At home in my room, I undress, don a nightgown, and crawl into bed with my phone to get comfortable. Then, I text Desiree.

  ‘Hey, it’s Rei. How are you doing?’

  ‘Hi, Rei! Good to hear from you. Doing great, yourself?’

  We text back and forth for a while, then I finally get around to the point of why I texted her to begin with. ‘How would you two feel like hanging out with my group of friends sometime?’

  ‘If they are anything like you two, it sounds like we’ll have a great time.’

  ‘Cool. I’ll get back to you about when and where.’

  Mom comes by my room and tells me, “Don’t stay up too te, young dy.”

  “I won’t.”

  She bends down and kisses my forehead. “Goodnight. Love you,” she tells me.

  Honestly, I love the retionship Mom and I have now. We were never distant. She loved me, and I loved her, but it’s not the same as the retionship between a mother and her daughter. We’re happy to spend time together shopping, watching sappy movies together, or even cooking for everyone, though there are times she irks me just like any other parent does. Especially when she treats me as if I’m her dress-up doll. Even if the after-the-fact of the sessions usually makes me happy, since I usually look amazing in the outfits she ends up picking out for me.

  “Night, Mom. Love you, too.”

  I tell Desiree I need to go, and she replies goodnight.

  Opening discord, I jump onto our friends’ server we made, so we can hold group chats. Then I ask one simple question, ‘What are we all doing tomorrow for our group date?’ Oddly enough, we don’t have any pns in pce. I say odd because we usually have a pn the week before.

  A flood of suggestions soon appears, and we hold a vote on what we want to do out of the choices. Roller skating receives the most votes. We have a huge skating park in our city. It not only has a rge indoor skating rink, but an outdoor one as well as one for skateboards.

  That decided, I text Desiree with the information. About 5 minutes ter, she apologizes for the dey in answering, tells me she was in the shower and will talk to Carl about it, then get back to me tomorrow. I text back that it’ll be fine, set down my phone on the nightstand, turn off the lights, and curl up under the covers.

  ◇ ◆ ◇ ◆ ◇ ◆ ◇

  The next morning, I find a text waiting for me when I wake up. I’m actually surprised that getting it didn’t wake me since I’m generally a light sleeper. Unlocking my phone, I see it’s from Desiree. She talked to Carl, and he said sure, that it sounds like fun. I reply with a thumbs up and smiley emoji.

  After showering and dressing in a cute, yet comfortable, outfit, a white, sleeveless blouse, navy knee-length pencil skirt, and ankle boots. Then I head off to Emma’s to meet her and Kelly since we have pns to hang out today. I have no idea what the two of them have pnned for us, not that I really care, in my case; I simply enjoy spending time with them just being us girls.

  We end up taking an uber to the mall, walking around window shopping, occasionally trying on different outfits, and looking at jewelry as boys ogle the three of us. My parents have given me a debit card linked to a bank account they set up for me so I can buy clothes and such when I find things I like, which I think was rather cool of them. It’s more than apparent to me that my parents are enjoying having another daughter.

  Yes, I did quite a bit of shopping for my outfits with Mom, but as she said when they gave me the card, it’s nowhere near enough, and of course, I’ll grow out of them fairly quickly. I’m a growing girl, after all. Heck, we’ve already had to repce my lingerie once, and it hadn’t been all that long since we bought them. Thankfully, my changes weren’t enough that we had to buy me a lot of new clothes as well. Though some of my blouses are on the verge of being far too tight across my breasts.

  The point is, my parents deposited 1,000.00 in an account for me, and told me to let them know when I needed more. Of course, my allowance of 200.00 goes into the same account every month as well, but as they said, my allowance and the money for clothing are two different things.

  Anyway, I found a couple of really cute skirts, some blouses to go with them, and another dress as well. The dress is a rather pale pink sleeveless skater dress, the skirt of which falls to mid-thigh. I’ve got some great boots to wear with it at the house, so I bought it. I think Jeremy will love it when I wear it. I bought a few other summer dresses as well. Mostly jumper dresses, but I also found a couple of pinafore dresses that I liked. Trust me when I say that I looked extremely cute in them. I also found and bought a couple of pairs of really cute amethyst dangle earrings.

  We take a break for lunch at the food court, which is nothing more than a chef’s sad with light ranch dressing and some water. We cheerleaders need to watch our weight after all.

  Thankfully, for once, no boys come over to bother us while we eat. Look, it’s tiring fending off guys all the time. I’m not saying the attention isn’t fttering, or that it doesn’t make me feel good about myself. It’s simply that some boys have no clue what the word ‘No’ means. They seem to feel like it means to try harder or be more forceful about it. Note that I said some, not all. Sometimes, some boys like that can be overbearing and rather intimidating, you know? After all, I’m a tiny little thing, even if I do know karate.

  Regardless, we enjoy our girls’ day out at the mall. Finally, though, it’s time to return home. At home, I show Mom what I bought, then go put it up. By the time I’m done, it’s dinner time. After we eat, we kids head upstairs to get ready to go out. Diana has a date with her boyfriend, and as you know, David and I have a group date with our friends to go to the skating rink. It’s something all of us enjoy since there is far more than skating avaible there. There’s an arcade, an area with pool tables, and of course, a snack bar. If you can’t tell already, the pce is huge.

  I shower, shave, dry off, blow dry and brush out my hair, then don my lingerie. Next, I sit down at my vanity and style my hair in a French side tail braid. My hair is fairly long now, and leaving it loose while skating is a great way to get lots of tangles due to sweating and it being blown around. I don’t enjoy having to untangle the mess afterward. Hence, the braid. Plus, I look rather cute with the hairstyle.

  I apply the little bit of makeup that I’m going to wear, eyeliner, mascara, and of course, some pink-tinted, smudge-proof lip-gloss. Then I put on my new amethyst dangle earrings and smile at the reflection of the cute girl looking back at me. That done, I walk over to my closet to get the outfit I pn to wear tonight. It’s a pink, off-the-shoulder ruched skater dress. I grab some sheer. bck stockings and my ivory strappy sandals with a three-inch cone heel.

  Once I’m dressed, I look myself over in the full-length mirror on my bedroom door. Turning slowly, I look myself over. Satisfied with my look, I walk back over to my vanity, pick up the white purse there, and drop in my phone, the little makeup I’ll need, as well as a pair of ankle socks and my wallet.

  I know that Jeremy is going to pay for everything, but you never know when an emergency might arise and I’ll need cash or my debit card. Per my parents’ instructions, I never have less than 50.00 in cash in it. As they said, 50.00 will more than pay for me to get home by taxi from anywhere in the city. Plus, it isn’t as if what I’m wearing has any pockets for me to carry things.

  I head downstairs to the living room to wait. In there, I see David, Emma, and Kelly sitting on the sofa. Of course, Emma and Kelly stand up to hug me when I enter.

  Emma says, “Rei, you look amazing,” and Kelly nods in agreement.

  I give them a brilliant smile. “Thanks. You two look great as well. Don’t they, David?”

  He grunts out a “Yeah,” which makes me frown and give him a pointed look. That is not the way you compliment girls, David! He picks up on my displeasure, and says, “What I mean is, of course, Emma is drop-dead gorgeous, and Kelly is gonna be able to knock Jason over with a feather.”

  They beam at his compliments, and I think, ‘Much better this time, David.’ I really need to talk to Diana, so the two of us can sit him down and have a discussion about how to talk to girls. Look, I know he’s as new to all this as I am since Jeremy and Emma are our firsts. Regardless, even David should know the basics of dating and what to do or say. Heck, just watching TV will tell you a lot of what you should or shouldn’t do. Of course, David absolutely hates romance or romcom shows. Boys and their hang-ups… am I right?

  Everyone shows up within the next 10 minutes, except for Carl and Desiree. Thankfully, they show up a few minutes ter, and we decide who’s going to call for Uber to take us to the skating rink. It ends up being David and Jeremy since Carl already paid for one for them to get here.

  When they arrive, we troop out and split up to get in the cars. It only takes about 15 minutes for us to arrive at the skating rink. Walking inside, Jeremy pays the 18.00 for our admittance, then we go over, and he pays the 10.00 for our skate rentals. Thankfully, David and Emma find us a table in a semi-quiet corner, and we head over to join them. Taking a seat, I slip off my sandals, put on my skates, then skate back to the rental to have them store my shoes.

  Suffice it to say the eight of us have a great time skating, and pying pool, which I suck at. I even py a couple of video games against Jeremy. Gaming, I’m rather good at, especially the first-person shooter we pyed, so I handily beat him down. His rueful grin when he looked at me afterward made me giggle. I gave him a kiss as a consotion prize, which of course, he happily accepted. David and Emma didn’t skate a lot, though they did do couples’ skates. They mostly parked themselves in the dim corner where our table is and made out. Not that Jeremy and I didn’t do our fair share of making out as well. Mainly because that boy knows how to curl my toes when we do. Jeremy and I also had a lot of fun with Carl and Desiree, plus everyone really liked them, just as I thought they would. I found it rather nice to be able to add another nice couple to our little group.

  Finally, around 11:00 P.M., we get our shoes, turn in our skates, and call for Uber because we have to be home by midnight. Needless to say, we don’t want to be te because the consequences of that aren’t something we’d enjoy.