Okay, let's recap for a second.
A very tripped-out Stella Anderson showed up at my, Emma Lenford's, house on Monday the 27th of March, dragged me, Emma Lenford, from my night of hot showers and potato chips into the snowy dark unknown outside... and then, somehow, took me, Emma Lenford, along on a ride in the trunk of a kidnapper's stolen black Mercedes. And I know it was stolen, too, because, after an eternity of being cramped in the tight box with a gagging, physically ill Stella Anderson, I was able to actually execute what I guess you could call plan G, or something like that, which was... call 911 and summon the county police to save Stella before I clawed her hair follicles out of her pretty little head.
Oh, and to bring me some pants.
So, after the cops eventually arrived on the scene, busted the oddly deformed trunk open, and gave me a blanket and some slippers to put on, the head chief, or whoever, tried to explain to me what must have happened.
"This here car is listed as a stolen vehicle," he began, rubbing the edges of his gray, unfortunately untrimmed mustache as I stood in front of him, shivering under my blanket with chunks of Stella's stomach acid still ice-encased in my hair. "And it seems like someone hit this here back end, and that must've mashed you two gals in there all up and tight... and then whoever it was must've done a hit and run, too... and then the driver who you nabbed you two took off, too... and not one other nosy Wisconsin driver passing by stopped and checked out the abandoned car, either... Well, now you poor lil' ladies, that's just one steaming heap of bad luck."
My luck indeed.
As for the creep/ 'modeling agent', his whereabouts are unknown, and the police said they'd look into it...
But the past is in the past now, anyway, right?
Well, I ended up skipping school the very next day. My dad had no problem calling me in 'sick' after he found out I had to be picked up from the police... again. As for Stella Anderson, she just couldn’t stand to let down her all-important perfect attendance standing… so she went to school completely hung over and running on nothing but ten minutes of nighttime sleep and about six different types of cappuccinos.
However, that adrenalized mixture and day full of state-mandated education must have sparked something in her slow synapses, because she just so happened to call me up after she returned home with what was actually quite a brilliant plan dealing with the devil's very own witch-child, Miranda Lively.
And that bring us here, to Thursday night, in Stella's 'retro' slug-bug, parked across the street from Miranda's house.
Because Miranda wouldn't have been home, asleep in her own bed, probably any of the next few weekend nights... at least, not alone.
"Okay, so," Stella started, killing the engine and un-clicking her seatbelt. "Her mom sleeps with earplugs because of her stepdad who snores too loud to be awoken by absolutely anything, and all of her stupid stepbrothers live with their mom a block away, and, as far as I know, there are no pets in this household other than Bubble-Oh-Seven the goldfish, so..." She stopped to slide a pair of black sunglasses over the tip of her nose. "We should be good."
I looked from the cloudy dark night outside the front windshield to her face.
"Is that really necessary?" I questioned.
"What?" she snapped. "I like to do my research ahead of time, Emma, and you'll probably thank me later..."
"No," I stopped her. "Not that; the, uh..." I gestured to my own eyes with outstretched fingers. "The sunglasses."
"Oh," she shot out, then glanced down to her car's dashboard. "Well, here, I have another pair." She grabbed a nearly identical pair of shades from the cubby beneath her radio system. "Nobody switches a blade on the guy in shades."
She held the free pair out to me; I looked from her hand to her shielded expression.
"No, thanks," I refuted.
"Whatever," she spat back, and then replaced the glasses in the miniature cabinet; she leaned back in her seat before looking back at me. "You ready?"
I nodded back, no words necessary.
I'm actually not the most avid talker when I'm tired, and there's about a ninety-seven percent chance that I'll be pretty exhausted at three a.m. on a school morning.
Stella grinned the tiniest bit.
" 'Kay," she said, and then whipped herself toward the driver's side door. "Let's bust this bitch!"
I did nothing but raise an eyebrow as she threw the door open and hopped out, and then turned to do the same from the passenger's side.
Once out of the car, Stella rushed across the vacant street, and I decided to follow a bit more sluggishly behind her. I looked over the front of the Lively's large, two-story tan house, then the closely identical next-door neighbors on either side, each of them only separated by a few feet of snow and a tall, white picket fence.
"Damn Levittowns," I muttered, shaking my head a bit, right before I continued on toward the front door beside the Lively's garage, where Stella stood.
"Miranda keeps a key under the third rock," she said, kneeling down in front of the iced-over landscaping underneath a window on our left. "For when she can't get to sleep and calls up someone to put her to sleep."
She overturned the third rock in the line beside our feet and, low and behold, a small golden key had been concealed underneath it. After that, she popped back up and spun to the door, then followed up by inserting it carefully into the keyhole under the handle and turning the knob itself ever-so cautiously.
She gently propelled the tall white door a few inches forward, and then glanced back at me from over her shoulder, pulling her shades down to her nose.
"Oh, shit; we in," she whispered, flashing the quickest grin.
"Not until you step through the door," I grumbled, and then pushed past her to step into the house. "Now, let's just get this all over with so I can go back to sleep before my Spanish test tomorrow."
"Well," Stella went on, trotting quietly in behind me. "Technically, it's today, actually."
"Oh, Stella," I softly whined, twisting around to face her. "Please don't be one of those people."
I watched her remove her sunglasses and slide them into her back jean pocket. However, as soon as she did that, she flipped the dark hood of her black pull-over over the top of her bouncy blonde ponytail, and then tugged it down to slightly below her eyebrows.
"Okay," she simply mumbled, and then turned to both take the key out of the door and shut it softly behind us.
I, myself, twisted to take in our new surroundings.
To the direct left: an excessively large, vacant dining area complete with a glass chandelier and tall display of frosted cupcakes in the center of the long table underneath it; straight ahead: a lengthy corridor with a spiral-style staircase at the very end of it, expensive-seeming paintings and wide doorways leading up to the wide, spacious area surrounding it; to the immediate right: a wall.
"Wow," I commented on my observations.
"Okay, come on," Stella whispered, now stepping lightly in front of me.
Soon enough, I obeyed her command, and followed close behind her as she turned into the first left doorframe through the faintly lit hallway. After that, I stopped to take in quite a spacious living area, which was connected to an even larger kitchen area, which was connected to the vast lofty area that held the staircase I mentioned earlier.
"Good Lord," I mumbled out, and then turned to Stella's back as she stopped a few steps in front of me. "Why does she need your dad's money, again?"
Stella spun around to face me, her black hood flopping even farther down as she did so.
"Because," she started, yanking the hood back up to her forehead. "She's a heartless bitch with an online gambling problem."
I stared back at her for a second, and then nodded right before she pivoted back on her heels. She made her way to the kitchen on the right, and I decided to follow in her footsteps.
"Now," she began, again, pausing to gaze around the area a bit. "I'm not sure where her closet is..."
I stepped up beside her.
"Maybe in her room," I flatly suggested.
Stella glared over at me.
"In a house like this?" she stressed.
She then rolled her eyes and turned away from me, afterward proceeding to pace around to the hall area once more. I rolled my own eyes to myself as she walked away.
"In a place like this?" I mocked, quietly enough that she couldn't hear me, and then stepped myself in the direction of the refrigerator on the other side of the kitchen island in front of me. Once I reached it, I looked over my shoulder, saw that Stella (and, luckily enough, everyone else currently in the house) was out of sight, and then turned back and proceeded to crack it open.
"What kind of goodies do we keep in our pantry, Miss Miranda?" I mumbled as I looked over the array of V8 drinks, plain vanilla yogurts, and single bag of two apples and one mango. "Figures... with a fridge this big, of course."
I paused for a second when my eyes got to the bottom shelf, though, where, literally, about forty to fifty glass bottles of mocha Starbucks Frappuccinos sat.
"Well," I went on, reaching out to just touch one of them. "A little pick-me-up couldn't hurt."
I continued to snatch up the frontmost bottle, and then used my other hand to fill in the gap it left with the surrounding jars.
"I could probably use it, anyway," I commented, gently closing the fridge and turning back around.
I then stepped all the way over to the long, cream-colored sofa facing the, probably, approximately one hundred-inch flat screen television in the den area nearby. Once there, I stepped around it, plopped down, and twisted the cap off my icy cool coffee glass. However, unfortunately, a small amount of the liquid dripped off of the cap and down to hit the sofa right between my two thighs in the exact same moment.
"Shit," I cursed, replacing the cap and leaning forward, the glass outstretched in my left hand as I pushed my gray sweatshirt sleeve down on my right wrist and began my attempt of rubbing the splotchy new stain away.
As I did so, though, every dim light around me abruptly shut off.
I froze, and then listened as a creaky pair of footsteps piped up from somewhere slightly beyond the kitchen behind me, followed by a rusty, deep man's voice singing a slightly familiar tune.
"You used to call me on my cellphone..." he, whoever it was, grumbled out... pretty flatly, too. "Late night when you need my love..."
I narrowed my brows, then silently shifted in place and peered out from behind the backside of the couch I sat on.
A vividly middle-aged man with a long, graying beard was walking up to the kitchen island, a crackly plastic bag in his hands. He raised it to the countertop, sat it on the edge, and then pulled out what, seriously, looked like a live turtle.
I stared at him a little longer as he stared at it.
And, actually, yes... it seriously was a turtle, one with the shell and the moving legs and all.
He reached into the bag once more, and then pulled out a dangling gold chain; he proceeded to double-wrap the necklace around the neck of the turtle.
"I know when that hotline bling," he continued, and then let out a slight chuckle. "Oh, they're so clueless, aren't they, Caper?"
I raised my brows, and then ducked back down behind the sofa's back as he snatched up the now empty bag and started to step around the island. I waited for his steps to trail off, and then looked down at my drink through the new sense of darkness around me.
"Oh, god," I whispered, and then took a big swig from the glass.
I then heard a door slam, followed by silence.
"I'm so tired I'm... I'm actually hallucinating," I uttered out.
Just then, a softer pair of steps began to patter into the room.
"Emma!" I heard, clearly, Stella's voice loud-whisper from a few feet away.
I popped my head over the back of the couch as I twisted the cap back on my drink, and then saw her figure make its way into the room.
"Stella!" I not exactly whispered out as I jumped up from the sofa. "Oh my god, I—"
Stella snapped her head toward me, and then rushed over to hush me with her finger.
"Sh," she mumbled, and then paused for a long moment. "Why did you turn the lights off?"
I stared at her for an even longer moment.
"They're..." I cocked my head to look at her sideways. "Really... off?"
She threw her hushing finger down and slapped her sides.
"Uh, yeah," she replied.
I paused before stepping completely around the couch's armrest between us.
"Okay, well, then," I said as I tapped on the aluminum cap on the bottle in my hands. "Stella, I saw..." I stopped, glanced over at her yet again, and pursed my lips. "A, um... the... neighborhood... veterinarian, or the... royal turtle catcher, or something, and he, like..." I turned and gestured to the kitchen island a few feet to the right of us. "Came in here, and then... pulled a live turtle out of a Walmart bag, and then... put a..." I looked back at her. "A gold chain on it, and he was... singing... Drake..."
Stella searched me a second, and then shrugged.
"Probably a Canadian," she answered. "That was sleeping with Miranda's mom. Or Miranda..."
"But," I objected, lowering my hands to my thighs. "He was old..."
"Probably her mom, then," Stella said. "Or her dad..." She glanced to the side wall for a second, then turned back to me. "I don't know; her parents have weird kinks, I guess."
I raised a brow.
"Do they have... turtle kinks?" I questioned.
She paused, and then tilted her head to the side.
"You know," she started. "Actually, I did find some pressed flowers in a box in their library a second ago..." She stopped, and then nodded at me. "Maybe it's, like, a nature thing."
She continued to nod, straight-faced, as I looked her over.
"Uh, yeah..." I muttered back. "Maybe..."
"There are worse kinks, Emma," Stella went on, now stepping past my side and spinning around on her heels. "Like, I've heard that in some parts of Africa, men will let pharaoh ants climb up their urethras for the enjoyment of their wives."
"Oh, god," I spat out, turning toward her as she continued to pace around the kitchen island ahead.
"Now, come on," Stella whispered, continuing from the kitchen to the stairs' area ahead. I took a second before obeying, but, after reaching the edge of the steps behind her, she stopped and looked back over at me. "We have to find her closet first, okay?" She flickered her eyes down to the glass jar in my hands. "Oo, where'd you get that?" She proceeded to reach out, snatch up the container, and then, somehow, let it slip from her fingers down to the floor.
It promptly smashed into the ground, though, luckily, and surprisingly, it didn't break open. It did, however, release the sound of a supersonically loud bang.
"Damn it, Stella," I cursed under my breath as I dropped to my knees and grabbed it back up.
"Oh, sorry," she mumbled, and I popped back up to my feet right after.
We looked at each other for one silent moment. And then Stella reached out to seize me by my left wrist while the bottle was in both of my hands.
"Okay, no one's coming, come on," she urged, spinning around to face the bottom of the stairs once more.
"Stella!" I loud-whispered at her, and then pulled my right hand, now holding the coffee cup, away from her as she yanked my body forward.
"Sh!" she scolded, continuously pulling me as she trotted up the bottom two spiral steps.
Without much choice, I followed her heels to the very top, and then stopped right behind her as she looked hurriedly left and right. I jerked my wrist away from her, and then looked around, myself.
There was a second large den in a loft-style area overlooking the stairs ahead and on the left; straight ahead of that was a long corridor, behind us was the back half of the lengthy hallway, and, to the side, nothing but a wall.
Oh, and, of course, there were closed doors everywhere.
"Do you happen to have a map?" I asked.
"No, Emma," Stella grumbled back, turning back to me. "We just have to check every door until we find... the right closet."
"Lord," I murmured.
Stella spun back around, and then began to lightly step away from me.
"You check those back there," she commanded, pointing behind her back. "And be, like, really careful about it."
I watched her pace up to the side of the nearest door ahead, and then took another long drag on my stolen coffee bottle. After that, I took a deep breath, twisted around, and slugged myself forward. I forged my way to the closest door beyond the staircase, and then stopped right beside it.
I leaned an ear against it and placed my free hand over its knob. After hearing no sounds of vitality from the other side, then, I gradually turned the handle and creaked the passageway open.
I poked my head inside the pitch-black room, allowed my eyes to adjust to the darkness a moment, and then blinked a few times to pick up the sight of a toilet, double sink, and spacious, decorative counters all encased in a moderately sized room.
"Nope," I whispered, leaning back out to hallway. "Not here for that business."
I crossed the hall and pushed my ear up to the next door in line while, at the same time, glancing to Stella down the corridor, where she was standing, hands on hips, in front of a door that she had, as it would seem, apparently just swung completely back on its hinges.
"So much for being careful," I commented, now turning to push the door in front of me open by just an inch. After that, I peered inside to see a small enclosed area complete with two tall red machines with circular glass doors on their frontsides, tall white plastic baskets stacked all around them.
"No," I grumbled, closing the door once more and stepping up to the next one on the same side of the hall. As soon as I reached it, however, I picked up on some very human-like noises from the other side.
"I like Ben and all," a highly-pitched, feminine voice spoke out. "But, he's just... so... what's the word..."
"Platitudinous?" a grumbly, masculine counterpart piped up.
I stepped closer and leaned my ear inward.
"No..." the female replied.
"Peremptory?" the man asked.
"What the hell," I mouthed, just to myself.
"No..." the woman said.
"Phlegmatic?" the male questioned.
"No..."
I listened intently as this went on for a while longer.
"Languid?"
"No..."
"Languorous?"
"No..."
"Discommodious?"
"No..."
"Inexpedient?"
"No..."
"Temerarious?"
"No... but close..."
The man paused for a long moment.
"Impertinent?"
"No..."
"Traducing?"
"Yes!"
I shifted on my feet and narrowed my brows.
"I mean," the woman continued. "He's nice and all, too, but... the honing steel? That was so cold... and, I don't know, I still miss Ron a lot; he was just so... so..."
"Copacetic?" the man asked.
"No..." the woman responded.
I took a quiet breath.
"Meritorious?"
"No..."
"Saporous?"
"No..."
I turned back toward where Stella was to see her suddenly charging my way, waving her arms all around as she did so. I pushed myself away from the door and met her halfway through the hallway as she began to speak.
"Emma," she whispered. "I found it!"
"Thank god," I remarked.
"Come on, come on!"
She bounced in place and grabbed my wrist, the one holding the coffee glass yet again.
"Stella, sh," I murmured, quickly tossing the bottle to my other hand before I would inevitably be forced to throw it to the ground.
She then jerked me forward and dragged my arm all the way to a widely-opened door at the very end of the right side of the hall. After we both slowly to a stop in front of its brightly lit core, she released my wrist, and then let me take in the contents of an enormous pink closet.
There were racks on racks of dresses and tops, stands on stands of heels and boots, and drawers on drawers of... well, I didn't really know, because they were all closed, but I'm sure it was full of more articles of clothing.
Stella stepped to the center of the room, where a large, white furry ottoman sat.
"And look at this," she said, gesturing for me to come closer.
I followed command, and then followed her gaze to the right, where all of the shirts against the wall were pushed to either side of a dangling pair of pristinely white pants covered in clear plastic, each end of the wrapping tightly knotted to keep the inner contents as untouched as humanly possible.
"The pants..." I awed.
There they were.
The infamous white pants Miranda was rumored to worship and wear for precisely seven minutes and seven seconds every single day.
The notorious white pants that supposedly gave Miranda the 'mystical powers' she required to fuel her devious witchcraft practices.
The legendary white pants Stella and I were praying actually existed so that we could break into Miranda's house, steal them, and use them as persuasion to make Miranda submit to our orders of which were now soon to come.
And there they were.
"They're so..." I began. "Hm, what's the word..."
"Small," Stella answered for me, stepping forward to snatch them from the rack they swung from. "I mean, Emma, look at this..." She stepped back and held the pants against her waistline, then bent her neck to look down at them for a long moment. "They could almost fit me..." She glanced back up at me. "And, Emma, you know I have a tiny ass..."
"That's..." I sluggishly responded, studying the pants for a while. "Very... true..."
"I mean," Stella went on. "I know Miranda does her cardio and crud..." She kept the slacks held up against her legs as she leaned onto one side and slid her free hand up to her hip. "But, honestly, she's like a tower... and squats can only do so much for the baby that's got back, right?"
I flickered my eyes from the pants (which, for the record, were actually sized for the average woman's physique, though they did seem a tad on the small side to me for Miranda herself, who was a little bit taller and bigger in the backside than the average adult female) to Stella's face.
"Sure..." I muttered.
"So," Stella shot back, and then leaned toward me a bit. "How does she fit into these?"
She turned to the side, and then stepped over to where a set of three full-length body mirrors sat against the wall nearby, right in front of the ottoman. I looked her over a moment as she looked herself over in the glass, and then began to tap on my coffee bottle's cap as she continued.
"I mean," she started. "If she's so into witching and shit, why doesn't she just, like... pop a potion, or... suck a spell, or... something to make them bigger?" She twisted back and forth a bit, her eyes still glued to the mirror. "Or make herself smaller?" She paused, and then shot her gaze over to me. "Or what if she already does that?"
I shrugged, and then stepped over to her side.
"I don't know, Stella," I said. "But maybe you should ask her."
"Oh, good idea," she replied, and then threw the pants on the ottoman behind herself. After that, she stepped back, out of her classic tan UGGs, and began to reach for the fly on her light-wash skinny jeans.
"Now what are you doing?" I asked of her.
"I'm changing into those pants, Emma," she answered. "What does it look like?"
"Like you're about to come onto either me or Miranda's kinky parents down the hall," I shot back.
Stella let out a quite loud laugh as she slid her trousers off of her feet, revealing her hot-pink, cheetah-print panties underneath.
"Oh, Emma," she giggled, now reaching for the wrapped white pants beside us. "I don't think even anyone in this house could afford a night with me."
I glared at her as she unwrapped the slacks, slipped them on, and then turned back to the mirror to showcase.
"They're a little big," I commented, studying the baggy thick leggings from her flat behind to the slabs of material that flopped around her feet.
"Yeah, but," Stella said, turning back to me. "Miranda could fix that, right?"
I stared blankly at her for a second, and then responded with nothing but another shrug.
"Well," she went on, looking back at the mirror. "Either way, as long as I'm wearing them when we go talk to her, she can't use any of her witch powers on us... right? Like, they only work when she wears the pants?"
She wrinkled her nose over to me.
"I don't think they work at all, actually, so..." I voiced.
"Yeah, but," Stella countered, now spinning around to gather her own pants and shoes. "She actually cursed you with, like, bad luck, right?"
I paused while she turned back to me once more and dropped her garments on the ottoman beside the deserted hanger and plastic wrap.
"Well," I began. "I wouldn't call it so much bad luck as I would… just… slight misfortune."
Stella shook her head.
"Emma," she said. "That's the exact same thing."
I paused, again, and searched her expression.
"You know," I started. "You're right, actually, for once." I nodded. "We should go destroy those god-forsaken skinny jeans."
"They're jeggings, actually," Stella stated.
I rolled my eyes, and then grabbed her by the forearm.
"Just come on," I spat as I spun around and hurled the both of us toward the hallway.
I dragged her into the corridor, much like she had with me on all of the previous occasions of the night, looked from right to left, and then glanced back at Stella.
"Where, exactly, is Miranda's room?" I asked.
Stella paused for a second.
"Um," she began. "Maybe one of these..."
I let go of her wrist and allowed her to cross the hall in front of me as she pointed to the two closed doors that sat there.
"Okay," I agreed, walking up to the opposite side of the left one from where she was.
"So, we should..." she went on, now slowly wrapping her hand around the door's handle. "Just, like..." She threw her hand back down and turned to me. "Emma, should we really do this?"
I paused before replying.
"Well, it was your idea," I began, tapping on my glass top once again. "Much like every other one of your plans that end up in tragedy or minor inconveniences, so..." I searched her face for a split millisecond. "Yeah."
I nodded, and then reached for the knob myself.
"But, Emma," Stella uttered. "Wait—"
Before she could gru