"Mr. Madison," Mrs. Watson declared after the echoes of Jon's cry faded to the deathly silence of a very still classroom, "you will gather your things and you will go to the principal's office."
The silence returned once more, as Jon stood up from his chair feeling every single eye in the classroom upon him. He put his textbook back into Tiffany's backpack, grateful to still be wearing his own jeans rather than Tiffany's skirt as he bent down.
But as his head was level with the back of his chair, the silence was broken by the whisper of Lucy Corinth's mischievous voice: "I wish Jon wasn't in trouble and that the four of us were at the mall right now excused from school."
And as it was spoken, so it became.
Jon wasn't sure whether to be thankful or furious, so he did each in turn. "I told you I didn't want to make stupid wishes!" he huffed from between a boutique kitchenware store and a GameStop. "But thank you for getting me out of trouble with Mrs. Watson."
"What are friends for?" Lucy stretched out her arms in the universal gesture for 'I want to hug you,' and Jon obliged, unintentionally smothering the girl's much smaller frame even as his newly-minted bosoms smothered her face.
"You were kind of the reason I got into trouble in the first place, though," Jon said with his entirely unencumbered face.
"To Lucy," Melony wrapped her arms around the both of them as she prepared to paraphrase The Simpsons, "the cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems."
"Hey, I feel left out!" Melissa giggled as she joined the embrace.
This lasted for a few seconds before Lucy announced, matter-of-factly, that she could no longer breathe between "all of you giants" and playfully pushed them away.
The four found a bench in the corridor and sat down, with the three girls chatting away excitedly, and Jon sitting only slightly apart, observing them.
What are friends for? Those words had come out of Lucy's mouth so naturally, and Jon had just accepted them. Even if he felt like he didn't know them at all, somehow these girls were still his friends. His earlier doubts seemed silly in that moment: of course he could trust them. Sure, they teased each other sometimes, but it was never anything over the line. Inherently, intrinsically, Jon knew that if he had to march through Hell, the three girls beside him were the only people he wanted with him for the journey.
Briefly, a sour taste formed in Jon's mouth. What did that mean for Karyn? He tried to think about her. In contrast to the essentially blank slate of memories that Melissa, Lucy, and Melony represented, Jon had nearly a lifetime of memories with Karyn. He knew they shared a lot of interests in common. He knew that they should be friends. But something about her made him uncomfortable. He remembered Karyn's last birthday party, a relatively small affair at the Black house with Karyn's family, Jon, Gladys Brewer, Tim Brant, and Kyla Leeson. He remembered that as Karyn's mom brought out the cake, candles lit, Karyn had shushed everyone when they had started singing Happy Birthday, and insisted they sing Eye of the Tiger instead. And Jon could remember joyfully joining in the song.
But he could also remember a small voice in the back of his head: 'why am I even here?'
Jon shook off the memory and turned towards his companions, who were deep into some discussion that Jon hadn't been listening to. It occurred to him that his own birthday was in a few weeks, and the thought made him interrupt whatever conversation they were having. "Hey," he said, getting the girls' attention, "you're all coming to my birthday next month, right?"
A three-part harmony of affirmatives replied, to Jon's great relief. It almost seemed like a given, but of course he wanted to be sure that his best friends would be there for him. Even if a more rational part of his brain kept screaming that they weren't his friends at all.
