on the back of every picture. My mind drifted from dragons to sea monsters.”
“Daniel are you sure you’ll be alright?”
“Yes, and thank you for everything. I appreciate it very much.”
I gave Liz a hug, thinking that she needed it more than I did. She needed the comfort. I wished I could have done more. I turned, and walked down the hall to the door. A walk I had done a hundred times, and will do a hundred times more. As I opened the door I heard, “We can always use a few more good guys like you.” Then the door closed with a final, echoing click. What we really need are a few more angels, were my thoughts.
I needed the drive to the house to be much longer than it was. I needed to think. Did I say the right things to help Timmy through this? I didn’t know. I hoped I made it easer for him. He deserved better, better than what I could do.
I knew I would have some time before my next assignment. The trouble was I’d likely spend it wondering if I could have done anything more.
As I drove up the long drive, I noticed lights. Someone was up. I needed just to get past them and to my room… if I could. But I doubted it. It was hard to keep things like this quiet. I could just sit in my car, but someone would come looking for me, sooner or later. I knew I had better get this over with. It was a nice night, and someone had left the door open. For a minute I thought I could get to my room without notice.
“Daniel.” Then I thought, ‘maybe not’. It was Rachael’s sweet voice, “If you want someone to talk to…”
“No, I’ll be all right.”
“Hey, Danny-boy.” Thinking, ‘so much for getting to my room now’, I held my hand out in front of me to stop him.
“Willy, I don’t have time for this right now.” I knew I would have to talk to him at some point, but not now.
“Okay,” he smiled. He always had a smile on his face. “But that’s not how it goes.” He put his hand out in front of my face. “When you put your hand out like that, you’re supposed to say ‘Talk to the hand’.” I just looked at him, most likely with a very dumb look on my face. I had no idea what to say. And how would talking to his hand help me? I just turned and walked down the hall to my room.
Friend
* A person with whom one has a bond of mutual affection
Chapter 2 - Hope’s story
“Hope… Hope, what are you looking at?”
“What?”
“I said, what you are looking at?”
I looked around me, coming back to reality. I was standing in the middle of the hall, slowing down the flow of traffic, and starring out one of the skylights.
“I’m sorry, I wasn’t paying attention.”
And I definitely wasn’t. Was the sky always this blue? The clouds looked like spun white cotton candy. Anna looked at me with that puzzled look that I’d seen so many times before. Anna and I had known each other since we were in the third grade. Anna was tall, standing next to me, all five-foot-nine. She was a blue-eyed blond. We teased her about her blondness a lot, even though Anna was one of the smartest girls I knew. I was delighted she was one of my best friends.
My other dear friend was Toby: Tobias Winters named after his grandfather. He had threatened me when I was five, that if I ever called him Tobias he would make me eat a worm. And I still believed he would. I had known Toby all my life. He lived next door to us with his two sisters. It was Toby and I who had wanted to see the world in our hot air balloon. Okay… it was really just my tree house. We spent hours dreaming of places we would go and the marvels we would see looking down from the sky above.
We were the three musketeers, Toby, Anna, and I, until last summer. That’s when Kayla moved into the neighborhood and we became the four musketeers. It always seemed natural that the four of us had more in common than just our friendship. We all wanted to see the world together. To see the places people sent post cards from. And I wanted to see the great wonders of the world; at least what was left of them. All the places my dad told me stories about. To make those travels come true we all agreed you need a good job… a very good job, that pays good money. You needed a college degree, from a good school. And you needed good grades to get that. So we all enrolled in a program at high school called Stepping-up. We spend a half-day at the high school and evening classes at the college across the river. With our plan, we would graduate in June with a high school diploma in hand and one year of college finished as well. Plan [A] was coming together. All the hard work was paying off.
“Hope, after class we were going to stop at the mall, want to go?” Anna had that puppy dog look, the one I usually gave my dad.
“Sounds like fun, you driving?”
“Don’t I always?” she said with a smirk.
Anna had an old car that was her grandmother’s. It was a big white four-door sedan we called the ‘Boat’. Don’t get me wrong; we loved it. It fit all of our junk and the four of us with ease. To top it off it had a very large trunk for our shopping trips. What more did you want in a car? And like Anna always said, ‘It was free’.
You could tell what the plan of action was when we got to the mall. We stood by the car all facing in different directions.
Anna had a date with the dress shop. Kayla yearned to get to the bookstore. Toby sought out the technology. Yes, Toby was a techno geek. I was always on the hunt for some new music. We all stared at each other, with the, “okay, you win” look. Like always we would go as a group. I always felt sorry for Toby with girl stuff, but he didn’t seem to care. I guess with two sisters he got used to it.
The first store was “Bargain Books” for Kayla. She knew what she was looking for, even had a list. Her room at home had so many books it resembled a small bookstore. Books were stacked on shelves and some in piles in the corners like little towers.
We wandered between the aisles of books together. Observing the sign above his head, Toby giggled when he remarked, “Young Romance”?
Kayla gave him that ‘think about it’ gaze. “I spend most of my free time studying, or hanging out with you, I don’t date, and this” shaking a book in his face, “is as close to a boyfriend as I’m going to get.”
I gave Toby that ‘you started it’ look, putting my hand over my mouth and I started giggling.
The next stop was Toby’s hi-tech electronics store where he was in geek heaven. Okay I liked the store too. I liked the iPods and anything else I could listen to my music on.
The music shop was next. This was my domain. We all went to our neutral corners. Our taste in music was as different as the four of us. We even looked like we belonged in each place. Kayla, in her long skirts, wild colored tops, with her perfect cornrows. She blended into the Reggae corner with ease. Her music always seemed upbeat like her. Anna was country all the way. Even down to her pointed toe boots and snug jeans, though she ditched the cowboy hat in the eighth grade. Toby was all rock: concert tees was his statement. I didn’t have to look at him to know that. I could always hear the
