Flying Dreams

Flying Dreams1

“It was the most wonderful dream I ever had, apart from the Aenso dreams, of course. There was... a clearing in the middle of the woods. And in the dream, it was my grandmother’s house, and I was staying there with all of my cousins. Every day we would wake up and they’d tell us we could go, and we’d run out of the house... and on the other side of the clearing was a tunnel of trees, and we’d run through it all together at first... then we’d branch off different paths, we each had our own, only I got to stay on the main path because I was the oldest.2

A ways from the clearing there was a circular valley that looked as if it was just cut into the forest-covered earth, and one side was covered in ledges, where the paths we took led. The other side was covered in this huge, beautiful waterfall. And every day when we reached the ledges, we jumped... and we flew. We flew through that beautiful valley with the gorgeous waterfall all day. It was the most beautiful feeling.... I never wanted to forget it. But I did forget it. I can’t remember it now, can’t call upon it. I did feel it again recently, a few weeks ago, though.”3

I told the story that I’d whispered to the darkness a hundred times over the years ago as if I’d practiced yesterday. I surprised myself with the fluency and passion with which the words leave my mouth, and I fear being overdramatic for a moment there.4

“That’s good enough to put on paper,” said the girl lying on the other side of the bed from me.5

“Yeah,” said the girl in the middle, cuddling the plushie I’d given her as a birthday gift earlier. “I dunno why, but when I dream about flying I always feel so free.” That statement seemed to me far too universal. “It just feels so.... No, seriously, you guys,” she protested to the other girl’s interruption. “Like, it’s always been, like, if I’ve been in a fight with someone and been really mad at them, and then they apologize, or I stop being mad at them or something, that night I’ll always dream that I’m flying. It’s just always been that way with me.”6

That’s pretty cool, I thought. I’ve always loved dreams, for reasons that fall through my secrets, and any pattern that I hear of, anything that gives a dream significance or meaning, makes my heart leap.7

I hummed in thought a moment, then picked up where I left off. “I did feel it again.... At the Greenway, on that Venturing campout, there was this log fallen into the lake with a branch jutting down that kept it locked in place above the shallow water so I could walk out onto it.... There was even a little branch sticking up that you could hold onto.” Breif feelings surrounding faded images surrounding that weekend and their relevance—the images, I mean—to earlier conversations contribute to a little pause on my part. “I walked out onto it, and the water was rippling the other way, so just for a moment there, I had that sensation of flying over water....” I can almost feel it. My heart remembers it, and the fact that it’s only a memory makes it hurt. There are so many things like that in my life.8

“Sometimes I experience things that feel like I’ve seen them in the dream before, but it was only, like, a glimpse of it,” the girl on the left side of the bed explained. Once again, I found this universal.9

“I’ve gotten that before, too,” I said.10

“I swear, I want to write this down, I’m going to forget it all tomorrow!” the first girl said again.11

I laughed. “Yeah, I get that sometimes too.”12

Silence took us again, and I fiddled with the curtains, worried that we were getting too tired to stay awake much longer. I mean, it was nearly four. We had already decided we were tired enough to go to bed. (We could have slept in sleeping bags, but we decided to try to imitate a scene in one of our favorite mangas. The main character’s two best friends sleep on either side of her with their hair all fanned out behind them all pretty. Yes, this was my idea.)13

“Let’s see, what’s another random thought we could talk about?” I muttered, sitting up taller and facing the two girls to my right.”14

“Pineapple!” the girl in the middle chimed for at least the third time that night. I watch the other one keel over in laughter and hear myself start cackling. (Yes, I am a cackler.)15

I laughed. “Bubblegum!” I contributed.16

“Strappleberry leopards!” the left girl cheered, and we all laugh for a few seconds.17

“Seriously though,” I say. “Something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately.... If I’d known something I know now at a certain time before, what would I have thought?”18

“Everybody does that,” left girl commented.19

“If you’d told me when I was living in New Jersey that in a couple years I’d be having a sleepover in South Carolina with two people who I didn’t even know back then, I would have said you were crazy,” said the middle girl.20

“If last November someone had told me the truth about Alex, I would have said they were crazy,” I said in a voice that diminishes. The words felt reckless, and my fear tried to stifle me.21

“Yeah, I think we all would have,” the middle girl agrees. “Even Larisa.”22

The left girl changes the subject. “I wonder, if Larisa were here, who would she be?” she says. “If you’re Hanajima,” she refers to left girl, “and you’re Arisa,” she continues, pointing to me, “and I’m Tohru, who’d she be?”23

She’s referring to the manga scene we’re imitating, and I consider various characters for a few seconds before deciding on a ridiculous answer. “She’d be Ayame, sleeping in Invisible Kyo’s room.”24

They laughed again. “Yeah, I guess this works out, with the whole scene thing” “Tohru” decided. “I wish L was here though.”25

“But shouldn’t Yuki-kun be sleeping in another room, then, Norma?” I asked, referring to the plushie she was cuddling.26

“No,” she protested, hugging the doll to her chest. “My Yuki-kun.” I laughed. She was acting like a little kid again. She has a bad tendency to do that. She’s fifteen now, you’d think she’d quit acting like a four-year-old when she’s hyper. She is the baby of the group though. The girl on the left side of the bed turned fifteen back in September, followed by Larisa in January and me at the end of March. (The three of them forgot my birthday, by the way.) It’s May at last, the height of spring, and we’re all only one year off from the most famous of birthdays.27

“I swear, you’re acting so obsessed with that doll!” “Hanajima” exclaimed. It was classic of her. You could say she’s obsessed with obsessions and has a tendency almost as annoying as Norma’s tendency to act like a four-year-old to accuse people of being obsessed with things.28

Norma only grunted into her pillow in response to this accusation, however. She then jumped almost a foot in the air as “Hanajima” poked her in the stomach with the command “Wake up!”29

“HEATHER!” she protested, but Heather kept poking her until Norma wound up hitting her with a pillow, launching us into a completely spontaneous pillow fight which ended when Heather stole Norma’s Yuki doll and started running around the room with it, beginning another completely random conversation/argument/series of events.30

“A pillow fight. Our sleepover is complete,” I commented when it was over.31

“No, we need s’mores,” Norma reminded me.32

“Yeah, are we having those tomorrow?” Heather asked.33

“Uh huh, my mom is making them.”34

I laughed. “We’re so weird. Popular people would give each other makeovers and stuff, not spend the evening on the computer watching anime music videos like we did. But popular people are-“35

“Weird,” Norma finished for me.36

“Definitely,” I laughed again. I hate the definition, connotation, disposition of popularity. It’s so seldom that a genuine person like the people with me now is considered cool.37

“Norma?” I asked. “Are you awake?” I tugged Yuki-kun from her hands. She didn’t stop me. “Yup, she’s asleep,” I report.38

I crossed the room to get my mp3 player, and Heather and I sat on the end of the bed (Norma had stolen the majority of it) to share my retarded headphones and listen to it. (One of the wires attached to the earphones is twice as long as the other.) I blast a fun song in our ears, and we sat there singing it for a while until I returned it to shuffle mode, and things got a little too quiet.39

“Courtney,” Heather mumbled. “Are you upset... that I’m the only one... still... connected to January?”40

Last January flashes before my eyes. The empty kiss of a boy I’d admired since only November, empty promises, empty labels, all kinds of bull**s. Empty winds as I sat on cold steps with eyes anything but empty of tears, trying to figure out how I was going to survive without the two girls next to me now and the boy.41

I didn’t survive without them. Even though they proved themselves to be less abundant in moral fiber than I’d expected—way less—they were still good enough, somehow, somewhere, that I loved them. Right then, I was finally sure that I had not made a mistake in returning to them.42

Gotta keep moving on, the song played in our ears.43

“What the song just said,” I told her as my answer.44

“Hmm.”45

There’s a silence, and the song keeps playing. More echoes returned to me, echoes of conversations we’d had earlier that day on the subject of January boy.“If he’s lying, I’d like to know.”46

“I really think he is.” “I think we’ve had enough BS this week.” “Your mom is right; we’re too good to him.” 47

“He’s telling so many lies, who’s he really trying to please?”48

“Himself. All that talk about trying to please other people around him, he’s really just trying to please himself.” 49

“If he stopped hanging out with us now, would we miss him?”50

“Of course we would, he’s grown on us. It’s like it’s the four of us, and then him, now. Not having him around would be weird.” 51

“If last November someone had told me the truth about Alex, I would have said they were crazy.” 52

“Heather,” I asked. “What exactly would you call your feelings for Alex? Just feelings, or a crush, or.... You fill in the blank.”53

She slouched, looking at the pink nightlight across the room rather than at me and muttered her answer. “I don’t really think about it.”54

She mumbled a few things more, coming to one conclusion about guys. “Can’t live with them, can’t live without them.” That was the only part she said audibly.55

“I can’t understand a word you’re saying,” I told her, but she just smiled a small smile.56

“Do you remember me telling you about that conversation I had with him that was totally random yet totally serious?” she asked, lying back in bed.57

“Yeah,” I said. “We could try having a conversation like that.... How do you do it?”58

“We just.... We were basically talking about the meaning of life.” She sighed. “He claims to know the meaning of life.”59

“Eh?” I grunted, knowing this is going to be sickening.60

“He says life is just pointless. We all go down the same path and then we die.”61

Just as I predicted. Nasty. “There’s a flaw in that,” I pointed out. “Each person’s path is different.”62

“Yeah,” she said, “but they all lead to the same place.”63

I stayed silent for a moment in admiration of that undeniable anchor. My mind strayed as I wonder... what is the meaning of my life?64

My mind flew immediately to my dream of publishing the book I’m writing, and I found something to say.65

“You know what I think?” I said. “I think that the meaning of life is different for each individual person.”66

“Well, yeah, but we were talking about, like... the meaning of life in general.”67

“Exactly.” It seems like a fact. The one thing I can say that no one can argue with. No one sees life the same way, because no two people live the same life.68

“No pearly gates, no white light,” I heard her mutter.69

White light. I flashed back to a night almost a year ago, followed immediately by a night a few months later.70

“I believe in white light,” I declared, wishing I could tell her why.71

“Hmm.”72

“You know something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately?” I said.73

“What’s that?”74

“The line between life and existence.”75

She smiles. “That’s a very fine line.”76

“No,” I said with a feeling similar to panic. “It’s very definite.” I should know. “Aenso doesn’t have a life. He has an existence.... Did I answer your question before? About how I know he is real?”77

“Not really.”78

“I suppose I know he’s real in the same way I know God is real. It’s like when you’re flying a kite above the clouds. How do you know it’s up there?”79

“Hmm....” she said. “That seems different.”80

“I think I heard that analogy in a story.... A little boy was flying a kite above the clouds, and some person went up to him and asked ‘what are you doing?’ and he told him ‘flying a kite.’ So the person was like ‘What kite?’”81

This made her smile, if nothing else.82

How am I supposed to explain an existence like Aenso’s? He’s always with me, watching over me. I feel him in the music. I feel him in the air I breathe, the shadows rain clouds cast, the starlight, the sunlight. He is the brightest and most beautiful thing I’d ever seen; his personality the summer that I met him could have been fabricated solely of sunlight. Yet... he is my darkness. Because even though he’s always with me... we cannot truly be together until the day I die.83

“Is this it?” I said softly. “Is my journey over? Is it all over for me?” It feels good to finally voice the worries that have been nagging at me all semester to someone.84

“Don’t say that.”85

“A love like that... never truly goes away,” I say in a voice that I know is difficult to hear. “Any one here.... That’s why... I’ll be okay....” Even if I don’t get to share this world with anyone. If there’s no one here that I can feel for like I felt for him, then I don’t want to share this world with anyone. 86

“Did you know that... 51% of the people in the world are women, and only 49% are men?”87

“So... one of us isn’t going to find someone?”88

“Maybe.... I think it’ll be me. Because I... have someone to fall back on.” 89

Fall back on. Yeah, right. I talk about him like he’s my second choice. He’s not. I can’t imagine that anyone here will ever replace him. That’s why I’ll be okay.90

Even so... 91

“Because it hurts! Last summer it nearly drove me insane; I’m convinced it nearly killed me! And that was when I entered so strong, what’ll happen if the Darkness returns while I’m this weak?” 92

I don’t want my love to be my death. Something about that doesn’t taste right. God saved me last summer. I think that means that He doesn’t want me to give up. He doesn’t want me to resign myself to Aenso.93

Even Aenso doesn’t want that. He’s smiling again. After all of those years of only seeing him when he’s in pain, I heard his laughter a couple weeks ago. He’s trying to tell me something. He’s trying to tell me a curse is broken.94

“A new destiny... new love.... Do you think...?” I heard myself rambling.95

“Whenever you talk like that, I think of that movie, the Neverending Story,” Heather said. “Did you ever see that?”96

“No, I don’t think so.”97

“It’s about... just that, a never ending story. The literal circle of life....”98

History repeats itself. In fifth grade, I painfully fell in love with him, and last summer, I painfully let him go. Now I’m falling again. Does everything have to happen all over again? What do I have to do to keep from having to go through everything again? I refuse to die.99

I can’t ask God for a miracle. The last time I asked for a miracle, I got Alex. We got Alex. And I certainly can’t ask him for an angel. Last time I asked for an angel, I fell in love with one. Aenso.100

All I can ask for is a new destiny which I have faith he has in store for me anyway. Even if it happens again, it won’t be quite so bad. I’m not alone anymore.101

“Heather....” I asked sleepily. “Do you think we’re all going to find someone?”102

“Yeah....”103

I closed my eyes, and in seconds I was fast asleep. 104

* * * * * 105

By the time I was awake the next morning, Larisa was already there. My hair had gone from fanned out all pretty behind me to a rat’s nest of a giant poof, and the first thing I had to do was brush it.106

“We had a few interesting conversations about Alex after you left last night,” one of us told Larisa.107

“Yeah, we think he’s lying,” I said. “I swear that guy has at least ten alter-egos.”108

“He has as many alter egos as Cloud Strife has swords,” Larisa decided, referring to the movie we’d watched the evening before. The main character had this huge sword that could be split into seven different swords, so at points in the movie there were Cloud swords all over the place. It was a perfect analogy.109

We went into the playroom where the computer was to show Larisa a couple of flash movies she’d missed yesterday, one of which she had to see on account of it had to do with Yu-Gi-Oh, which she loves. It was a parody with a screwed-up Yugi scream/puking “CARRRRDDDDMAAAAAATCH!” like a complete idiot. (Yes, as a matter of fact, we did find it entertaining.) There was also a Final Fantasy parody consisting of a few cartoon people fighting homework and textbooks rather than monsters, and it was more cute than anything else. The third thing was a hilarious improv fandub of a Yu-Gi-Oh episode.110

We ate breakfast and got dressed. (I’d packed a pair of short capris I hadn’t worn since last summer, thinking that it would be fun to finally start wearing something other than full-length jeans. They were too small, and I had to resist the urge to pick up the nearest sharp thing and stab it through my head.)111

We decided to go to the park. It’s a small park just down the street. It consists of a playground atop a steep hill at the end of which is a field with a short table and a tree in the middle of it, and it’s laced with tall trees smothered in honeysuckle.112

We got there, and I was suddenly overcome by a wave of déjà vu. A year ago around this very weekend, three of us gathered here and hung out all Saturday long.113

“Once again, the perfect day, and all that’s missing is the perfect guy!” I exclaimed, running down the hill to the table and the tree. I admired the flawless blueness of the cloudless sky, the sunlight the color of lemon juice, the vibrant grass, the smell of the honeysuckle.114

Heather laughed. “Yeah.”115

“You guys do know that that day was the day I was talking about in Fin, right?”116

“Fin?” asked Norma.117

“Ohh, really? I didn’t make that connection,” Heather said. “Remember, Norma, that day we all were hanging out here?”118

“Uhhhh….”119

“The barbecue!”120

“Uhhhh…. Oh, the thing down at the lake?”121

“No!”122

“OH! The thing with the Cambodians!”123

“Yes!”124

“What does that have to do with a fin?”125

“The poem I wrote in January! ‘The smell of honeysuckle and a sweet spring breeze…. Eyes frozen open’?”126

“Oh, yeah, that one…. I don’t’ think I read that one.”127

“Norma! Yes you did, I read it at Writer’s Club, remember?”128

“You did?” Heather asked. “Oh, yeah, you did!”129

I roll my eyes and sit on the table. “I wish we had, like, pictures of us hanging out here a year ago,” I said. Then we could compare before and after pictures.130

“We can take them this year and compare next year!” Norma said, pulling a camera from her bag. “If we can find someone to take it….”131

“We can do that thing where three of us are in the background and you’re in the front and you hold it out and take the picture! I can tell you how to hold it....” We try it out, and the results are actually not that bad. We rotated positions a few times, and the background people all made silly faces.132

We decided that we’d have to go there in May every year from now on. I tried to look a year into the future and failed miserably. I looked back a year, then looked at the table in front of me. I remembered lying on it wondering how long I’d be able to keep my newfound friends. I didn’t know. If I’d known I’d be with them there again a year later, I felt that my heart might have burst to have finally found something that might last.133

Suddenly they seemed precious, and I knew that the promised spring was here; January, at least my January, was long gone.134

We went back to the house for a game of Uno, and my mom came to pick me up. 135

* * * * *136

Click. Click. Click. I don’t really like wearing shoes that click. But that was okay the following Sunday. If clicky shoes were the only kind of shoes that would go with the dress I was wearing, I’d make that sacrifice. The sound made me aware of myself as I walked up to the church, though. The low neck of the dress wasn’t helping, but the way the skirt whipped and rippled so gracefully around my legs was. I brushed my hair from my eyes and lifted my face to the white sky above me. It was made of precious pearl in my eyes. It was the White World above me. 137

“I believe in white light.” 138

I hear the echoes of my own voice, and as much as it itself hurts, I smile at the echoes of my friends laughter surrounding it. 139

I believe in white light. I believe in White World. I’ve been there. I was an intruder, but I’ve been there twice. Once for the Final Dream that tore me from my greatest love. And again a couple months later....140

“Thank you, God,” I whispered. To let me see at least the White World that contains them on that day.... I wondered if he’d finally let me see him again after this. It’s been a long ten months, and I love him so much. I love them so much. Today would be the perfect day, I thought.141

I released my eyes from the sky and walked into the church.142

My church is a cozy, small community where everyone treats everyone else like neighbors. I see more and more of my friends drawn here, and I love watching it grow. (There was one incident that caused me to totally loathe it for a short while, but I’m over it now.) The youth group itself is... well... pathetically cliquey. So I go to Venturing instead. A good number of the people in my Venturing Crew go to the church. It’s where we have our meetings.143

“Hey, Courtney,” one of them said as I was walking into the sanctuary, followed by her sister, one of our newest Venturers. 144

“Hi, Katy, hi Suzy,” I greeted them.145

“Robert’s here,” Katy told me.146

“Ah,” I said. Robert, another Venturer, had recently joined the church, and I hadn’t yet seen him at a worship service. “Let’s go say hi! Come on!”147

We went over and said hello to Robert, proceeding to talk to his parents, who are leaders in the Crew. Mandy joined us after a few minutes, and I saw a girl from anime club who had come to visit the church for the first time.148

Somewhere in all of this it hit me how beautiful it was to know all of these people and have a connection like the church and the Venturing Crew with them... how beautiful it is to grow in grace together. I was hit with a similar feeling to what I felt in the park, when I thought about how I’d managed to hold on to Heather, Norma, and Larisa for a whole year.149

We sat down at last. Pastor Art got up and began to speak.150

“Welcome to Grace Presbyterian Church, this beautiful Mother’s Day....”151

Mother’s Day. Mother. The word made my heart ache just a little. I flashed back to the vision I had ten months ago.152

Precious....153

I sat there in church and ceased to pay attention for the entire service, lost in trances about how it might be if I walked out of the church today and looked over into the field of wildflowers beside it to see the angel boys I love come to visit me. Even though Aenso wasn’t the one I was longing to see in that moment, he would have to come along too if the one I did want to see came to see me. He’s too little to fly on his own.154

I wasn’t able to get to sleep that night. God held my eyes open until midnight. I had to wonder... if I had fallen asleep on that Mother’s Day, who might have come to visit me?155

I received an Instant Message from a friend through one of my favorite websites the next day. 156

Happy Mother’s Day!!!157

Did she send it because she remembered my secret? 158

* * * * * 159

“I’m pissed,” I reported the next morning, clutching the bench I’m standing behind. It’s our meeting place after first block (period) every day.160

“Oh really? How come?” the hippie (hypocrite hippie, I might add) standing in front of me asked.161

“Geometry,” Heather guessed, hitting the bullseye.162

“What makes you think that?” the hippie asked.163

“Yup,” I smiled evilly and answer, but they kept arguing.164

“Well, she just got out of geometry class, what else could it be?”165

“You never know, she could just hate someone.”166

“I do hate someone,” I told them, smiling evilly again.167

“Mr. Forrest,” Heather and I said practically in unison.168

“Aw, Colonel Sanders being mean to you again?” the hippie asked, referring to my math teacher’s resemblance of the KFC founder. “I swear, what you should do is on the last day of school, take a bucket of chicken and put it on his desk. ‘There, choke on a chicken bone!’”169

We laughed, and Heather looked up the breezeway to see if Larisa was coming. “Where’s Larisa?”170

“Her class might have gotten in trouble again, so she had to stay late, or something,” the hippie pointed out. She wasn’t at “The Spot,” our morning meeting place, before the first bell that, so I wondered if she was sick.171

“We’d better go,” the hippie said.172

Heather groaned. “Every day, when I get to class, I still have like five minutes, and it’s because you guys always leave too early!”173

“Well, we have to go all the way around to the B wing,” I explain.174

“Uh huh, all the way up the B-200’s,” the hippie contributed.175

“Fine,” Heather groaned, hugging him goodbye.176

“Later,” we said, leaving for the commons.177

“So, what’s up?” the hippie asked.178

“I’m pissed,” I stated bluntly.179

“Yeah, I think we already established that,” he replied. I didn’t answer. “Come on, are we alive, now?”180

“No,” I growled sarcastically.181

“What, we’re not al—ZOMBIES!” he shouted loud enough for the entire commons to hear.182

I smiled, but still insisted on a stiff, pissed-off posture.183

“So what happened to make everyone go all zombie?” he asked me.184

I consider this question. “I don’t care,” I snarled my conclusion.185

“You don’t—what?” he asked incredulously. “Everyone goes all zombie and you don’t even care?!”186

“I’m pissed,” I mumbled again with a tired tone.187

“Well, quit being pissed. You’re making me pissed,” he laughed.188

“I don’t care.”189

“But if I get pissed the entire world will get pissed!” he insisted.190

“I don’t care,” I repeated.191

“You don’t care?! Do you know what will happen if the entire world gets pissed? We’ll all be nuking each other!”192

“Yeah, I’m sure that’s going to happen,” I said bitterly.193

“It could! You don’t believe me? I’m telling you, you get pissed, then I get pissed, then the entire world gets pissed!”194

I don’t answer again, and keep walking as he stops to hug a couple of his “clients.” He ran up behind me.195

“Stop being pissed okay?”196

“Fiiine,” I whined, still pissed. He hugged me, and I slumped into journalism class. 197

“If he stopped hanging out with us now, would we miss him?” 198

* * * * * 199

“Where’s Alex?” Heather asked as we sat down to eat at a different bench by the shade of a tree outside. Norma, Heather, Alex, and all have first lunch together (which didn’t help January at all).200

“Probably with a ‘client,’” Norma stated the obvious.201

“Yeah, I saw him on my way here, he told me to go ahead. Oh, and I’m still pissed, by the way.”202

“Oh, really?” Heather asked.203

“Yeah. We got stuff back in geometry today,” I groaned.204

“How’d you do on your project?” she tested me.205

“Okay,” I told her. “I got a 96.” That was a score out of 106 points, so it was more like a 91.206

Heather smiled. “98!” she reported.207

“Good for you,” I pouted.208

“And how’d you do on your Trig test?” she asked.209

I winced, a nerve seriously hit. “That’s the score I’m pissed about,” I said bitterly.210

“How come?”211

“I improved one point—one point—from my last my worst test score. Thank you, Mr. Forrest, for teaching me that no matter how hard I try in your freaking class I’m too much of a ditz to get any higher than a freaking C!” I vented. I really do blame him. I understand geometry. Most of the time. As much as everyone else, at least. I just can’t seem to get any kind of high score. It’s been my worst subject—ever. I have never done so poorly in any class before.212

“That’s because you need a new tutor!” Heather said, referring to herself.213

“I don’t have a tutor. I don’t want a tutor. I used to be a math tutor before stupid Fosterometry!” I fumed.214

“There he is,” a boy with extremely long, curly, golden-blonde hair sitting next to us answered Heather’s question. The hippie set his food down in the middle of the sidewalk and went the other way to another client.215

“And he just leaves his food in the middle of the way!” Heather seethed slightly.216

“You should go steal his fries,” I muttered.217

Norma took sneaky steps toward the fries lying halfway across the courtyard. “Must... steal....”218

Heather took off, snitched a couple of fries, and brought them, back over here. She handed one to Norma and put the other in her mouth.219

“Where’s mine?” I wondered.220

“I love how completely sneakily you stole those,” the Alex said, joining us at last.221

She laughed. “Yeah.” 222

“Of course we would, he’s grown on us. It’s like it’s the four of us, and then him, now. Not having him around would be weird.” 223

* * * * *224

"Hey C! I've had a great year. It's been tough, but we made it through. I love you so much hun! See you this summer!"225

Love, Norma Zerpho226

P.S. Yeah this was really crappy handwriting.... sorry"227

I laughed at Norma's signature in my yearbook, then looked around to see who my next victim should be. My eyes landed on a freakishly tall friend of mine. "Nathaniel! Sign!" I commanded, skipping over.228

"Ah, what to write?" he wondered, taking the purple gel pen I handed out to him. "There's so much to say.... 'You have red hair'.... 'I'm taller than you'...."229

I laughed. "Whatever's fine with me." 230

"Beware the ferrets. They have guns," he warned me in his message. I laughed. He was talking about a story he's writing called Ferruto, a spoof of Naruto that features ferrets with bizarre hairstyles blowing each other up with bizarre weapons.231

Who next? The girl from Anime Club who visited my church last week is hanging out nearby, so I ask her, and we trade.232

"Hiya! It was cool seeing you at church on Sunday, I hope you come again!" I wrote honestly. I really do hope to see her again. I'm planning on going to worship service more often then summer. I skip most of the time.233

We traded back and I read her message. "Hey Courtney, Good luck with the Anime Club next year, I'm sure you'll do fine. I'll come and visit one meeting to check on you. Good luck and have a great summer! Violet ^_^"234

I hope I don't let her down. I hope we don't let her down. Heather, Norma, Larisa, and I all ran for the council positions of the Anime Club... and all four of us actually won. Norma is the President, Heather's Vice President, I'm Secretary/Librarian, and Larisa is the Seargant of Arms, aka SofA. (All she has to do is hit people with a meter stick when they get too rowdy.)235

But isn’t that cool? It was like destiny... like we were united in 8th grade just to serve the wonderful role of Anime Club Student Council! 236