Two Years Earlier

It’s two weeks before the start of my senior year and I’m multi-tasking: working on the finishing touches of my tan and nursing a positively catastrophic hang over. I imagine the throbbing behind my eyelids resembles something akin to Godzilla’s Tokyo rampage. Summertime kicked my liver’s ass up and down the block many, many times over.

I’m rolling my eyes behind my shades. My Mother has yet to shut up about her best friend, Paula something-or-other, ever since she found out the woman was picking up her ideal family and relocating to Los Angeles. Mom gives me the impression that Paula shits sunbeams, general merriment, and jelly beans—not the gross liquorish kind either.

Paula’s shipping her daughter out here to spend a week with us before the rest of the Brady clan arrives. In all honesty, I nodded off during Mom’s explanation, but I’m sure the reasoning is perfectly sound. The girl’s supposed to arrive today. She’s actually due at any minute now. Mom thought it’d be fun to have a limo pick her up from the airport, so now we’re just waiting, twiddling our fucking thumbs, having canceled our more interesting plans, just throwing away the steadily ticking vestiges of my summer vacation, all for this mystery girl. She better have some redeeming quality.

On the up side? I do appreciate courier services. Sometimes courier services remedy the munchies, or enable me to make discreet online purchases. Today, a courier service saved me an annoying trip to the stuffy airport. Who doesn’t adore convenience anyway? It certainly bolsters, maybe even cultivates, instant gratification, which only happens to be, like, the greatest love of my life. I’m a hedonist, and virtually anything that promotes my way of life automatically gets an ‘I’m Ashley Davies, and I approve of this message’ seal.

Someone, presumably our maid, knocks on the French doors leading out to our expansive balcony. I don’t bother looking. It would just further agitate my hang over, so I keep my eyes screwed shut. “Oh my Gosh, you must be Spencer,” is the next thing I hear. My Mom sounds entirely plastic. If I hadn’t spent the majority of the morning barfing out the alcoholic lubricant of last night’s debauchery, I would have barfed then.