MASKED

Chapter Eight

Early the next saturday morning, Lexy woke up to the sound of the doorbell.

'Urghh! It's a Saturday, for crying out loud. Who could be at the door at this time on a weekend?'

She wasn't expecting anyone; her mum was not at home as usual and she hardly ever got visitors.

She tried to ignore it but the person at the door was not ready to give in yet.

'Great. Now I have to actually go downstairs.' She grumbled to herself.

When she finally opened the door, she was caught by surprise.

"Hey girl.", Katie said excitedly with arms outstretched.

"Katie! Mal! What are you guys doing here?", Lexy's sour morning mood vanished in an instant.

"You sound like you aren't very happy to see us here." pipped Katie with a grin.

"More like surprised. You guys didn't tell me that you'd be coming over."

"Well surprise, surprise! We're here now.", she replied with a laugh while Malory, in her timid manner just smiled.

"How did you guys figure out this place?", Lexy inquired.

"Mark brought us here, course.", Katie said as they stepped in to the house.

Lexy didn't know how the two would react, knowing that they were from affluent homes but they didin't seem to mind at all. Infact, Malory had gotten interested almost immediately in the hamster in it's cage by the flower vase and Katie had already made herself comfortable, sprawled in the sofa.

"So, what brings you two here todayyy", Lexy joined Katie on the couch.

"Actually," she shrugged. "We had nothing in mind when we came here, right Mal?"

"Oh...uhhh", she pushed her glasses back unto her nose. "We could always start with some homework or something?"

"Huh? You want us to start a perfectly boring Saturday with homework?", Katie retorted.

"That's all I could come up with, Katie. Besides, alot of them are due next week and i know you've not done any of them"

"Fine! If that's what you want to do so bad then let's. But let's do it at Ice Bites, then maybe we could go somewhere else afterwards.", Katie suggested.

"Isn't it a bit too early for ice cream?", Malory wondered aloud.

"Geez, Mal. It's never too early for ice-cream; what are we, six?"

"We could just have a smoothie or something then.", Lexy said.

"How about we zero out the homework and just go to the beach instead?",Katie asked.

"How about we finish homework first for a change?", Malory pushed on.

"Come on, Katie. You'll eventually have to do it in the end." Lexy nuged her.

"Ever heard of 'better late than never'?", said Katie.

"Ever heard of 'the earlier the better'?", Lexy grinned in triumph.

With homework done and 12 different flavours of ice cream sampled with a touch of brain freeze, the trio made for the beach. There weren't much people there because the sun wasn't so high up yet. They happened chanced upon Steve and Stephanie who were havinga family picnic.

"You guys can't be serious. Homework on a Saturday morning??", Stephanie laughed seeing Malory with a backpack.

"I'm surprised Katie even agreed to it", Steve added.

"Well atleast I'm done, meaning I can do something more interesting for the rest of the weekend", Katie said.

Later on Steve, bored with all the girls' chattering left for the arcade with some of his friends. They decided to have a sleep over the last minute and they rang up the other girls to meet up at Lexy's.

The girls made some popcorn and watched a sweet romance movie . Later on, they ordered pizzas. After spending almost 45 minutes deliberating on wether or not to have mushroom (This was Katie and Harmony) or sausages (Cassie's option) or both (they rest of them didn't have a problem with either one), they finally settled on having three separate orders to suit everyone.

While waiting for the pizza's to arrive, a food fight errupted; which later turned to a world war of pillow fighting. Swimming in a sea of popcorn, cotton and feathers, Lexy wondered how ever she was going to clean up the pace before her mum arrived at the house. Britney knocked over the hamster's cage and this cost them another 20 minutes of hunting for the startled furball whom they found snuggled up in a basket full of laundry.

A bemused pizza boy left the house when a wild levy of girls met him at the door after he rang the doorbell and released him after minutes of jostling him with questions.

After the meal, someone brought the idea to prank one of the boys and the unlucky one they chose was Brian who was over at Mike's end. They played several rounds 'truth or dare' before one by one they fell asleep; exhausted from cleaning up the house.