Ride or Die

Chapter 1

It started because I threw the biggest party Woolridge High had ever seen—just to steal a necklace.
     “A party?” Cairo asked, collapsing next to me with her lunch tray.
     She didn’t quite know about the second part yet.
     I smiled. “You got my text.”
     “Text?” Cairo furrowed a brow, crinkling the scatter of dark freckles on her forehead. Our cafeteria’s natural lighting did wonders for us all but, like all other lighting, it was especially good to her. “What text? I heard the news from Connor.”
     I shot her a tired look. As much as I admired Cai’s ability to detach from social media and exist apart from her phone, it really messed with the flow of things. I opened my mouth to say this for the thousandth time but was stopped short by a brush on my side and a low voice in my ear.
     “The Golden Eagle has been snagged. I repeat, The Golden Eagle has been—”
     “Ryan,” I interrupted, holding a hand up in his direction without looking at him. “I swear. If you call him by that name one more time, I will force these highly processed Double Stuf Oreos down your throat.”
     Ryan eased onto the bench next to me, tousling his blond hair as he did. Like any good best friend, he knew just the way to get on my nerves. “Hey, you’re the one who dated him,” he said with a smug smile.
     I winced. There was nothing smart I could say about that, because it was true and I would never live it down.
     Tristan Mattaliano was disgustingly wealthy, very good-looking, and the captain of the football team, but I cared for none of these things. I only really dated him because everyone at school kept saying we’d be the ultimate dream Couple of Color, and I loved that powerful image; it made sense to have the most popular guy go out with the most popular girl, right? But you see, Mattaliano was popular for normal things, like his attractiveness and his ability to play sports, whereas I was popular for slightly less conventional things, like cutting Ms. Davenport’s hair in her sleep and kidnapping all the animals on my block to stage a Pet Rapture.
     We had our wires crossed from the start.
     I ripped open my yogurt. “Let’s just call him Mattaliano, okay?”
     I hated the way everyone at Woolridge said his name; Tristan Mattaliano, spoken slowly and with admiration, like it was something to be savored or revered. It was never just “Tristan.” It was Tristan Mattaliano, or “The Golden Eagle” if you wanted to really show off that you were close with him.
     I think the simple knowledge that the latter was a thing was half the reason I broke up with him.
     “There are a lot of people who just call him Mattaliano, Lo,” Cai said, when I voiced my thoughts aloud.
     I scowled. “That’s beside the point.”
     “Either way,” Ryan said, looking between us both. “He’s been snagged. The venue is secure.”
     Cairo raised her eyebrows. “Venue? For the party?”
     “Wow, Cairo didn’t get the text?” Ryan teased. “What a shocking twist of events.”
     Cai stretched a long, tan arm out to flick Ryan’s head, but he dodged out of the way just in time.
     “Hey don’t hit me, I’m trying to help you!”
     He whipped his phone out and spun it across the table to her. She stopped it with impressive agility and squinted at the screen.
 
Emergency party. Tonight. At Mattaliano’s. Let everybody know they’re not invited.
 
     Cairo slid the phone back to Ryan. “Well that barely clarified anything.”
     “We’re throwing a party,” I explained, yet again. “And thanks to Ryan, the venue has been secured.”
     “It was actually pretty easy,” Ryan said, pulling out his re-usable plastic utensils and his blue lunch container. “All I did was ‘accidentally’ bump into Mattaliano in the hallway and casually bring up the big party that was happening at his house tonight, making sure to emphasize how lucky he is that you’d planned for it to be at his house before the breakup because, well, we all know you would never have let him anywhere near the party if it wasn’t.”
     I nodded, impressed by his guile. Across the cafeteria, a girl with a custom Perigold lunch box handed out overly priced iced coffees to her friends and pointed in our direction. I smiled at her and waved politely. Looked like news of our party was spreading nicely.
     “Mattaliano was completely dumbfounded at first,” Ryan continued, “but he played along immediately. Turns out his mother is out of town this weekend.”
     “She’s out of town every weekend,” I said. “Most days of the week too.”
     Cairo grimaced. “Ouch.”
     Mattaliano’s parents were divorced and his mother—a successful businesswoman, NAACP board member, and high-profile motivational speaker—was almost always out of town. Sure, it was sad to know he was alone at home again, but I only allowed myself to pity him for a second. He was the reason I was in this mess in the first place.
     “Wait. Hold on . . .” Cairo squinted at me. “You want to throw a last-minute party at your ex-boyfriend’s house?”
     Crap.
     I’d been praying the excitement of a potential party would distract them from that part. My hope was to keep them in the dark for as long as I could. Forever, if possible. Ryan especially.
     I shrugged, willing myself to look relaxed. “Well. Yeah . . . he lives in a mansion. Didn’t we always say he had the best space for a party?”
     Cairo scoffed and shook her head. “This is so classically Loli Crawford,” she said, dipping her fry into ketchup with more force than necessary. “You can’t just do stuff like this, you know. What’s that saying? About eating cake? You can’t have your cake and eat it too.”
     I grinned sweetly. “You can if you have two cakes.”
     Water sputtered out of Ryan’s mouth and Cairo smirked.
     “I’m gonna ignore that,” she said, placing both elbows on the table. “So. What’s the plan?”
     I relaxed. That’s what I loved about Cai. No matter how many questions she needed to ask to get there, she was always down for anything I threw at her.
     “I’m gonna get all my usual contacts: my mom’s go-to catering company, that party decorator who did my sixteenth birthday, and—you know that kid we usually call for fake ID’s and fireworks? Wolf? I’m sure he has college contacts to get us drinks. Which means all you have to do is get the people. A lot of people.”
     “And you plan on doing that by telling everyone that they’re not invited?” Cairo asked skeptically.
     “Oh, Dahmani.” I rested my face in my palm. “Sweet, sweet, Diamond Dahmani. How do you think the news reached you so fast? I told just three girls about an exclusive super-secret pool party this morning, and the news reached you before my text message could.”
     Cairo leaned back, impressed. “Touché.” Behind her, one of the Dani twins jumped up and scuttled to the other side of the cafeteria. “By that rhetoric, all we really have to do is invite Nate Wilde, Sarah Plaxton, and the theater kids, and by the end of the day the entire school will be buzzing.”
     “Genius.” I smiled and clapped my hands together. “Clean and concise. Perfect.”
     We had great food, a luxurious venue, pending guests, and the target all lined up. If everything went according to plan, I would have the necklace back in my rightful possession and yet another feat for the history books—all before the start of the weekend.
     Ryan turned to face me. “Obviously I’m on music for tonight.”
     “Obviously,” I repeated. “We wouldn’t trust anybody else.”
     He stretched an arm above his head, smiling the most genuinely blissful smile at the prospect of creating a fresh playlist. Ryan lived and breathed music. It was his truest passion, right above staying in trouble and taking care of his car, affectionately named Baby. I glanced at his lunch: an apple, a bottle of water, and a beautifully made chicken salad. Eating healthy was also somewhere up there on his list.
     “Gee, red onions today?” I commented. “You’ve been going absolutely crazy with these salads lately.”
     Ryan rolled his eyes and ignored me, stabbing his fork into a cucumber.
     Cairo grabbed my packet of Oreos off the table. “Proximity of carbs,” she explained. “I’m not trying to kill you, Ry. I know how deathly allergic you are.”
     “Ha-ha-ha,” Ryan sarcastically droned. “I get it, okay? You guys make fun of my nutritious lunch—which is, by the way, much more delicious than the cardboard our school calls pizza—I shoot out a comeback, we all have a good laugh etc. But can we skip all that today? Can we talk about something else? Like for example, Lo, why the emergency party?”
     I stilled.
     Ryan took a bite of his salad and looked back at me, waiting for an answer, and as soon as his eyes landed on mine, I knew I couldn’t tell him the truth. There was no point in getting him upset when I was on the cusp of getting it all fixed anyway. My plan was falling perfectly into place—ideally, it included him not finding out.
     “Really?” I asked, feigning indifference by licking the back of my yogurt lid. “When do I ever need a reason for anything I do?”
     There was a second of silence as my friends exchanged a look.
     I sighed. “I’m bored!”
     “We know, we know,” Cairo cut in. “It’s the constant state of Loli Crawford; the reason for all your dangerous and impulsive actions.” She reached into my packet of Oreos and stuffed a whole one in her mouth. “At least this time we’re getting a party out of it and not a court summoning.”
     Ryan raised an eyebrow and lifted his fork. “Yet.”
     In retrospect, I think a court summoning would have been easier to deal with.