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Paris stood in front of the mirror, trying to use a hairpin to pin back her hair instead of making her scalp sore like it was bent on doing right now. When she was sure it wasn’t going to be launching an attack on her skull for the rest of the day, she grabbed her backpack and ran downstairs.

She stopped at the kitchen table for a moment to grab a toast.

“Hurry! The others are already waiting outside,” her mom said from beside the stove.

“Bye Mom!” she kissed her mother’s cheek before running outside to the driveway. She paused at the doorway and looked down at her feet when she realized that she had forgotten her shoes. She ran back into the foyer and grabbed them.

“Kid!” she heard Max yell.

She ran back out, shoes in one hand and books in the other while trying not to let the strap of her backpack slide down her shoulder. She was sure that she looked like an unbalanced freak with a peg leg right now.

She jumped in just before Max took off. As she bent down to tie her shoelaces, a stray strand of hair fell into her eyes and she huffed it away. This was not a good start to a Wednesday morning.

Max parked the car in the school parking lot and the four of them said their "see you laters" before stepping into the throng of moving kids in the hallway and losing sight of each other.

As she was putting her books in her locker, she felt someone tap her shoulder and turned to find Kristen and her posse there. Kristen and her gang were *the* girls of the freshman class.

“Hi, Paris. We, like, want to talk to you about something.”

Huh? Since when did Kristen stoop to the lower levels of the freshman social ladder? Unfortunately, my tongue was immobile from shock, preventing me from voicing my thoughts.

“See, we’ve noticed that, like, with a good makeover, you could be, like, really pretty.”

Are you blind?

“Plus, your brothers are, like, really cute.”

Ah, the real hidden agenda.

“But, like, you need to get rid of your friend Nickolas there.”

She gestured towards Nick who was moving towards them. Paris winced when he fell down tripping over his own feet.

“He would just, like, totally radiate dorkiness. And that would, like, totally ruin our vibe.”

Paris finally found that her tongue wasn’t frozen anymore but just as she was about to say that Kristen had no right whatsoever to say that about Nick and that she really should get a Thesaurus, Kristen and Co. had whisked away, paving a path through the hallway.


“Hey, Kid. What was that about?” Nick said as he glanced at the direction Kristen had disappeared to.

“Nothing. Just Kristen torturing me with her limited vocabulary.” I figured that I shouldn’t diss her friends since they were really brainwashed and had been turned into clones by the evil Kristen. It wasn't their fault Kristen was so evil.

“Yeah, like, they really need, like, extra classes in English. I wonder if she speaks like that all the time.” Nick actually sounded like he was seriously thinking about it.

I laughed until tears came to my eyes. Even though it was true that Nick *was* a little dorky, he could do the best mimics. He was practically an expert at mimicking Mr. Stanley who tried to insert the subject of stock markets in every sentence he said. It was no secret that Mr. Stanley hoped to be working on Wall Street. But for now, he was just a math teacher.

When they got to Creative Writing, they had to hand in their journals. The idea was that so kids could pour their feelings into the journal and be comforted by the fact that no one other than Mrs. Jameson would read them. This was supposedly to reduce the chances of a kid trying to blow up the school or something. Paris wondered if Principal Maniker was really desperate enough to think that it would work.

Their latest assignment was to write down what motivated them in life. Paris didn’t really know what to answer to that but she figured that writing down “not much, thank you” wouldn’t really help her get an A in class.

So she settled for *pretending* to bare her heart and soul when she really wasn’t exposing an inch. It was kind of fun if you thought about it. It was almost like creating a story.

On Saturday morning, Paris was watching The Nutcracker and eating cereal when Nick called.

“Hey Kid! Remember the gig I told you about with those four other guys? Lou just said that we could go to Germany and do concerts next month. Real live concerts! In front of real live audience!”

“Really? Man. Wow. That’s great!”

“What’s the matter?”

“Just. Germany, man. That’s in Europe. As in thousands of miles away.”

“But we can still keep in touch, right? I mean, not my phone because then Lou, Kevin, and Mom would kill me when they see the bill but we can send letters and stuff. I mean, we’ve known each other half our lives. Literally. We’re not going to sop being friends just because I’m going to Germany for a while.”

“Yeah, of course not. I’ll send you books so you won’t get bored. Or even comics.”

“Good. That’s settled. Hey, are you watching Nutcracker again?”

“Yeah,” I said around a mouthful of cereal.

"Dude, gross. And I still don’t get why you like it so much.”

I swallowed the cereal. “Hey, it’s a nice story.”

The thing was, I mostly liked it because of all the dancing. I had been taking dancing lessons since I was a kid. I was even planning to apply to Julliard when I was old enough.

A few weeks later, Nick told me that they had to leave earlier than expected. They would be gone by the end of the month. We managed to say our goodbyes over the phone right before he left.

“Take care. Eat. You’re too skinny.”

“This coming from the girl people *still* call Sticks,” he muttered. “Seriously, though. Take care.”

“Yeah, you too. Seriously,” I said in the gravest tone I could manage. The thought of Nick leaving for God knows how long sobered me up pretty effectively.

“Okay. So. Bye.”

“Bye.”