"Come on, guys," I said, looking at Tomi, Chas, and Erika. We were squashed into a corner of the school cafeteria. "Let's get together after school today. We've hardly done anything together lately. I'll get a video from my Dad's store--something really terrible that we can laugh over."
"Can't, Alys," Tomi said, flinging her long black hair over her shoulder. "I've got Swim Club practice today."
"Me either," Chas said, his round, freckled face wincing at the crash of dishes behind us. "Film Club meeting for me."
"But we can watch a film," I protested.
"Sorry, Alys. We're learning how to edit videotape," he said. "It's not quite the same thing."
Erika looked from one of us to the other, her eyes big and solemn behind her glasses. The four of us lived in the same apartment building, and we had been friends since grammar school--my dad called us the Fearsome Foursome. But though he'd also given me the lecture on How Things Change when you hit junior high, I had a tough time seeing us pulled apart by new interests. I liked things the way they were.
I sighed and said to Erika, "I guess it's just you and me--"
"I can't," she whispered, ducking her head.
Tomi, Chas, and I stared at small, pale Erika, whose face was half hidden by her dark frizzy hair. She sneaked a quick peek upward, then hunched down even more. "Have to meet someone. Help them with a project."
"Really?" Chas said, looking vaguely surprised that Erika would have anyone outside of our group to meet, when usually she didn't talk to anyone else. She and I'd been best friends since we were five, and she'd always followed my lead, playing alone with the others only if I had to help my dad at the video store. Though they'd always liked her--when she wasn't feeling shy, she was fun, and funny, and had the wildest imagination of the four of us.
But around other people she was very shy, and no one else at school had ever bothered to find out these things about her. Who could she be meeting? Who could she know?
"Is it anything I can help with?" I asked.
Erika opened her mouth, but just then the bell rang. She jumped up.
"Erika," I said, "how long will it take? How come you haven't--"
Erika didn't say anything, but she gave me this look, her dark eyes behind those thick glasses suddenly, well, spooky. I felt my mouth fall open, and before I could shut it, she disappeared in the mass of students shoving their way out of the cafeteria.
)
