→ Everyone has their own secrets

→ You know that would be a lie right?

━━━

I called out, ready to proudly exhibit my art work. The wall was covered in a set of stick figures, all in different crayon colors. A messy yellow circle was drawn with lines coming out of each side as a sun and a jig jagged green topping the baseboard. In the middle of the wall, two stick figures, one with a cap on and one with sunglasses, stood tall.

"Jess? You're in here right?" Daddy asked, turning the corner of the living room in his pajamas. "Oh my goodness, what is this angel?" He placed his hand covering his mouth and immediately went on alert, removing the red crayon that I had grasped tightly in my fist off. Dropping on the ground, he immediately swooped down to pick up all the coloring utensils away from my reach.

"My masterpiece, daddy! Do you not like it?" I announced, confused on daddy's reaction.

"Oh Jess," He said his signature phrase and took off his glasses holding them in one hand. He rubbed his eyes and sighed before touching my drawing on the wall. "It's beautiful-" I perked up. "-but you aren't supposed to draw on the wall, love."

"Oh," I mutter quietly, downcasting my eyes. "Sorry."

"Aw, no princess. Come here, let's draw a enormous masterpiece on a piece of paper." He held out his hand towards me and led me towards the huge cupboard near the kitchen. Dropping my hand, he took out a huge piece of scratch paper that extended as long as the rainbow!

... except that there was no pot of gold on the other side.

Immediately, a smile covered my face and I ran to the kitchen counter. Jumping up and down, I reached my hand up as high as it could go to get my crayons that daddy had put there. Daddy taped the sides of the paper on opposite sides of the table and we climbed onto the tall dining room chairs to start coloring.

━━━

Two hours and two pairs of colorful hands later, we had finally finished our drawing.

Blue unfinished circles meant to be droplets of rain were scattered across the paper. Two brown lines stood at both sides of the paper with what looked like a pink cloud on top. 'A cherry blossom tree,' daddy had told me. And its final touch was the two stick figures in the middle- similar to the ones currently on our wall- one with glasses and one with braids.

"It's beautiful." Daddy said quietly with loving eyes, but he wasn't looking at the painting. He was looking at me.

━━━

The closer I got to Ryan's house, the more my anxiety continued to spike up.

This Friday, when Ms. Mandy announced that the projects were due the following Monday, was when I first realized that we hadn't even started the project. Procrastination at its finest, why don't you? When I expressed my concern to Ryan, his only response was a shrug to which I explained to him that we had to meet up outside of school to finish this assignment. Ryan had begrudgingly given me his address and told me to meet him today. Eli and Mason, now in charge of the house as Caden was on a business trip, had reluctantly agreed to let me go with the promise that I would stay safe and that it was for a project. Though they had offered to drop me off, I protested to walk by myself, claiming to want exercise, when in reality, I just didn't want to bother them any more.

Stopping in front of a large house that looked very much similar to a mansion, I checked the address from on the scratch piece of paper I had scribbled it onto, hoping I hadn't gotten it wrong.

5878 Wentil Drive

The addresses matched up.

Plants lined on both sides of the walkway and a fountain sprayed water near the double sided pathway. Two guards stood on the side of a barred gate wearing tightly cut uniforms. "Name," One gruffed, his voice giving out no emotion but slight anger.

"Jessica Jane Willens," I answered, trying to disguise my nerves as confidence.

The second guard looked down at his phone before sending me a curt nod. He walked over to the side of the gate and entered a few buttons on a keypad. The door slowly opened with a screeching noise as the metal hit the road floor.

Without a choice, I walked up the designed stairs and into a large porch. A cushioned chair sat near the front door and a sign stating 'no trespassing' in large red letters sat right above it.

The door flung open just as I was about to ring the doorbell and out came a tall woman. She sidestepped me before turning around to look at me properly, a scowl already placed on her face, as she looked me up and down. Her dark blue coat is perfectly buttoned up to the brim and her long black high heels click as she stepped onto the porch. Her dark red lipstick and high cheekbones clash with her narrow nose and overly exaggerated eyebrows. She pushes her dark framed glasses above the brim of her nose, glaring at me.

"Girl, do you speak? What are you doing outside my property?" Her first words spoke.

"S-sorry ma'am, I- I'm h-"

"Speak without stuttering!" She interrupted, raising her voice a bit louder.

"S-sor-"

"Mum, chill. This is Jessica, she's working on a project with me." Ryan magically appeared in the doorway, his hands in his pockets. He wore a black hoodie and sweatpants, his hair messed up on his head making it look like he had just woken up.

"Mhm..." She replied, barely acknowledging Ryan's presence in the doorway as her sharp glaring eyes continued judging me. Ryan sighed loudly and grabbed me by the elbow, pulling me inside. He continued dragging me all the way up the million steps of the mansion and to a room closest to the stairway.

I pulled out of his tight grip, "You idiot! Who do you think you are to drag me around like a rag doll!"

Ryan looked more amused than intimidated. "Well would you prefer to be stuck under the eyes of that woman?"

Oookay so he clearly doesn't like his mother much.

Agitated and annoyed, I finally looked around the room he had dragged me to. The room looked much less fancy than the rest of the house but was spacious. There were trophies and certificates on a shelf on the side and a poster of a basketball player dunking stuck in the middle. A blue designed drum set sat in one corner of the room, opposite to the bed.

"You play?" I ask, nodding to the set.

"Nope, just have it for show to get the girls," he deadpanned, his usual trademark smirk on his face.

I rolled my eyes and plopped down on his blue comforter bed. So I'll take that as a yes.

"Well if you wanted to go on my bed, you could have just asked?" Ryan raised an eyebrow. Realizing the double meaning to the sentence, my eyes grew a thousand sizes larger and I stood up faster than one could say 'stand.' "Dude relax, I was just joking," he chuckled.

"And... you just got dude zoned!" A girl who only seemed to be a few years old skipped inside the room. She wore two pigtails and had a huge grin on her face, showing off her two missing front teeth.

"How do you even know what that means?" Ryan turned towards her, sitting on the bed next to me.

"I heard Tyler say it!" She exclaims innocently.

"Man, I'm gonna kill that boy," I heard Ryan mutter under his breath before turning to me. "Jessica, this is my sister, Annama and Annama, this is-"

I cut him off, "his partner for a biology project. I'm Jessica."

"Nah, I prefer 'princess'. You know you could have just said friend right?" I offer him a look.

"Well, you know that would have been a lie right?"

He places a hand dramatically on his heart and sways to the side. "You wound me."

"No, she's just telling the truth!" Her truth sounding more like 'tooth', Anna comes to my defense. "And you can call me Anna, like the princess!"

"Who's side are you on, girl?" Ryan asks, narrowing his eyes at his younger sister.

"Jessica's," she offers him a cheeky smile and climbs onto my lap. "She's prettier!"

"Aww, thank you sweetie! Let me tell you a secret," I say leaning in close to the girls ear and cupping my hands. "I think you're way way prettier than Ryan. You may be the prettiest girl in the universe," I whisper, loudly enough so Ryan could hear and Anna giggles wildly.

"I've been betrayed."

Ryan's mom appears in the doorway a second later and I straighten. "Not much project work seems to be going on here, does it?" She asks menacingly, her eyes zeroing in on me. I gulp. "Annama, come along. I have better stuff to do than to wait for you all day."

"I don't like her very much," Anna leans in and whispers in my ear. That doesn't do much to help Ryan's mom's hating me as Anna's whispering could be heard from the doorway. Ryan's mother narrows her eyes to slits.

"Now Annama!" Anna jumps off my lap within an instant and runs up to her mothers legs. They both walk away soon after and Ryan turns to me.

"So, I guess we should get this project started then, huh?" He says, brightening the mood almost immediately.

"Yes sir!" I say with a fake salut.

━━━

Believe it or not, working on the project with Ryan consisted of way more laughing than I expected. Ryan wasn't as dumb as I though and unlike previous group projects, we ended up working on the project together. Our three page report took only a matter of two hours with me doing the researching and Ryan doing the writing.

On my walk home, I noticed one thing: Ryan was much more an actual person, relaxed and fun to be around at home than at school.

And maybe I actually had fun today.

━━━