40 Pajama Party

They played Dance Fusion Party until it was pretty late. After a shower to get all the sweat off from dancing so much, Emily ended up sleeping on an air mattress in Sam's room. Out of all the girls there, she felt most comfortable around Sam. Partly because she had met her a few times and partly because she had fun listening to her stories about Justin earlier when he was at swim practice.

Emily had no idea that Justin was so resistant to the outdoors. Sam had cracked up telling her horror stories about the time they had all gone camping together. Justin was nine and annoyed with the little girls who were tailing him everywhere he went as he tried to play a handheld game so he ended up climbing a boulder and hiding in a little outcropping of rock that was over twenty feet high and couldn't figure out how to get down.

Sam, who had figured out where he was hiding, went to the adults to tattle on him for being mean but they were more concerned that Justin was stuck up there. It was too high for him to jump down into his dad's arms and the handholds were too small for any of the adults to climb up and get him.

In the end they had to call a park ranger and get search and rescue involved. The whole ordeal took more than four hours and by the time they got to him he had fallen asleep up there.

According to Sam, that was the last time she had seen him willingly participate in any physical activity. Looking back, she was amazed that he hadn't died trying to climb up there because he was the least athletic person she had ever met.

"This idiot…he met the girl he liked in middle school by hitting her in the face with a ball during P.E."

Emily had laughed and said that there were clumsy people everywhere because she had been hit in the face in P.E. too. There were plenty of other stories Sam had to share and Emily enjoyed all of them.

She had seen more of Justin's personality over the last week than she had the entire time she had known him but it was interesting hearing about him from other people's perspectives. Quiet people were way more interesting than they seemed at first glance. She drifted off to sleep, still thinking about the things Sam had told her.

The next morning she was awoken by the sound of shrieking coming from the kitchen. Lily hollered something about how Kaitlyn had thrown a potato at her while Kaitlyn vehemently denied it. Justin tiredly told them to give it a rest. Curious, Emily rubbed her eyes and wandered out of Sam's room to see what was actually going on.

Lily and Kaitlyn were dressed for the day and continued arguing while Justin, whose bedhead and wrinkled pajamas told her he had just woken up and wasn't awake enough for their nonsense, silently peeled potatoes behind them. He yawned and rubbed his eyes absently before recoiling at the potato juice on them.

The look on his face was priceless. Emily really wanted to laugh but the poor guy seemed completely done with the situation so she did her best to hold it in.

As he rinsed his eyes out in the sink Emily approached and asked if he needed help with the potatoes. Whirling around, he just about jumped out of his skin.

Clutching his tee shirt as if he was having a heart attack, he exclaimed, "Emily! You scared the life out of me! When did you wake up?"

She resisted the urge to laugh again. "A few minutes ago. Do you want me to help you? It doesn't look like those two are going to be helping again any time soon."

"Sure," he mumbled, still recovering from her sudden appearance behind him. "Thanks. I always get saddled with the potato peeling. Aunt Rhonda makes a ton of mashed potatoes and my mom makes candied yams so we have to peel those too."

"When he was six he cut his finger on a potato peeler and passed out at the sight of his own blood," Sam said from the doorway, rumpling her hair as she yawned.

Justin scowled at her. "You're too young to even remember that."

"I've heard the story from Mom a million times. I don't need to remember it."

"You faint a lot, don't you?" Emily blurted before she could stop herself. She immediately wanted to swallow her words when she saw the way Justin blanched. "Sorry, that was rude."

"Just because it's rude doesn't mean it isn't true," Sam said and Justin gently smacked her upside the head. "Ow! Don't be like that. I'm the one who dragged you to the hospital last time it happened."

"Don't remind me of that horrible day ever again," he said through gritted teeth.

"Come on, it wasn't that bad," Emily tried to console him.

He rubbed his forehead and wouldn't look at her. "It was too that bad. The worst possible ending to an entire day of having to win tickets because this dork wouldn't let me just buy her a stupid lava lamp like a normal person. No, we had to win it. With ten thousand tickets."

Emily covered her hand with her mouth to keep from snorting. "Is that the lamp I saw in your room?"

"Yep!" Sam said happily. "It's one of my most prized possessions."

"It better be after all I went through to get it for you," Justin grumbled, making the other two laugh at him.

Justin's mom walked in just then and scolded all of them lightly. "What is this, a pajama party? Come on, lazy bones. It's nearly eleven and only Lily and Kaitlyn are dressed!"

They all looked at each other. Sam was wearing a giraffe onesie. Justin had on a black t-shirt with little holes in a few places and plaid pajama pants. Emily was wearing an oversized pink sweatshirt and fuzzy polka-dotted pants. All of them had bedhead.

Emily was the first to react, turning beet red and running out of the room. She had been so preoccupied with the noise that she hadn't realized how terrible she looked in front of a bunch of strangers…and a guy.

Even if he was the human version of a puppy, Justin was still a guy. A guy who had just seen her in her pajamas. Oh boy.

"Mom, you embarrassed her," she heard Justin say as she scurried around the corner.

"I was only teasing you…"

Twenty minutes later Emily emerged from the bathroom and found the rest of the 'pajama party' had gotten dressed too. Sam wore an off-the-shoulder light blue sweater and jeans ripped at the knee, her blonde hair in a messy bun atop her head, looking as fashionable as ever. Justin was in a thick blue sweater and his messy hair had been slightly tamed. Emily was relieved that her green and purple striped sweater and simple braid matched everyone else's vibe.

"We've been officially banished from the kitchen until dinner time," Justin informed her. "We're trying to decide on a movie to watch. Any suggestions, Miss Film Critic?"

She half-smiled, her earlier embarrassment not fully faded. "I'm on vacation so film critic mode is off. I'm cool with anything."

After much argument Kaitlyn made them all watch a movie about a girl training a wild horse. Lily complained the most because Kaitlyn 'always chooses dumb horse movies' but Sam shut her up with a glare. Emily wasn't terribly invested in the highly cliché plot (all horse movies were the same) so she opened up Blogr, hoping to find RoboCat online.

He wasn't on. She shouldn't have been too disappointed. It was a holiday, after all. He was probably busy. She sent a simple message saying 'Happy Thanksgiving' before closing the app and sliding her phone back into her pocket.

She had accepted Justin's invitation because she needed a distraction from the mess she caused. Talking on the drive up, meeting new people, and playing games had done a pretty good job of that. But now that her mind wasn't focused on something else, her thoughts went back to RoboCat.

What was he doing? Was he having Thanksgiving with his family? Or had he stayed on the east coast at school?

Justin's phone dinged and with a frown, he checked for messages before sighing and putting it away without answering. What was that about? He noticed her looking at him funny and smiled at her, dispelling the previous gloom on his face.

"It was an app notification. I really need to remember to disable those."

"Yeah, those can be annoying," Emily agreed.

She tried and failed to turn her attention back to the movie so instead she texted her mom, asking what they were doing for Thanksgiving. Her mom didn't reply for a while because she was making a salad but eventually she told her daughter how the whole family was squished into her uncle's house and all the kids were making enough noise to wake the dead. Suddenly hit with a wave of homesickness, she thought that Christmas couldn't come fast enough so she could be with her own family on a holiday.