The Sleep Over

Shelly goes to spend the night at Jessica's...or so she thinks.

Two weeks after he had been kicked off the football team, and I hadn’t seen much of Brian. As far as I knew, no one had. He only went to a few classes here and there, and after a while, even stopped going to those. It was like he had disappeared off the face of the planet. No one heard from him, not even his own friends. A rumor was going around the school that he had dropped out, unable to handle the stress of being dumped from the team. He’s social status had plummeted considerably. All of a sudden, everyone could remember how he had treated others, and they treated him the same in kind. No one would be his friend after the incident with Jessica, and no one wanted anything to do with him. He had become, for all intents and purposes, a social leper. I almost felt sorry for the guy…almost.

Jessica didn’t act the lest bit perturbed about what she had caused to happen to the guy. She had, more or less, ruined a guy’s life, and it didn’t seem to bother her in the least. When you even tried to bring up the subject, all she would do was shrug and make mention on how he hadn’t deserved any less than what he got. I couldn’t believe the cold heartedness of the woman. I’m not sure I actually enjoyed having her as a friend, but I was sure thankful that she was not an enemy of mine. I think I would have been completely and utterly destroyed, had she taken it into her head to do so, and I doubted there would have been anything I could have done to stop it.

“Want to come over to my place this weekend?”

I looked up from the book I had been reading to see that Jessica was staring very intently at me. I had never been on a sleep over with anyone before, not even over to a relative’s house, and wasn’t sure how to respond to her question. I hadn’t even gotten around to telling my parents about Jessica yet. To suddenly say I had a sleep over date with another girl to them would seem strange, to say the least. I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that they would let me go. They would probably see it as a blessing, and want to see me off to her house themselves. So there would be no help there in getting out of this. “Umm…are you sure it will be okay with your parents?” I asked, hoping that that would prove to be a way out of this. Maybe they would be old fogy’s who hated having anyone around their place, no matter how old those other people were. I could only hope.

“Sure. They’d love it if I brought someone home with me. They think I need to get more friends, and they’d be delighted to meet you.”

“Tell them a lot about me?” What would she have told them about the friend she had all but kidnapped the first day she had met her.

Jessica shook her head. “Nay. They don’t listen to much of what I have to say. I don’t think they would even remember if I had mentioned you. So what do you think? Want to come over for a few days?” Her eyes were sparkling with delight at the prospect of me staying at her place.

I wasn’t sure if I could say no without bringing her wrath down upon me, and considering what she had done to Brian, I didn’t want to see what she would come up with to do to me. “I’ll…have to ask my parents, but I’m pretty sure they’ll say yes,” I informed her, knowing perfectly well how they would respond.

I went home that day actually dreading the discussion I would have to have that night. It was Thursday, so I couldn’t put off asking them. It had to be tonight or not at all, and I knew Jessica wouldn‘t accept that.

I waited until dinner before popping off with the question. It was about the only time my parents were in the same place at the same time anymore.

“Um…I…” I started, not sure how to go from there. They had been fighting again recently, and getting their attention was not always the easiest thing to do, even when they were both in a good mood, and I didn’t make a habit of trying to talk to them most of the time, so this was proving harder than I thought. They continued to eat in silence, and I tried clearing my throat. That finally got their attention.

“What is it, sugar?” my father finally asked me, as if he hadn’t been in a terrible mood just a few moments before.

I looked down at my plate, moving my pasta around with my fork. How to broach this subject? This wasn’t something I had done often in my short life. To be honest, it wasn’t something I had ever done before, and just felt a bit odd doing so now. “I was wondering if it would be alright if I spent the night at a friend’s house this weekend?”

“Who’s this friend of yours?” Mother asked. “I don’t remember you mentioning having a friend before now.” Of course, I sort of doubted she would have remembered me saying anything of the sort, with how much she and father had been fighting lately. It seemed that it was just getting worse and worse as time went by, and I was just waiting for the big D word to start appearing in their conversations. So far they had avoided it, but I couldn’t keep believing that it would stay that way for very much longer.

“Well, she’s just this girl I met at school a little while back. We hang out a bit, and she asked me today if I could stay over at her place this weekend, sort of a sleep over thing. She said her parents would be okay with it.” Well, there. There was no getting out of it now. I was stuck in the situation with no escape. I was going to be spending the night with Jessica Welsh.

“Well, if you leaver us a number where we could reach you at, I think it should be okay,” Dad said, a huge grin on his face. Well, at least someone was happy with this, even if it wasn’t me.

“If your father’s alright with you spending the night at this girl’s place, I guess I’m okay with it too. What’s her name?”

“Jessica Welsh.”

“And do you have classes with her? Is that how you met?”

“We have homeroom together. She sits right next to me.” I sort of left out how she had come to sit in the seat right next to me, thinking that was something better left unsaid. When it came to Jessica, there were probably a lot of things better left unsaid.

“Well, it’s good to see that you’re finally making friends, after all this time. I knew high school would be good for you. Well, you two have a good time. Just be careful and don’t do anything that I wouldn’t do,” Dad said, and I had to wonder what he might have meant by that. From what I’ve overheard of my father’s youth, he was quite a player, and had a new girl every week until he settled down with mom. He had almost been notorious when it came to drug use, so what exactly was I not supposed to be doing while I was at Jessica’s? I decided not to bring any of this up. I wouldn’t have been grounded from this outing this weekend, so I didn’t see the point.

“Sure, Dad, we’ll behave ourselves,” was all I said.

And that was the end of that. I was destined to spend the weekend with Jessica, a fate that I had not planned for, and had no idea what to expect.

After school the next day, Jessica followed me out to my truck. “Man, you’ve got your own set of wheels. That is so cool. I’ve still got to rely on my parents to take me where I want to go, or I have to walk it. I like to walk, and the town’s so small that it’s pretty easy to get to wherever you want to go in a short amount of time.”

“Yeah, the place is pretty small. At least there’s a few places to go where you can have a bit of fun. And the truck, well, I had to work my a*s off to get enough money to afford the thing. My parents didn‘t help there at all.”

“Mine wouldn’t even think of helping me get my own vehicle. Hell, they wouldn’t help me get my own bike. They say I’m not ready for that much responsibility yet.” Knowing her as well as I did, I had to wonder if that statement wasn’t the complete and total truth. “Well, let’s get going. We’re going to have a blast tonight.”

Jessica gave me one of her mischievous smiles, and I was starting to wonder what sort of plans she might actually have for the weekend that she had neglected to tell me about.

She directed me to her house, and I was surprised by what I saw. The Welsh family lived in a rather dilapidated looking house. The yard, which looked as if it had not seen a lawnmower in several years, was surrounded by a rusted fence that leaned here and there. I couldn’t see how anything could be kept in or out of the yard with the fence in the condition it was in. The house itself had once been painted white. Now, if had faded in places, and had completely come off in others, making it sort of more a gray then white. Rust colored paint was chipping off the shutters, and one window on the second floor had only one shutter on the left side, and it looked as if it was thinking of jumping off the side of the house at any moment. I just hoped I wasn’t under it when it finally came to a decision on what to do there.

The walk leading up to the front pouch was concrete that had broken in several places, making it look more like a minefield than an actual walk. There were toys scattered about the yard that were way too small for Jessica to even think of using, but considering how old they all looked, I was pretty sure that they had been hers at one point in time. There was a rusty, metal pot near one corner of the yard, and a patch of ugly, struggling flowers desperately trying to grow out of it. It was just about the saddest sight I had ever seen in my life, and I thought I was starting to understand her odd behavior just a little bit more. If her parents had neglected their daughter half as much as they did their dwelling, then she was one to be pitied.

I pulled into their gravel drive, and turned the truck off with a great deal of apprehension. I now had no idea what I was going to find in her house, and that sort of had me more than a bit nervous. If her parents could stand to live this way, what sort of people were they? “Are you sure your parents don’t mind me staying the night?” I asked, rather hoping that she would tell me that yes, they would and that I should high tail it out of here as fast as I can. Unfortunately, those were not the words that came out of her mouth.

“They’re okay with it. As long as we don’t bother them too much, they won’t even notice you’re here, and I don’t plan on bothering them all that much tonight. Come on, let’s go in.”

She got out of the truck, and I could do nothing but follow her through the rickety, groaning, old gate. We went up the walk, and through the front door. The screen door was covered in rust, and squeaked and squalled when it was open, announcing our presence to the whole neighborhood. It closed with a resounding bang that echoed through my ears for several moments after it had closed. The front door swung precariously on its hinges, and I sort of feared it would topple off onto the floor if one opened it too quickly.

“Hi, Dad,” Jessica called out as soon as she was through the door.

Her father was sitting on an aged and dirty yellow recliner in the living room. I could tell by how low he was sitting that the seat had broken and was sagging beneath the man’s ample weight. I was starting to see a similarity between the man of the house and the structure itself. He was fairly large, with a gut that just wouldn’t quit, and I wondered how the chair had survived him at all. His once white tee-shirt was stained with food items that had been there so long that I could not even hope to figure out what they had once been. Judging by how many open cans of Coca-Cola that were sitting around his chair that at least some of the stains were probably from long drank cans of this particular liquid. The bottom half of his face was covered with a shaggy beard that looked as if he tried to shave it once a week, at most, and the upper half of his head was topped with a shaggy mane of hair that was light brown shading to gray. His eyes, found deep within the confines of his flabby cheeks, had an aged and tired look to them, and it was hard to tell what color they were, as they seemed as faded as the rest of the place. His jeans were about as messy as his shirt, proclaiming the guy’s cleaning habits with great detail. He looked up at us, and his eyes brightened up as they landed on me. “Hey, Jessie, who’s your new friend? She looks really cute.”

“She’s jailbait, Dad, and don’t you forget it. It wouldn’t look good on your record, and I doubt your probation officer would approve of such thoughts coming from such an aged man.”

Probation officer? Had Jessica failed to mention a few things about her family that I would have been better off knowing.

“Well, you could at least cheer an old man up by coming down right before you’re ready for bed and giving him a good night kiss.”

“Our nightgowns are old, granny nightgowns. You’d get more of a rise out of mom’s.”

Jessica’s father suddenly turned dower, and started sulking. It seemed as if he settled further down in his chair, if that was at all possible, and turned his attention back to the rickety television that sat off to one corner of the room. The picture flickered and jumped so much I had a nearly impossible time telling what was even on the screen. “Fine, stupid b***h. I don’t know why I’d want to see your ugly friend anyway. Her face looks like someone beat her with the ugly stick, and she doesn’t even have to wear a bra to hold up her nonexistent tits.”
I felt my face reddening with each cruel remark that came out of his mouth, and it was all I could do to keep from saying to him that if I was ugly, then he was the king of disgusting. Jessica took my hand, and we headed for a set of stairs off to one side of the living room. “Thanks, Dad, you’re such a peach. Don’t ever change on my account.”

“Don’t worry. I won’t,” he called up after us before returning to whatever it had been on the tv that he had been watching when we came in. It sounded very much like a sports program to me, but I couldn’t tell which one from just the sound.

We navigated a treacherous flight of stairs, treacherous due to the number of loose items that were laying about on them, just waiting to trip someone. I wondered how Jessica kept from falling down the steps and breaking her neck. There were piles of clothes, papers and I didn’t even what to guess at some of the darker items I saw scattered here and there. I was left to wonder if they had had a cat at sometime, and someone had neglected to clean up after it. For all I knew, if I looked hard enough I might have actually found it…or what remained of the family pet.

We reached the top of the stairs to find ourselves in a hallway that didn’t look much better than the stairway had. The wallpaper, a light green with dark green patterns on it, was torn and stripping in places, showing the paneling behind it. The carpet was faded and patchy in some places. The carpet itself was sort of a mossy green, and the condition of the thing just made it look like a bunch of moss that had decided to grow up over a hard wood floor. The trim had once been white, but had yellowed with age and neglect. There were pictures hanging here and there, but none of them were set on the wall right, and a couple of them even had broken glass over them, making the people in the frames hard to see through the spider web of shattered glass.

I was lead down the hall to the first room on the right. There were three other rooms up there, one on the left side of the hall, and two more on the right. I could see that the one across from Jessica’s was a bathroom. From what I could see of it, it looked only slightly better than the rest of what I had seen of the house, and I wasn’t sure if I would be able to use the restroom the entire time I would be staying here. I wondered if I could actually hold it that long, or if I might be able to sneak down stairs later and use one of the old soda cans I had seen laying all round the recliner that held Jessica’s father. Probably not, and I wasn’t sure how on earth I would make sure to keep it all in the can anyway. My aim was not that great. As a girl, it didn’t have to be. Maybe, if I was incredibly lucky, I could sneak out of the house and find a gas station with an all night restroom.

Jessica pulled me into her room, and closed the door behind us. I looked about the room, and was starting to feel a little bit more comfortable. Out of all the rooms I had seen so far in the house, Jessica’s was by far the neatest. The wall paper was still pilling off the walls, and the ceiling had a nasty water stain on it, and the pink carpet was so faded I couldn’t tell if it had originally been pink or red, but the things that the girl owned herself were in new or like new condition. She had a television set that was no where near the size of the one in the living room, but was in a lot better condition and dust free. There was a DVD player connected to it and an Xbox. The tv sat on an entertainment stand that had a number of DVDs and video games arranged in neat order on it. There was a book shelf off to one side of the room, and the books on it were in perfect order. I could even imagine that if I actually looked at them that they would be in alphabetical order by author. The bed was made with a dark blue coverlet and purple, lacy pillows. There were a number of glass figurines sitting here and there, trying their damnedest to make the place look decent. Unfortunately, they had too much work in that regard to even hope of coming close to accomplishing their goal, but at least they were giving it their all. That was more than I could say for the girl’s parents.

She also had a vanity with a large mirror and lights around it to make it easier to see oneself in the dim lighting the one, bare bulb in the room gave off. It was to this that she now rushed off to. Looking back at me, she waved excitedly as she took a seat on one of two stools that had been put in front of the mirror. “Well, come over here. Don’t make me come over there and drag you over here.”

Not sure what she had in mind, I went over with a shrug and sat down on the stool she had offered me. I looked down at the vanity to see that it was covered in so many jars and tubes of makeup and cosmetics that it would have put Avon to shame.

Giggling, she snatched up one of the jars, and twisted the top off. “This is foundation. You put it on first to get your face ready for the rest of the makeup that you want to apply.”

“I don’t want to apply anything,” I told her, not sure what she had in mind, and not sure that I wanted to know what that was. At the moment, all I really wanted to do was get out of there before her creepy father came up with the idea of barging in on us and making more snide comments…or worse.

“Sure you do. Here, I’ll help you. It’ll be fun. You’ll see.”

I don’t know much about makeup myself. I was one of those girls who never really got into that sort of thing, so I can’t tell you what all she put on me, but I know a lot of jars and tubes were opened and their contents applied to my face. The foundation felt heavy and suffocating on my skin, not something I was the least bit used to, and not something I thought I could easy get used to. There was eye shadow and eye liner and blush and lipstick. By the time I was done, my own parents wouldn’t have been able to recognize me.

I looked into the mirror and saw the faintest hint of my homely looking face. My face is rather rounded with a small nose, average lips and soft, green eyes. Now my skin and a darker tone then my sickly white, a blush to my cheeks and green eye shadow that brought out the color of my eyes. For being as young as she is, Jessica did a rather bang up job on my face, if I do say so myself. I couldn’t believe the girl who was staring back at me, and I was shocked that I could even come out looking half as good as I did that night.

“Okay, let’s get you something to wear,” cried Jessica as she jumped up off her stool.

“Something to wear?”

She was over at her closet, tossing shirts and blouses and skirts and pants onto her bed with such abandon that I had to actually wonder if she was seeing anything she had tossed aside. After several outfits had made their way to the bed, she exclaimed with glee, and pulled out a couple things. “Here, these will look perfect on you, and we’re close enough to the same size that they should fit nicely.”

In her hands she held a wide necked, pearl white sweater with sleeves that just wouldn’t quit and in the other, she had a pair of slim, black pants. Tossing them to me, she said, “Here, try these on. I’ve got to get ready.” She plopped back down on her stool, and started doing up her own makeup.

“Why are we doing this?” I asked, staring at the outfit she had handed to me. I couldn’t help but be jealous of the clothes. They were better than anything I had in my own closet, and was sort of wishing I had a few more feminine things to wear in my own wardrobe. Most of the things I wore were the cheap jeans and shirts that my mother found on sale at various stores she went to. I had never complained before, but now, looking at what my friend had to wear, I sort of wish I had cared about my appearance a bit more often.

She was applying a dark red lipstick that went great with her lips. “We can’t go out if we don’t look the part.”

“We’re going out? I thought we were staying here for the entire night.” She hadn’t said anything about going anywhere to me when she had discussed this little sleep over.

She turned to look at me with unbelieving eyes. “Do you really want to stay here with what’s sitting in the living room?”

Looking towards the closed door, I shook my head. “No, not really.” I knew I should have felt sort of bad about saying that about her father, but the guy was pretty creepy, and she didn’t look the least bit offended. I was sort of under the impression that she didn’t much care for her father either. “Where’s your mother? Do we have to check in with her before we go out? Won’t she worry about you?” I hadn’t seen hide nor hair of the woman since we had come in.

Jessica shook her head. “Mom works the late shift at a local gas station. She won’t even be home until tomorrow morning.”

“Oh,” was all I could think of to say. Man, she lived a crummy life. I could actually see that her life was worse than mine.

“Come on, get dressed. The night life isn’t going to wait for us forever.”

I changed into the clothes she had given me, and looked at myself in the mirror. I couldn’t believe the girl who looked back at me. She was stunning, a real beauty. I almost wished I could keep the clothes she had given me, they looked so nice on me. The sweater revealed just enough of my shoulders to make it interesting in what else was under the clothes, and the sleeves covered most of my hands, showing off just a little bit of my fingers. The jeans fit snuggly about my legs and hips, leaving very little to the imagination there.

Jessica changed into a red blouse and long, black skirt that had a long slit up one side, showing off a well cared for leg. The blouse was short sleeved, showing of an equally well cared for arm. She looked like a pagan goddess in that outfit, and I couldn’t believe how much of a change there was in her.

Taking hold of my hand, she pulled me towards the door. “Come on, let’s go have us some fun.”

Author's Note

First Draft