvie drop into a bowl and skate in a zigzag pattern up and down along the bowl’s sides.

  She gnced over to her friends on her left. Hailey worked on a small crochet cat, a tiny bit of her tongue peeking out of the corner of her mouth as she concentrated. A ball of grey yarn sat on her school bag in her p, the end of it extending into the cat as she made stitches.

  Autumn sat beside Hailey on the grass, reading a thriller book. She looked up when Michelle tapped her on the shoulder. Seeing the opened bag of chips that Michelle was offering to her, her face lit up. She held her novel with one hand instead and reached out to grab some chips with the other.

  “Such a peaceful afternoon,” Michelle sighed, closing her eyes to bask in the warm rays of sunlight. “I love it.”

  The air was fresh, the birds were singing, and the noises made by the skateboarders at the skate park were reassuring. What else could be better than this?

  “So good,” Autumn said in between munching on the chips. “I thought it was gonna rain, but the sun came out instead. Too bad I have to go home before dinner, though. I have so much homework to do today.”

  Hailey paused in her crocheting to look up at them with big, sad eyes. “Guys, I don’t want to go home. What am I going to do about the rat? What if it goes into my bedroom while I’m asleep?”

  During lunch period, she’d shared with them that her mother had spotted a rat in the house and texted her to keep a look out for it when she got home. Apparently, they suspected that it had come from a neighbor who didn’t keep the cleanest house. It was scurrying away as Hailey’s mother had spotted it and had vanished into some unknown hiding spot.

  “Sleep over at my house tonight,” Michelle suggested. “We could do a slumber party.”

  She was only half-joking—her parents were quite x about her best friends coming over since they had all known each other since the first grade. Impromptu sleepovers in her bedroom were implicitly allowed if the girls had permission from their parents to stay over and if they kept the noise down. She’d only had a spontaneous sleepover a couple of times so far, but Michelle’s parents had always taken it in their stride.

  “Wait, really?” Hailey’s gaze transformed from distraught to hopeful.

  “Hey, that’s no fair.” Autumn frowned, grabbing another handful of chips. “You two are going to have fun without me?”

  “You know you can join us too, right?”

  “But my mom won’t let me go to a sleepover when it’s so st minute!”

  Michelle shrugged. “Next time, then. We can always arrange one.”

  In fact, the idea was beginning to sound better by the minute. The guys wouldn’t be allowed to come to a sleepover, so she’d get her friends all to herself for at least a few hours.

  “It’s not about fun, Autumn,” Hailey said. “It’s about me not potentially sleeping in the same room as a rat. Maybe my parents will catch it while I’m gone.”

  Michelle chuckled. Hailey’s mother was even more terrified of little critters than Hailey was, which was saying something. If anyone had the slightest chance of catching a rat, it would be her father. Unfortunately, he frequently had to do overtime at work and more often than not came home te at night—if the rat stayed hidden and out of sight, the odds of him catching it tonight were slim.

  “Maybe,” she said, trying to be supportive. “You guys should look into getting a humane rat trap or something.”

  Hailey dug her phone out of her bag. “My mom probably already did. I’ll ask her about sleeping over. I bet she would want to sleep over at a friend’s if she was able to.”

  Sylvie came strolling over with her skateboard under her arm, looking rejuvenated from her bout of exercise. Setting the skateboard down by her side, she plopped herself down on the grass next to her friends.

  “That felt so good,” she said, grabbing her water bottle from her bag that Michelle had been guarding for her. “Hey, you’re almost done with that cat. It looks so cute.”

  Hailey put her phone away and beamed. “Thanks. I’m thinking of making it into a keychain.”

  “Hey,” Michelle said, turning to Sylvie. “Hailey might sleep over at my house tonight because of the rat in her house. Do you want to come too? Autumn can’t make it, though.”

  Flopping down to a lying position on the grass, Autumn closed her novel and pced it on her stomach. “Wish I could come. My mom would kill me if I even tried to think about it.”

  “It’s just Michelle’s house.” Hailey continued with crocheting the gray cat. “It’s not like you’re going to a house party.”

  “She’s right. The most we’ll get up to is eating too many snacks and staying up too te.”

  Autumn let out a loud, disappointed sigh.

  Sylvie tucked the bottle she’d finished drinking from back into her bag. “Ooh, I’m in. I’ll call my mom and tell her.”

  Autumn stared on in envy as Sylvie had her phone conversation with her mother, apparently having obtained permission right away.

  They zed about on the grass some more after that, soaking up the rare warmth of the sun in the spring.

  When they finally left the skate park, Michelle was reenergized. She’d missed days like these.

  ———

  “I’m having a food coma,” Sylvie mumbled, her arm sliding across the dining table as she id her head down on it.

  Michelle’s parents weren’t home for dinner tonight, so they had gotten takeout before coming to her house. Her empty takeout box that had contained tacos mere thirty minutes before sat a couple of inches away from her face.

  Michelle grinned zily at her friend, feeling the same sort of sleepiness hit her. She’d ordered the same dish as Sylvie.

  “Same.”

  Hailey, after having inhaled a burrito, stretched out her arms over the table as well and yawned. Her eyelids drooped.

  They discarded the trash in the kitchen before trudging towards the living room, intending to lie down on the couches.

  With her voice drowsy, Sylvie said, “Did you hear about the frog in the library today? Natasha was telling me about it before Calculus.”

  “Oh, oh, I heard about it,” Michelle volunteered sleepily, her head feeling like it was full of cotton. “Some freshman found it in the rain st night and wanted to keep it as a pet or something.”

  Hailey shuddered. “Then why bring it to school?"

  “He was afraid his parents would find it and get it rid of it or something. Stupid idea, though, since the teachers confiscated it. I heard he got like, a month’s detention for it.”

  Hailey chose a couch, and Sylvie took the other. Michelle sank herself down on the comfortable armchair beside Sylvie’s couch. The sleepiness was taking over her brain.

  “How did they find it?” Hailey used a cushion as her pillow.

  Sylvie’s snort sounded weak. “They didn’t ‘find’ it—he took it out of the container he was keeping it in. He was trying to show it to his friend and opened the lid to pet it.”

  “That is so dumb.”

  Shifting herself into a more comfortable position on the armchair, Michelle yawned.

  After that dispy, Sylvie’s own yawn followed. “For real. It hopped out of the container onto the table while Miss Bradbury was passing by. I heard she almost passed out.”

  Michelle chuckled and then felt bad. “Did you hear Ms. Saunders looked happy about it? She took her sweet time helping her to the infirmary.”

  Ms. Saunders, their school librarian, was known to have something against a few teachers, Miss Bradbury included, in their school. Students often witnessed her snubbing the aforementioned teachers whenever they crossed paths. The kicker was that the common denominator among all these female teachers she appeared to detest was that they were friendly with one Mr. Copend, a bespectacled biology teacher. Everyone specuted that she had a crush on Mr. Copend, but nobody had any evidence to support the theory.

  “Ew,” Hailey moaned. “If she wants Mr. Copend so bad, she should just talk to him already.”

  Snickering, Sylvie said, “Maybe she already did but got rejected. That’s why she hates the other teachers.”

  “Ew,” Michelle echoed, smiling to herself.

  She’d missed having these idle conversations, moments where they’d talk about nothing important or something silly, with them. Nowadays, it all seemed to be geared towards whatever sweet or cute thing their respective boyfriends had done for them or involved the boyfriends giving their opinions on every little conversation she tried to have with her friends.

  “What happened to the frog, anyway?”

  “I think they caught it and confiscated it,” Sylvie said.

  “Yeah,” Michelle said, trying to recall the story she’d heard from her own cssmate. “They sent a teacher to the park to release it or something.”

  “Good,” Hailey said. “Next time, he should leave it at home. Who brings a frog to school?”

  “Hey, that reminds me. Doesn’t your drama club friend bring his rooster to school or something?”

  Michelle frowned. “Barnaby? He doesn’t. Landon usually escapes from home and comes to school on his own.”

  Hailey sighed. “At least a rooster isn’t slimy like a frog.”

  “That’s frog snder.” Sylvie sluggishly raised an arm into the air. “Justice for the innocent frogs!”

  “Sylvie’s right. The frog didn’t ask to be captured and brought to school. Be nice.”

  “Yeah, be nice.”

  Hailey’s spluttering sounds made Michelle chuckle.

  “How am I being mean? I didn’t say I wanted all frogs to be exterminated from the world. But it’s true that they’re slimy!”

  “They are,” Sylvie said. “But it’s not their fault. Leave them alone.”

  “I do leave them alone—I can’t. I just can’t talk to you guys when you’re being like this. I’m going to sleep.”

  Hailey turned over on the couch so that her back was facing them and began fake-snoring.

  Michelle giggled. She’d missed harassing Hailey with Sylvie—and Autumn, even though she wasn’t here this evening—like this. They used to take turns pestering each other, depending on what the subject matter was.

  It really was a beautiful day. She wished it could st forever.

  LotteStarburst