Our Sleepover(Nicole) It was a few weeks before school started, and a girl who was about to join our school named Eva had just arrived in Monterrey. Some friends of mine had begun talking to her over the summer to welcome her to town. Since she had just arrived, Grace decided to host a sleepover with whoever was in town and Eva.

We all arrived at Grace's house and waited for everyone else to arrive, we began talking to Eva, and we started to get along great, she liked the same things we liked, made jokes like we did, and it seemed like we would be great friends. As soon as everyone else arrived, we started to decorate cakes like Taylor Swift's albums. We each dressed like our albums and finished decorating. We put all the cakes up for display on the table and took pictures.

We had a lot of fun and decided to do a presentation night where everyone made a funny presentation about everyone else. We wanted to do this to get to know each other better. I was very excited to do this, and I was looking on Pinterest for ideas. We went to the living room and started to make the presentations. But Eva started to say that she didn't want to do that. We told her it was fun and that it was a good way to get to know each other, and most of us wanted to do that. She continued saying that she didn't want to do that, but she would wait while we made them. We talked while making our presentations, while Eva sat there on her phone quietly.

We decided not to do the presentation night so that everyone would have fun, and we started talking about school and Eva's friends from her old school. We were bored, and we offered many activities we could do or games we could play. Whenever we offered to do something, Eva would always turn it down until she just got quiet and told us she just would sit out. We asked her what she wanted to do, and she said we should make a TikTok. None of us wanted to do that, so instead we offered to go outside and show Eva some tunnels in some hills near Grace's house, which we always used to go to when we were little. We went outside and took Grace's dogs with us. When we were walking through the street, blasting music, singing, and laughing, and got to the tunnels to keep exploring. They were small tunnels that passed through a small hill. Some of us lined up to get in, while Eva and Fiona stayed outside because they were scared.

I was at the back of the line, and since I didn't have a flashlight and there were many bugs inside the tunnel, I quickly turned around and headed back to the entrance, quickly followed by everyone else. We made our way to the park to chat on the trampoline. We sat for a while and eventually decided to head back to the house.

We eventually got back to the house, and we got ready for bed, even though we were not going to sleep yet. I went downstairs to get my pajamas and my phone. I stayed downstairs for a few minutes and when I got upstairs everyone was playing, fighting and somehow got a hold of Grace's shaving cream and got the fantastic idea to start throwing it at each other, making a mess everywhere. I went inside late enough to be safe from them, so Eva, Vicky, and I stood there on the sides laughing at them. When they finished, they each spent like half an hour trying to get the shaving cream out of their hair, while everyone else placed their sleeping bags on the wooden floor and made bracelets.

When everyone was ready for bed, we decided to show Eva the yearbook to show her who she was going to be seeing in just a couple of weeks. We started looking at all the pictures and saying who we did and did not get along with, Vicky and I talking about how we did not like anyone, and Grace and Fiona talking about how everyone was super nice.

We finished looking at everyone and talked about what we wanted to do. Eva suggested we make a TikTok and again, we didn't want to do that, so instead we agreed to play a board game. While we were playing, Eva spent the whole time on her phone and didn't care about the game. Grace got tired of this and decided to take everyone's phones away so we could ALL decide what we wanted to do. Eva started protesting and arguing that she wanted to make a TikTok and that she wouldn't give Grace her phone. Since she was being stubborn, we decided to let her keep it, but we all had to agree to do something together.

We finally decided to play Mario Party, and nobody could use their phones while we played. It had always been a tradition between us to try to use our phones as little as possible while we were together, even by locking them in drawers or hiding them on really tall shelves. When we saw Eva continue to not pay attention and just be on her phone while we played, Grace told her to stop using her phone in a very out-of-character calm manner. As the rest of us continued to play Mario Party, we heard the door slam, I turned around and Eva wasn't there.

I ran to follow Eva out the door, only to find her sitting on the floor with WhatsApp open. As tears ran down her face, I asked her what was wrong, The last time we saw her she was so much more energetic and happy but now, it didn't even seem like she wanted to be there. She started to cry even harder and told me about how she missed her old friends, old house, and her old city. I hadn't even thought about that, about how hard it must have been to pack everything up, leave everyone, and arrive in a whole different country. She told me about how she had been seeing all the TikToks her friends were making without her and told me that she just wanted to show her old friends that she was having a good time here too since she hadn't talked to them in a while.

We walked back into the room with everyone else and told them that she was just homesick and missed her old friends. We told her it was very late that she should text her friends and that for now, we should just find something that we all wanted to do so we could all have fun. I grabbed my phone quickly and looked at the time, it was 3 am, I told everyone we should just go to bed, and we could talk about that the next day. We all got into our sleeping bags and told scary stories, the same 3 that Grace had told us since we were little to introduce them to Eva, and just before we fell asleep Eva said,
“I'm glad I became friends with you, even if it means having to leave my old friends.”

The next morning, we ate breakfast, made a TikTok, went to the park, and barely touched our phones all morning.

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