"What is it?" I asked.
"Open it," Shiara said bluntly.
"It's a CD, right?"
"Open it!" everyone practically shouted at me.
"Okay, okay," I muttered. "Hard crowd to please." I carefully opened the paper and squealed with excitement when I saw what it was. "Where'd you get this?" I asked Shiara.
"I picked it up at Circut City," Shiara said. "And it cost me, like, thirty bucks."
I smiled, and looked at the copy of Backstreet's Back in my hands. I'd been wanting that CD ever since I first heard "That's The Way I Like It", and I'd whined to Shiara how I'd never had enough money to get it for the longest time. "Thanks so much for the great gifts y'all," I said. I gathered up the rest of the things (a snowglobe from Julie, Shiara's CD, and a silver messenger bag from Tabs) and put them into my backpack.
"Hello cousin dearest," a cold voice said from behind me. I didn't even have to turn around before I responded. "Hi Stacey. Since when do you speak to me? Am I suddenly good enough for you to talk to?"
If anyone had been just plain evil to me since I'd gotten to Aunt Sherri's, it was Stacey. She was eighteen, only two years older than me, but she apparently thought that those two years gave her perfect reason to make my life miserable.
Stacey stopped at our table and rolled her eyes. "Please. I just came over here to apologize."
"For what?"
"You not being able to go."
"Go where?" I asked, irritated.
"To the BSB concert, duh. You know Alexandra Prescott? Her dad knows their tour manager, and he can hook us up with the best tickets for the show." She paused, clearly for an effect. And, if we get lucky, he might throw in backstage passes with the deal."
"That's just lovely," Shiara said dryly. I half expected her to get down and beg Stacey to make Alexandra's dad hook her up too.
Stacey focused on me again. "It's a shame you can't go. But then again, how would you be able to afford tickets? When was the last time you ever had more than twenty dollars in your possesion?"
Christy jumped in. "Well, I have money, and I'd probably be able to get better tickets than Alex's dad could."
"Well then." Stacey was taken aback. "Since when have you become a charity case, cousin?"
"She's not a charity case," Julie snapped. "There's something called loyalty-ever heard of it? Wait, no you haven't. I can tell by the way you treat your own family."
Clearly pissed, Stacey walked off, mumbling. As soon as she was out of earshot, Tabs said, "Talk about blowing off the bitch."
I turned to Julie. "Whoa, thanks. I never expected you to be the one to make Stacey pissed."
"No problem. It felt good." Julie laughed.
"We got ya back," Tabs assured me.
"Yeah," Shiara said. "And we'll get you to that concert if it kills us."
"Really? Y'all would do that for me?"
Julie shrugged. "Hey, what're friends for?"
"Bumming money off of," I said sarcastically. "Juuust kidding. You guys are the best for doing this for me."
"It's all good," Christy said. And once again, we resumed to laughing and talking about whatever we'd been doing before Stacey had been interruped us.