“Oh, I’m over that. Victoria told me we’ll be fine since she and Tommy will still be there,” Cassandra said casually, wrenching open her front door and blasting us with the cold AC.
The Hopelys’ house was a four-bedroom that Cass’s parents had built in 1998. My mom had sold them the land, thrilled to finally have neighbors with similarly aged kids, though her affection for the family hadn’t lasted long.Snobby, she called them.
I followed Cassandra inside like I did most days after school—we alternated between her place and mine depending on where we could get the mostprivacy. Because she was a Realtor, my mom was often out, while Cassandra’s mom worked only part-time and was often there in the afternoon. But today, her mom’s CRV was gone.
“We’re home!” Cassandra shouted as we piled in, to confirm the house was empty of parents. Each room of the Hopelys’ looked like the pages of a Ralph Lauren catalog, with busy wallpaper and expensive, uncomfortable furniture. The walls were lined with fancy oil paintings and side tables littered with crystal tchotchkes and antique books we weren’t allowed to touch. It was nothing like my house, where toys were scattered everywhere and each room had a worn, squishy armchair in it. Even the Hopelys’ bathrooms were fancy, with shell-shaped soap you weren’t sure if you were actually supposed to use.
There was music playing down the hall. I couldn’t hear what song it was, but it sounded like rap. The bass was vibrating against the walls. Cassandra ignored it as we headed toward her bedroom.
“Thankgodyou’re home,” Victoria said, appearing in Cass’s open doorway, already changed from her school outfit into an oversized men’s sweatshirt. She looked at Alexandria’s closed door. “They’ve been in there with the door locked and music blaring since we got home.”
The high school got out two hours earlier than we did, so Alex and Will were always home first.
“Ugh.” Cassandra shuddered, looking in the direction of their older sister’s room. “Aren’t they tired?”
“Apparently Will has stamina,” Victoria said, following us into Cassandra’s room. She threw me an apologetic look. “Sorry, Rosie. That’s gross. I forget he’s your brother sometimes.”
I shrugged, too used to it by now to be bothered. “Just don’t give me any details.”
Will and Alex had been dating for all four years of high school, and Alex sometimes thought it was hilarious to give us dating and sex advice, forgetting that what she was describing was what she was doing with my brother. Part of me had suspicions she did it on purpose.
Cassandra and Victoria threw themselves on Cassandra’s bed, while I curled up on the floor.
“How was school?” Cassandra asked her sister, eagerness painted across her face. She was obsessed with all of her sisters, clinging to their every word, and I felt myself doing it sometimes with the Hopelys too. With two brothers, and a younger sister still in pre-K, it was nice to get a glimpse into their world.
Victoria wrapped her arms around her knees and shrugged. “Fine, I guess. A little boring. Everything’s starting to slow down a little. I can’t wait for summer.” She looked back toward Alex’s closed door across the hall. “Alex is driving me fucking insane, though. I get it, they’re graduating, but it’s all she’s talking about. I can’t wait for the next week to pass so she shuts up.” She looked a lot like Alex as she said this. It was the sneer.
Cassandra’s face twisted, and I could see the dilemma forming as she tried to decide which sister’s side to take. “I think she’s just excited,” she offered congenially.
“It’s a big deal,” I agreed, noting the annoyed look Victoria was giving us from inside the hood of her sweatshirt. “Will talks about it a lot too.”
Victoria sighed, pulling the strings of her sweatshirt tighter so it exposed only the smallest segment of her face. “I guess.”
Victoria was at a weird middle age, only thirteen months older than Cassandra and me, who she spent most of her free time with, and three years younger than Alex, who she spent every day at school with. “I’m only toleratingher right now because she’s taking us to the Wellington mall tomorrow to get something new for Matty’s thing,” she said.
Victoria and Alex had both been invited to a party at Matty Mueller’s house that weekend. Matty was a senior who lived with his grandparents. Grandparents who went on a lot of cruises and left Matty home alone most of the time to throw big parties on their secluded property. Cassandra and I had never been invited, but this time Cassandra had threatened to tell their parents where her older sisters were sneaking out to if they didn’t bring us along. We were going to high school soon after all.
“I’m so excited we finally get to come,” Cassandra exclaimed.
Victoria’s eyes narrowed, looking at her younger sister with the amount of irritation she usually reserved for girls she talked shit about at our sleepovers. “I swear to god, Cass, if you do one single thing that embarrasses me …”
A strangled noise escaped from the back of Cassandra’s throat. “When have Ieverembarrassed you?”
The two of them looked like they were about to launch into a long-winded fight that would invariably end in one of them crying about who shrunk whose favorite Forever 21 tank top in the dryer.
Suddenly, the music stopped. There was some shuffling, the squeak of bedsprings, and then the sound of a door opening loudly against the frame.
Alex appeared in the doorway, flushed pink and seemingly a little annoyed.
“What are you three going on and on about in here without me?” she demanded, her beautiful head lolling to one side.
Even then, irritation and all, she had the easy elegance of a girl who knew she was beautiful. Which she was. You could say what you wanted about Alexandria Hopely, but the one undeniable thing about her was that she was ridiculously attractive. You could forget sometimes, when you’d spent theentire night at her house watching her walk around in a big T-shirt eating Oreos, but then she’d round a corner one day, all girl-next-door beauty, and you’d be floored all over again.
I often found myself enviously looking at her tiny ski-slope nose, her bowed lips, the long, tousled hair that was such a specific shade of light gold that was impossible to replicate. The first time I’d seen her in a bikini, it had given me a complex I thought I’d never get rid of. She became my yardstick, what I measured myself by. Will thought it was funny. He called it the Alex Effect.
Victoria resembled Alex the most. It was one of the reasons they fought constantly. Alex sometimes joked that Victoria looked like an unflattering picture of her, which made my eyes widen every time she said it. Victoria always got very quiet when she did.
“Well?”Alex pressed, leaning on Cassandra’s doorframe. “What is going on?”
