Today at school, Astrid and I introduced Tracy to everyone. She wore an even cuter outfit; a graphic tank top paired with a black jacket, her usual flare jeans and sunglasses.

Tracy quickly became a fave among my group after we told them of how cleverly she stole from that rich lady. Nothing compared to me, though.

After school, we stayed chatting with my group until Tracy's mom came to pick us up. Tracy grabbed me by the hand and we said our farewells before walking to her mom's car.

During the way, her two loser friends waved at her. She looked so embarrassed—I felt bad for her, so I looped arms with her and lead her away.

Her mother was leaning against her car, and oh my gosh, she looked so cool! Her fit was like, gorg!

"Evie, this is my mom," Tracy introduced, gesturing to her mother.

"No way, she's like the hot big sister," I complimented as we approached her mother.

Her mother smiled and asked, "What do you want me to do?"

"Can you take us to Melrose?" Trace asked. I turned to look at her, a little surprised at how bluntly she put the question. I thought she would try to trick her mom by saying we would go to the library or something.

"Let's go," her mom replied, and I was pleasantly surprised at how quickly she agreed. Brooke would never.

As we got in the car, I pondered over how lucky Tracy was to have such a cool and lenient mom. While we were riding, her mom introduced herself as "Melanie", or Mel for short. I decided to call her Mel, less formal that way.

While we were stopping, Mel started listing off things we could buy.

"We'll find some really cute platforms, or maybe some of that body glitter..."

Tracy glanced at me for a split second before turning back to her mom and saying, "No—no, mom, it's okay, you can just drop us off and go run an errand or something."

Tracy shot her a knowing look.

"Oh," Mel replied, turning around to look at Tracy in surprise. "Um, okay...I guess that'll be all right, maybe for an hour..."

I was, once again, stunned by how lenient her mom was. Damn, Tracy was so lucky.

"I'll have to talk to Evie's mom though," she added. Immediately, I tensed. I didn't really have what you could call a mom, and Brooke...well, let's just say Brooke had no idea I spent so much time in Melrose by myself.

"Brooke is just my guardian," I answered hesitantly, frowning slightly as I wrote down Brooke's number on a piece of paper before handing it to Mel.

"Great, thank you," Mel replied as she glanced down at the phone number.

Tracy and I started to get out of the car, when Mel said something. I pretended not to hear her and got out, walking to a safe distance where I could wait for Tracy and not have Mel call out for me.

I watched Mel and Tracy have a conversation in the car and prayed that Brooke would let me stay. Eventually, Trace got out and I asked her what was going on. She assured me everything was fine and we entered Red Balls.

We started looking for cute clothing and I picked out these pretty leopard jeans for Tracy. I showed them to her and she absolutely adored it.

I also found a couple of tops that I liked and we went to the dressing rooms to try them on.

We giggled and talked while dressing and Tracy was having trouble putting on her jeans.

"It's my ass that isn't fitting," she said and I laughed.

Just then, Mel's voice called out, "Evie, Brooke says you're not allowed on Melrose without adult supervision."

I breathed out a sigh of relief. Thank goodness Brooke didn't say anything else, like "Come home immediately!" or something stupid like that. Brooke is usually really cool, and she doesn't embarrass me around my friends, lets me drink and stuff, but she can be so strict sometimes.

I peeped out of my dressing room to say, "Well you're here, aren't you, Mel?"

I smiled slightly too so I didn't seem too impolite.

"Yep," Mel replied, "I am."

I heard Tracy come out and ask her mom if she looked okay in her leopard jeans. Mel replied with a compliment.

"You love the leopard fur, Mel?" I called out as I tried on a cute cheap tank.

"Yep," Mel replied, and then said something about the price. Her and Tracy almost started arguing, but I calmed everything by sliding out of my dressing room and showing off the tank.

"Guys! This only costs 19.95!"

Tracy giggled and Mel offered an indulgent smile.

"It's pretty cute," Mel said, and I thanked her.

I then showed her an identical tank top, only in red.

"Maybe Tracy and I could have matching tops," I suggested with a charismatic smile. "Matching clothes are in style, you know."

"Yes, Mom, please!" Tracy begged.

I guess Mel felt bad for not buying the leopard jeans, so she paid for both of our tanks. God, Mel is so cool! Tracy is so lucky to have such an awesome mom.

After we purchased our clothes, Mel took us home to Tracy's. Mel had talked it over with Brooke, and Brooke let me have a sleepover with Trace! Yay.

We parked and Tracy and I ran out of the car. I was excited to meet more of her family; maybe they would all be as cool as Mel.

Before entering, I stopped Tracy and fixed her appearance. Then we walked through the doors.

I saw a bunch of older boys from school sitting and watching TV. That was no surprise; Tracy's older brother, Mason, was pretty well-known with the boys. Not exactly popular, but you know, not a complete loser either.

"Hey boys," I greeted, and most eyes went up to look at me. I was used to attention from boys so this was no surprise.

"Hey Evie," Mason mumbled out. I had a feeling he had a crush on me, but probably not that serious. Most guys liked me.

I bit my lip and leaned against the TV, observing them all. Some of them were cute, some of them were eh.

I followed Tracy to her room, and she blushed slightly, evidently embarrassed.

"Promise you won't laugh," she said with a nervous chuckle as we got in. "This is my room."

I looked around. It was a little childish, but overall pretty cute. I liked her picture wall. And her room was way bigger than mine. Ugh, Tracy was so lucky.

I immediately walked over to her closet to see what kind of clothing she had.

I scoffed as I saw a bunch of childish clothing and threw an ugly shirt at Trace. What? I couldn't just let my friends have these types of embarrassing clothes in their closet. It's disgraceful.

"Tracy," I said, rummaging through her closet. "Ugh!"

I threw some more clothes at her and one pair of pants was so hideous I had no choice but to throw it out of the window.

"You can't be serious about this," I said, and Tracy mumbled an embarrassed sorry. I felt kind of bad, so I said, "It's okay, we can save some of it."

I took out a shirt that was not as ugly as the rest but still ugly and started cutting it to make it look cuter. Tracy let out a surprised noise and laughed a little.

Then, a shout came from the living room.

"You guys want some pizza?"

We shouted an excited response in unison and ran out to meet Mason and the boys in the backyard. They had set up a little picnic area and some of the boys were skating. The others were opening up two boxes of pizza and we all began to eat.

After a while, they left and we crawled to their former places to steal some more pizza.

Just as we were eating, I saw one of Tracy's loser friends approach us. I smirked slightly in amusement.

"Your little friend is coming," I teased, and Tracy glanced behind us with a perplexed, "What?" just to immediately look back with an expression of utter embarrassment.

"Oh shit," she whispered, burying her face in her hands in annoyance.

I continued to smirk as her friend came over and sat down next to us. Tracy looked extremely flushed and irritated.

It felt a little awkward and silent, since Tracy didn't seem to want to talk to her, so I decided to start a conversation just for the fun of it.

"I'm Evie Zamora," I said, although she probably knew that. I just wanted to see how she would respond.

"Yeah, I know," she replied like a total loser. I would have never admitted knowing someone when they didn't know me but all right. "I'm Noel."

I picked up a slice of pizza and offered it to her. "Pizza?"

She gladly accepted and took a bite, before saying, "We love Hawaiian. Don't you, Evie?"

A group of guys caught my attention, so I didn't answer. They seemed to be calling out to me, so I slowly began to get up. I think I made out with one of them once but I don't really remember.

"Let's go, Trace," I said, as we both stood up, leaving Noel behind.

"Uh, you can't go to the park anyway, right Noel?" Tracy said, not even looking back at her. Well, I can't blame her, I wouldn't invite my friends along either if they acted like five year olds.

Noel replied with something about Tracy not being able to go either after dark, but we ignored her and followed the boys.

We followed the guys to the park, and saw them hanging out at a table.

"You guys wanna get high?" I suggested with a small smirk. "Four bucks a hit."

The guys exchanged excited glances.

"Let's trip," one said.

"For sure," the other replied.

We exchanged money and I turned to Tracy and said, "Pay me back when we get home."

We then walked around the park. I was looking for boys from our school who I knew would buy the drugs, and I saw a couple and pointed at them. Tracy seemed a little confused and unsure, but I knew with time, she would get more confident.

"You guys wanna buy some shit?" I said, stopping in front of them with a mischievous grin.

"Yeah, what you got?" one of them replied.

And after that—well, let's just say it was wild. It ended with us playing with water, and then Mason came and ruined all the fun.

We followed Mason home rather reluctantly. I could tell Tracy was starting to enjoy this. Good. Soon I planned to maybe get her some piercings.

"I found her, Mom," Mason said as we stumbled into their house.

I heard Tracy mumble something but I wasn't paying close attention to anything. I just focused on trying to act sober so they didn't suspect anything.

I only started to pay attention when Tracy started acting all crazy, throwing up some cards from a board game and roaring about how she was a lion.

I giggled and grabbed her arm to lead her away. It was funny, but we couldn't risk getting discovered.

Tracy was talking about something with her mother but I didn't really care enough to listen, so I lead her into her room.

"Damn," Tracy said as we entered, leaning against the wall. "How long is this gonna last?"

I lay down on her bed as she started getting changed and started singing some dumb song.

"Evie, I think—I think my nose is melting off," Tracy giggled.

We laughed and joked in a really absent-minded kind of way, when Mel suddenly stormed in, looking really angry. Uh oh.

"You want me to ground you?" she demanded, looking absolutely furious. Tracy muttered some snide remark that nobody heard. "You know you're not allowed out after dark."

"Mom! God, can't I have any privacy?" Tracy griped, hiding behind a wardrobe.

Mel looked around in surprise, and I felt kind of bad for her. "What, I'm not allowed to see your body anymore?"

"No, you're not," Tracy responded.

"Okay," Mel replied, looking slightly hurt. She began to walk out of the room. "Well, after he leaves, we'll talk."

Tracy got out from behind the closet and went to close the door.

"If he leaves," she muttered darkly. I was too high to notice that anything was wrong, except that Mel was hurt Tracy didn't feel comfortable with her seeing her body.

She turned around to look at me. We shared one glance and instantly started laughing.

"Ugh, I need to change," I grumbled, as I hesitantly got off the bed. I brought along a bunch of my clothes of course, and I started to change.

Tracy was already wearing her pajamas and looking out of this door she had to the outside. I thought that door was pretty cool—we could sneak out sometime. I took off my shoes, then my belt and jeans.

Tracy then went into the bathroom and didn't come out for a rather long time. I put on my red tank top and shorts and got inside the bed, waiting for Tracy.

She eventually came out of the bathroom, looking slightly grave. When she saw me looking at her, she giggled, so I thought I had probably imagined that upset look on her face.

"Damn, how long were you shitting in there?" I joked, and we both laughed. I thought Tracy looked sort of pale after I said that but that was probably just me imagining things.

She got inside her bed with a tired sigh, so I decided to just sleep instead of starting a conversation like I was planning to. She seemed really exhausted.

"Good night Trace," I said, giving her a little kiss on the forehead.

"Good night, Evie."