Timothy hesitates for a split second before kicking the soccer ball and sending it crashing into the chain-mail fence that divides our yard from our neighbors.

In response, it rattles and the cat perched on it mewls and makes a suicide leap onto the ground. Landing on her deceptively soft paws. Right on cue our neighbor, Ms. Finch slams open her screen door with the haste of a bat out of hell. An old bat.

To his credit, my little brother stands his ground. Unflinching as she scans the yard for signs of trouble and spots the two of us. Timothy, guilty as ever with the smoking gun of his ball rolling back to him and me, bent over my fur suit and scrubbing, hard.

"What the hell are you doing, boy?" She asks. Or more accurately screeches.

"Your cats were staring at me again." He responds, deadpan.

"They weren't bothering you," she says. Then she picks up the suicide jumper, an orange tabby with white feet, and nuzzles it. "They wouldn't harm a fly."

I snort. Tell that to the two mice I saw the tabby drag onto the porch two nights ago. Granted they weren't flies but their bloody, limp bodies looked pretty harmed to me.

Ms. Finch narrows her eyes at me when she hears the sound. "Hey stupid, tell your brother to keep his ball off my property."

Did she just do a rendition of Get off my property? She should be careful with that. She's one stern fist shaking away from senile.

I dust my knees and stop with the task at hand to face her. "My name's Hazel and the ball isn't on your side yet, Finch."

I know they say respect your elders but all those rules fly out the window when it comes to my dealings with this woman. If I didn't know any better I'd have said she was my life-long enemy in a past life come back to haunt me. We had a Curse you Perry the Platypus type relationship like that. It was just my luck that we moved in next door to her.

She's single-handedly responsible for calling security on my family five times. The last call was referred to the police.

On that occasion, I was practicing my pep rally routine one night, fully kitted in my panther mascot doing twirls and tumbles when a flashlight landed on me. Apparently, Ms. Finch had seen me through her blinds and called to report a cat burglary in progress.

It was a great joke. Even my dad thought so. She must have spent hours bent in her armchair, cackling with glee after the fact. But I wasn't amused in the tiniest bit. It only served to cement my dislike of the woman.

"The next time it does, I'm going to chop it up and use it as cat litter." With that, she turns on her heel and retreats into her cavern. I mean her home.

Timothy sets down the ball, preparing to strike again but I stop him.

"Don't," I say.

"She deserves it."

"She deserves a whole lot worse than that," I say. "But she has to cast the first stone."

The next time I found cat poop in my trainers or Tim got the tires of his bike mysteriously slashed. Then we'd strike and err on the right side of both neighborhood justice and Jonny law. I watch as the door closes behind her and bend to get back to my scrubbing. Working at the paint stain I got from a fundraiser for the art club. Spinning signs and charming parents.

My phone buzzes and I sigh at the distraction before pulling it out of my back pocket. The first text is a broadcast message:

If youre free tonight, pull up to Xaviers. Free vodka!!!

Classy, I think with a smile. The second is from Anika.

You should come, so much funnn.

It's nice of Anika to extend the invitation to me but it's nearly eight pm and the party is in full swing. The limits of fashionably late have come and gone. I know this because it just might be the most documented event in Snapchat history. Every few minutes a notification pops up on my phone letting me know that someone else has uploaded a group selfie, a boomerang of drinks clinking, or a video of tipsy teens swaying to trap music.

The FOMO is intense.

But my parents would never let me go. Drugs, alcohol, and boys in their opinion was simply asking for trouble. Coming from people who grew up in the seventies and eighties, the decades that made drugs and alcohol a thing, it didn't mean much. Coming from the people who raised me it meant a whole lot more. But my parental units weren't the only obstacle in my path to Xavier's party.

In less than a week, the Irvine High boys' basketball team will have their first game of the season. A game with the team that showed us the literal definition of flames the last time we played them. The Undefeated, Invincible Addams Charter Ravens. Their Instagram bio, not mine. It seemed a bit unfair to me to pit a team that hadn't won an opening game in a decade against the Ravens. But my emails stressing that point to the junior basketball league have gone unanswered and frankly ignored despite their frequency.

But in spite of that, I know we'll win. And here's why:

1. This season has the strongest line-up of players in our modern history. Amongst our starters are Greek gods like Xavier Preston, Joshua Miller, and Nic Cohen. Boys who I hope aren't hitting the alcohol too hard at that party. Because our coach will hit them even harder with drills in preparation for the game this week. And the last thing we need is anyone hungover and projectile vomiting onto the court. I know that this is their senior year but their fleeting enjoyment is not going to come between our State championship win.

And 2. Perhaps the most vital reason. Me. This game would mark my official debut as team mascot. A position I snapped up when our old mascot tripped over the bleachers and broke his leg. He'd be in a cast for six weeks. I would be the face behind the legend that was Pete the Panther. And no matter what Anika said it counted for something in terms of my street cred.

We'll win because I Hazel Monroe of the San Antonio trailer park Monroe's will bring so much energy to Friday's game that those entitled Chapter birds wouldn't know what hit—

"Hazel, Timothy." My stepmom Andrea calls, effectively cutting off my victorious internal monologue. "Inside guys. It's getting late and The Voice is on."

Timothy kicks his ball away. More interested in the prospect of finding out which one of his favorite contestants is one step closer to getting their hands on the golden mike than taunting Ms. Finch.

"Coming," I respond. I still have to work on my fur suit. It's drenched and I need it to dry overnight.

*****

Hours later and I'm on the couch after a heavy dinner, flicking through channels. Everyone else is in bed but me. I'm stressing over school tomorrow.

News? Nope, I wasn't middle-aged or interested in getting depression. Coincidentally from the same economic depression, every newscaster on CNN would be raving about.

A telenovela? Nah. They were only enjoyable when Andrea was around to bounce her enthusiasm onto me. And she was dead asleep.

After a few more flicks, I settle on NatGeo Wild. It's shark week. What better way to prepare oneself for the education system than to watch gory bloodshed and chaos as a school of fish is hunted and consequently devoured? If that didn't describe high school then I didn't know what did.

There were several things I could have—

No, should have, been doing. I could be working my way down the English literature recommended reading list. I could have tried to make sense of a few difficult concepts from my honors math and statistics classes. I could google what polymers were to understand why my chemistry teacher kept going on about them.

But that would make me a good student. And I didn't want to give anyone any false impressions about who I was.

Timothy walks into the room.

It's ten. Way past both of our bedtimes. Neither of us should be awake but I guess the school jitters have spread to him too.

He throws my phone into my lap. I don't have the time to wonder how he got it off of me and why because the next thing he says is, "Your phone's ringing."

It's a FaceTime call from Anika.

I slide the call into accept as he heads back into our room. If she's calling to gloat and tell me how much fun she's having without me, I'll drop the call so fast it'll give her whiplash.

"Hey."

Anika's face fills the screen and the background of the call isn't what I was expecting. Instead of the silhouettes of dancing couples and strobe lighting, I see that she's in a dark room and I can barely make out her face. The blue screen of her phone is the only source of light. Behind her is a rack of clothes. She must be in somebody's bedroom or closet.

"Are you having fun yet?" I ask as a greeting even though it doesn't take much to work out that she isn't. By the look of things, the opposite is more likely.

"No," she whispers. "It actually sucks."

I lift the remote to bring the TV volume all the way down.

"Why does it suck? The whole point of teenage debauchery is to numb the suck-ish human experience."

She rolls her eyes and I can almost hear the words smart ass dangling off her tongue but she doesn't bite. Instead, Anika pushes her hair back from her face and says, "Joshua is kinda here too."

There's a slur in her words and I have to ask myself just how much of the aforementioned teenage debauchery she has really indulged in.

"Joshua as in, your Joshua?"

Her Joshua. I knew that. The game of life loved to toss in a wildcard whenever I wasn't around to watch where it landed first hand. I'd never find out why they broke up at this rate unless I gathered the courage to ask. And I still had a few moments of cowardice within me.

"Yes, my Josh. Of course my Josh. He's downstairs right now. Just dominating the kitchen with his basketball idiots. No offense."

"None taken."

Her fault for showing up at Xavier's house and not expecting him to rope in his best friend.

"Also I may have just made a scene and talked trash about his new girlfriend. It was insanely embarrassing." She snorts before sobbing into her hand. As predictable as this situation was, my friend was still hurting. And I felt it all the way across town from her. "I just want to go home."

"Did you call an Uber? Or do you have someone to drive you home?"

"I can't call an Uber you know that." She says, shifting backwards into the sleeve of a long fluffy fur coat.

I did. Her account was connected to her dad's. If she tried to pay the driver, his phone would be notified too. It would take Mr. Singh mere seconds to realize his daughter had snuck out, again.

"Do you want me to call an Uber for you?" I almost didn't mind paying for it.

"Hazel," she mumbled. "I don't want an Uber. I don't want to drive home alone. With a stranger. I could end up on one of your true crime podcasts. And you'll forever be the guilt-ridden best friend who was too lazy to pick me up the night I disappeared. Forever."

She might be drunk but the skills she's gained as co-captain of our school's debate club render her argument stone cold sober.

"Fine, fine," I say. "You want me to violate the rules of my learner's license, sneak around my parents and leave the house just to pick you up?"

I hammer down each point slowly. Just so sober Anika can remember this the next time I ask to borrow her color-coded notes.

"Please and thank you. See you in fifteen minutes," she says. Right before leaning in and ending the call.

I scoff. Fifteen minutes is a flattering exaggeration of my talents.

I got my permit a few weeks ago. Just because I could parallel park didn't mean I was suddenly Dominic Toretto in Tokyo Drift.

It's a bad idea. I'm fully aware of the fact that taking the car, in the middle of the night without letting anyone know is a terrifyingly bad idea with a slim chance of success. But what am I supposed to do? Leave her alone to face Joshua in an unevenly matched round 2? The fact that she called me is a huge step in our friendship. It meant she trusted me. I'm not going to let her down.

Plus, when do I ever get to do something this exciting on a Sunday?

The plan is devilish in its simplicity. All I have to do is grab the spare car keys from the rack where they dangle like the shiny forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden. Maybe it's because church ran an hour longer than usual today but I'm starting to think I use way too many biblical analogies in my day-to-day lexicon.

In the bathroom, I pull the heavy frame of the window up. I'm trying very hard to keep quiet but it still creaks in response. A part of me knows that I should feel a lot guiltier than I do right now. But I don't. I'm really excited. Excited to go to a party. To see the Snapchat reel in real life. To be a part of that world for a few moments as Anika's designated driver.

I push the shampoo and cleaning products aside to make room for my exit. Then my foot edges the bathtub to propel myself upwards and close enough to fit through the gap. I look down and shimmy through the window and onto the ground.