The rest of the week went by pretty smoothly. Becky was getting to know some of the other girls at school, gradually working her way back into normal social interactions after a couple months of being locked in the house. She and Andrew were still best friends, and she regularily went over to his house for gaming sessions, when he wasn't coming over to hers. But she hadn't told his parents who she really was, and she and Andrew had yet to talk about whether they did have any feelings for each other.
She had had a few terse conversations with Jason, but thankfully there hadn't been any other major incidents. She mostly just avoided him, and he seemed to do the same. She would've preferred to be on good terms with him, but this worked. It wasn'tlike she could force anyone to like her, and she was making new friends just fine.
It was Friday already, and she was half-anticipating and half-dreading the sleepover tomorrow night. She had been thinking about it quite a bit; she knew
that Laurel and Ellen and probably anyone else they invited were going to try and prettify her and test her limits. It was an intimidating thought, but the way she'd come to see it was that it would help them get to know her better, and as an added bonus, it would help her know more about her limits; what sort of girl-type things she could and couldn't deal with. Hopefully, this would all work out for the better.
"Mom 'n Dad," Jenny said at supper that night, "Michelle's family is going to the lake for the weekend, and Michelle wanted to know if I could come with?" Her tone of voice was screaming please, pretty please? She hadn't told her parents or sister about Michelle's secret, but she didn't think it would make that much of a difference anyway.
"The Madisons?" Mark asked. "Huh, it's a little late in the year to be camping, isn't it?"
Jenny nodded. "Yeah, but they want to do one last trip before it's too cold. And they have a camper with a heater and everything!"
"Hmm," Karen pondered. "Well, they're good folks. Do they have enough life jackets to go around?"
"Yep!" Jenny smiled. "I checked just to make sure!"
"And you're all caught up on your schoolwork?"
"Yep!" She'd been taking special careto keep up ever since Michelle had raised the possibility, just in case. And it had paid off!
"Well, I guess that sounds okay," Mark said. "Karen, if you could just call over there in the morning and confirm the reservation?"
"Will do," his wife replied. After dinner, she walked up to him and put her arm around his shoulder. "You know," she said, "with Becky and Jenny both gone, it's going to be awfully quiet around here this weekend."
Mark grinned. "I'm sure we can think of something to do," he said. "Why do you think I said yes?"
Jason shoved the trash bag down into the can and replaced the lid. He hated taking out the garbage, but after he had spent a couple of days at the dairy farm his cousins lived on, he was glad that this was the worst part of his chores. He was just about to go back inside when he caught sight of something in the alley behind his house.
Was that a post-it note?
