The moment Annette turned her phone on, it immediately buzzed with a text. She took another bite of her everything bagel with butter, grabbed her coffee from the microwave then checked her phone.
‘Selene!! Time for senior year, bitches! want me 2 pick u up? Chloe iz wit me’
Annette replied a yes, covering her keyboard with grease from her bagel. She sat at the kitchen table, the house empty other than her. Her mom had already left for work and the maid wasn’t supposed to come until ten. She reached for the cup of coffee her mother prepared for her, taking a cautious sip in case it was too hot. She winced at the overly sweet taste. Disgusting Her phone vibrated again with a new text from Amber.
‘U want coffee? Chloe wants Starbucks. latte, lite, 3 sugars, rite?’
She smiled, momentarily loving Chloe’s obsession with Starbucks cappuccinos that she normally found annoying.
‘U no it. :p But 2day, make it 2 sugars. my moms cofee suxs’
Annette spilled the too sweet coffee down the drain, gagging when the dyed brown sugar slowly dripped from the cup after all the coffee was gone. She was almost out the door when she remembered her insulin pill and rushed back upstairs to get the little orange pill before her friends arrived. The daily dose of *DN* was just a constant reminder of who she really was. It was hard to get them after Selene died, but she, as always, found a way. She was a smart girl, after all.
She dry swallowed the pill then stared out the window towards the orange-red leaves falling from the trees in the woods surrounding the house or better phrased, mansion.
“Imma get your heart racing in my skin-tight jeans, be your teenage dream tonight. Let you put your hands on me, in my skin-tight jeans, be your teenage dream tonight”
Two off-key voices loudly sang along with Katy Perry, before the horn beeped and the music was turned down. Annette glanced down and saw her two best friends, sitting in Amber’s Mercedes, looking up at her expectantly through the window.
“Yo, Selene, my homie! We’re baaaack!” Chloe called in her infamous gangster voice. The only reason it was funny was because they all lived in Fieldstone, one of the richest, safest neighborhoods in the country.
“We brought coffee!” Amber called, holding the green and white cup up towards Selene’s window in one hand, a lit cigarette in the other .
“I call shotgun!” Annette called through the window. She ran down the stairs, threw her bag over her shoulder and walked outside, locking the door securely behind her. The smoke from the cigarette twirled in the air, doing the tango with the falling leaves from the tree above the waiting car.
“No way! I already got shotgun.” Chloe said, back in her normal preppy girl voice.
“Yeah, well, you didn’t call it so my seat now.” Annette answered with a smile. Chloe groaned and slid in the back, allowing Annette to jump in next to Amber.
“Senior year, here we come!” Chloe yelled. Annette let out a whoop and Amber rolled her eyes with a carefree smile on her lip gloss tinted lips.
Amber took a last drag of the cigarette before tossing it behind her where it landed on a golden leaf. The leaf shriveled up, turning orange then black, before dissolving completely. Chloe reached over and switched the music up, listening for a moment then singing along with Britney. Soon Amber joined in and Annette looked away from the dying leaf and sang too, falling back into routine.
For some reason though, as Amber started the car and began to drive away, Annette glanced back at the leaf’s ashes, feeling a strange sense of de ja vu. Something inside her was whispering the importance of this scene, but Annette couldn’t seem to grasp what it was. It was like the ’What’s different between these two pictures’ game Annette always played as a kid; she just couldn’t see the last wrong thing.
It’s a shame how such a simple and obvious detail might have saved her life.
