Free Personal Demons by Lisa Desrochers

except if I go to State, my parents will expect me to live at home. Plus, Mary and Kate are there. You know me. I just really need to do something different.” We slide past house after house, all the same from the outside, and all quiet tonight.
    “You’re not the LA type, Fee. They’ll eat you alive. Actually,
I’m
the LA type,” she says, running her hand through her pink spikes.
    “You should come with me. How cool would that be? Tay and Fee, tearing up LA.”
    “Yeah,” she says dejectedly, and then I feel bad, ’cause for Tay, it was State or nothing. Her dad’s been out of work for over a year. “I’m not even sure about State. If I can’t swing a few more scholarships, it ain’t gonna happen.”
    “Well, maybe you can come visit, like, for spring break.”
    “Yeah, maybe.” She sighs deeply and hikes up her book bag with a jerk of her shoulder. Her body tenses under my arm. “They’re foreclosing on our house.”
    “What?”
    “We have to move.”
    “What are you talking about?”
    “We’re looking for an apartment.” She quickly wipes away the tear leaking from the corner of her eye as we turn the corner onto her street.
    “Oh, man.” My stomach’s in my throat and I squeeze her. “Tay . . . I don’t know what to say.”
    “Nothing to say . . . except which of those guys you’re gonna pick,” she says with a weak smile.
    “Jesus, Tay. Bigger things to worry about, don’t you think?”
    “Maybe, but I want to worry about this. So which one?”
    “Shut up.”
    “When you give me a name. Luc or Gabe,” she says, turning up her driveway and towing me along by the neck.
    “You’re ridiculous.”
    “Name.” She squeezes the back of my neck.
    “Stop it!”
    “Name.” Now she’s shaking me.
    “Fine! Luc.” I’m not totally sure if I said that ’cause I meant it or ’cause Taylor said she wanted him.
    “Damn, you’re harsh! I couldn’t even get the sympathy vote,” she says, but she surprises me by pulling me into a hug. Her lips hint at a smile as she pushes open her front door. “Text me after Luc leaves tomorrow.” She lifts an eyebrow. “I want details,” she says with her lascivious smile. She steps in, and I hear her father yelling in the background before she closes the door behind her.
    I stand on Taylor’s front steps in the moonlight for a long minute, staring up at the constellations swirling above my head. Other than Crash barking down the street, the neighborhood is eerily quiet tonight.
    There has to be something I can do to help Taylor. I feel sick as I think about her family getting kicked out of their house. She’s lived here all her life. Maybe the church can help. They’ve gotta be good for something. I’ll talk to Dad.
    I turn to step off the porch just as the front door flies open and Trevor darts out, slamming into me and sending me flailing down the porch stairs.
    “Jesus, Frannie,” he says through his surprise, grabbing my arm to steady me.
    I brush him off. “Where’s the fire?”
    “Sorry,” he says and starts to back down the driveway. I follow.
    “You okay?”
    He glances warily at the house and spins, walking quickly toward the street. “Yeah. Just needed to get out of there. Thinkingabout heading over to Riley’s,” he says, and a wistful smile barely quirks his lips.
    “So, when are you guys gonna tell Tay?”
    His wistful expression becomes anxious and his eyes shoot to mine. “Don’t even think about it.”
    “I’m not gonna say anything. But you should. And you better not be screwing with Riley.”
    He stops walking and looks me in the eye. “I’m not,” he says as his eyes soften. Then he grins and starts walking again. “But speaking of screwing with people, what’s with you and Jackson? He does nothing but drool over you all day. It’s totally pathetic.”
    “I’m not screwing with him. I tell him every chance I get to leave me the hell alone.”
    “Mixed signals,” he says.
    “What part of