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"Is that really your name?" I asked.

She laughed.

"No. it's Wilhelmina Jean. I hate my name, so don't call me that."

"C'mon. Let's go get a piece of pizza and talk," Nikki said. "You got any money?"

"She got thirty-five dollars from her great-aunt, but we can't spend it all. I need to get her some notebooks, pens and stuff," Alanis said,

"That's no problem," Raspberry said. "We'll steal most of it."

She and Nikki laughed, Alanis looked at me and shook her head.

"They're just kidding." she said. I saw her give them a side look of reprimand.

They just smiled, and we walked on to the fastfood pizza. I wasn't really hungry yet. It hadn't been that long since breakfast.

"Shouldn't we wait for lunch?" I asked.

"Lunch? This is going to be our breakfast." Raspberry said and they all laughed again.

Maybe hanging out with older girls wasn't going to be as much fun as I had imagined. I thought, but I wasn't going to start complaining. It was better if I didn't say anything. I just listened to them talk about their summer and some of the things they had done. Almost everything involved one boy or another I didn't know, of course,

"Wait," Alanis said suddenly, putting up her hand like a traffic policeman. "I got to tell you how Jordan here nicknamed Chad Tadpole."

I looked up sharply, "No. I didn't." I said.

"Sure, you did. Here's what happened." Alanis began, and she told her girlfriends how I had discovered her and Chad in the basement and what I had asked her about it later. I wondered why she wasn't too embarrassed to tell, but soon, they were all laughing so hard that other kids were looking enviously at us.

"I can see you're going to be lots of fun to be with. Jordan." Nikki said.

I know I should have been happy they wanted to be my friends, but if anything, their laughter and smiles made me feel smaller and even more of an outsider. I knew they were taking advantage of me. None of them had any money. They spent nearly twenty of my thirty-five dollars before they were finished. I watched Alanis pay the bill. She glanced at me, and then she gave Nikki and Raspberry the remaining fifteen dollars.

"You two go get Jordan some notebooks, pens and pencils. I'll show her around the mall and we'll meet back here in twenty minutes," she said. Nikki took the money.

"Sure, we don't mind, and we know just what you'll need for third grade."

"C'mon," Alanis said, guiding me out and off to the left. "Let's go window shopping for when we get some real money. We both need new clothes. You like my friends?"

I nodded even though I didn't.

"Well invite them to our party tonight," she said. "It'll just be us girls. Next time, we'll invite some boys, too. We'll have to put our heads together and think of someone for you."

"Someone for me? You mean, a boyfriend?'

"He doesn't have to become your boyfriend. Jordan. But boys are like shoes."

"Shoes? How are they like shoes?"

"If you don't try them on, you don't know if they fit. right?"

She laughed and we walked on. I did enjoy listening to her talk about the boyfriends whose names she had written on her shoes. She was proud of how badly she had treated each eventually. She also talked about the girls she liked and disliked at school.

"Just because we have a small school doesn't mean we don't have our share of snobs," she said. "Someone bothers you, you come tell me. hear?"

"Why would they bother me?"

"They justwill." she insisted. She paused and added.


Tags: V.C. Andrews Early Spring Horror