Unwritten Rules (Rules 1)

“What?” I exclaim, mortified. “Y-You can’t ask me to do that. Isn’t there another way?”

He raises his voice. “Do you want to go to sleep tonight wondering if someone’s on his way to your house? No? Then stop arguing and do it.”

Blake tells me to write down his number and to call him with the house phone as soon as it’s done. I do as I’m told. Then, like I’m no longer in control of my body, I run toward the bathroom that’s directly linked to my bedroom and slam the door open, my breathing shallow and irregular.

“Forgive me,” I say to my brand-new phone before throwing it in the toilet and watching it sink to the bottom.

The screen glitches and turns pitch-black. Poor baby. I run to the house phone, frantically dialing Blake’s number.

“Did you do it?” he asks as soon as he picks up.

“It’s done. Can they still find me?” I pant, out of breath. All this running is making me realize how out of shape I am.

“We can’t know for sure. But thank God you called us right after.”

Realization hits me when I instinctively reach for my phone in my pocket but can’t find it.

“What the heck am I going to do without a phone? My entire life was in there.”

“We’ll take care of that tomorrow, I promise. Why were you calling Kendrick by the way?”

“Promise you won’t get mad.” I pause, overwhelmed. “I might have told Maria that Kendrick is staying with his depressed girlfriend whose parents just got divorced. Okay, bye.” Then, before he can get a word in, I hang up, not emotionally able to deal with their criticism right now.

The words poured out of me so fast, I’m assuming he could barely keep up. I collapse onto my bed and stare at the ceiling, a feeling of shame weighing on my conscience.

Not so long ago, my biggest worries were not making friends and getting lost in my new school.

Now, I’m afraid my simple mistake will hurt not only me but my entire family.

When you think things couldn’t possibly get any worse, life looks at you with a smile and says, “Challenge accepted.”

WAKING UP TO THE SOUND OF the idiots my cousin calls friends rushing into the house and screaming my name isn’t exactly how I wanted my Sunday to start. Way to do it, guys. Fortunately, the lack of complaints from Maria and Kass tells me that they left for work already.

“Canada, where you at?” Will screams. I roll my eyes at the stupid nickname.

“Upstairs,” I shout.

Last night was probably the worst I’ve had in a while. After I canceled my phone via internet, I kept on tossing and turning, alerted by every single noise. Like not having a phone anymore isn’t bad enough, I also couldn’t call for help if someone did track me down and showed up at the house.

No one did. Thank God.

“Good morning, sunshine!” Will walks into my room without knocking. I consider yelling at him but decide against it. This is Will we’re talking about—it’d go through one ear and right out the other. Alex follows not so far behind him.

“You still in bed? What’s wrong with you, woman?” Will says and walks to my window, opening the curtains. I wince, covering my eyes with my hands.

“Well, excuse me. It’s not like I spent the entire night afraid someone was going to track me down and murder me or anything.” I rub my heavy eyelids. “What time is it?”

“Eleven,” Alex replies. “We got you a gift.”

He drops something on the bed. I blink a couple of times, my sight struggling to adapt to the light. As soon as I can see clearly, the first thing that comes to my mind is, are they serious?

“An alarm clock. Gee, thanks.”

Because buying me a new phone isn’t the least they could do after not telling me that Kendrick lost his.

“Would you rather have no way to wake up for school tomorrow?” Will mocks. “We canceled Kendrick’s phone. Kass’s old phone still works if you want it. Now come on, get dressed. We’ve got a long day ahead of us.” He turns away, heading for the door. When did Will have time to talk to Kass?

No, scratch that.