“By the way, honey,” my mother said next morning at the breakfast table. “I've been meaning to ask: who's this remarkable tutor you've been going to?”

I had been half asleep up to that moment, not, understandably, having gotten a lot of sleep last night. My mother's question made me nearly swallow my spoon along with my cereal. A very effective method of rousing. I coughed, not because I felt the need to, but to give me a few precious seconds time to think.

“Em... a friend of father Elliot's. You know, the guy that runs the homeless shelter?”

What are you looking at me like that for? It wasn't a lie, after all, not technically at least. Remember the 'Thanks for coming again, my children, my friends'?” Well, okay, I admit it. A flimsy excuse. My parents' beaming faces told me I'd chosen the right answer, though.

“That's so nice. What's his name?”

“G- Gilbert.” Yes! My mom was in heaven, I could see it. Definitely the right answer.

“When can we meet him?” my dad wanted to know.

Scratch that.

“Meet him?!” My knuckles went white as I clutched my spoon like a life line. “I don't know.. don't know whether that's possible. He's very busy, you know. Tutoring, helping people...”

...snogging your daughter.

“Yes, but we must thank...”

At that moment, Cathy sauntered into the room, yawning loudly and interrupting my dad. Amazing. I was actually glad to see my sister. If I had calendar, I would have marked the day red.

She got herself a bowl of cereal and sat down at the table. No one said a word about her being late for the traditional MacAllen Saturday breakfast or about her not saying grace. Neither of my parents ever criticized her. Not Cathy, not Miss Cheerleader-with-perfect-grades. I scowled, thinking of what had happened the one time I hadn't said Grace before a meal. Then, my scowl slowly turned into a smile as I remembered Giacomo asking what a Cheerleader was.

My mother was smiling, too. Breakfast was her favorite meal of the day – since it was the only one she wasn't forced to prepare by her idea of the perfect housewife. Whether my father was smiling or not was hard to determine. He was hidden behind his paper, making appreciative noises now and then – either because of his breakfast or because of the news, I didn't know. I supposed it was breakfast, though. The current government was run by a Democrat, after all.

After breakfast, we all meekly folded our hands, and went: “Thank thee, O Lord...”

You should be pretty familiar with the rest by now.

“So,” my mother asked us brightly when we were finished and she had started to clean the already immaculate table. “What are your plans for today?”

Immediately I thought of Giacomo. But no – we couldn't meet in broad daylight. What if someone saw us? And what would I tell my parents about where I was going? Anyway, I had no way of contacting him. Stunned, I realized that our whole relationship relied on him showing up at the shelter the next evening. I didn't like that very much. But it wasn't as if I could ask him for his phone number. He probably didn't have the few cents for a call from a pay phone, let alone the ready cash to buy a cellphone.

As I was still considering my options, my sister said with the sweetest of smiles:

“I think I'm gonna go to Melinda's. She said she wanted to hang out.”

Or in other words, they planned to go shopping and let their rich boyfriends buy them clothes they couldn't afford themselves or, as in Cathy's case, were too frivolous for their parent's tastes.

“You do that,” my mother beamed.

“I'm gonna shoot with some of the boys,” dad grunted. Honestly, they were all probably 40 to sixty years old and still he called the members of his gun club 'boys'! How more childish could you get?

“And then I'm gonna head over to the club.” By which, as all members of the MacAllen family knew perfectly well, he meant the local automobile association's headquarters, located conveniently just beside a bar. My dad often spent the entire Saturday afternoon with his shooting and driving buddies. I didn't really see the point. So far, he hadn't managed to shoot a single one of them or run them over with his shiny truck. All they did, as far as I knew, was sit all day and complain about the decline of General Motors and the newest anti-weapons laws. Not the way I would wish to spend my day. Which brought me back to my earlier line of thought, as my mother turned to me.

“And you, Angela?”

“Well, um...”

The phone rang. Relieved, I sprang up. “I'll get it,” I shouted while I was already running down the corridor towards the small table on which the phone sat besides a vase of plastic flowers. Quickly, I picked up the receiver.

“I have officially arisen from the dead,” a spine-chilling voice whispered into my ear.

“Jen?”

“Of course!” I held the receiver a few inches away from my ear. “I'm finally out of bed again, Ange! Can you believe it? I'm free! I'm free! What's the name of that song that calls the US the land of the free and the home of the brave?”

“That's the national anthem. And you've heard it in school for years.”

“Hey, what do I have an mp3 player with headphones for?”

“So you're really free again?”

“Yes! Awesome, isn't it? You've got to tell me everything I missed – apart from lessons, of course!”

“Yea, it really is awesome.” Apart from the fact that now I wouldn't have to get into fights anymore, I'd really missed Jen. School wasn't the same without her. “I'm just a bit surprised. Your mother let you go out so soon?”

I knew the answer before I had finished the question.

“No of course she didn't! I climbed out the window. But I'm fine, really. I've had had a thermometer in my mouth long enough. What I need now is an afternoon with the gang!”

“Do you mean us or those guys with the motorcycles?”

“You, of course, blockhead! Call the others and tell them to meet us at Westfield, OK? I've gotta run, or my mom's gonna catch up with me.”

“Sure! Meet you there.”

I hung up and returned to the dining room, where my mother waited with a few dirty spoons in her hand and an apprehensive expression on her face.

“I'm gonna sho-um, hang out with some of my friends, mom, OK?”

My mother's reaction couldn't have been more different from what the reply Cathy had gotten.

“Where are you going? What are you going to do?”

“To the Westfield San Francisco Center, and I'm not sure yet. We're just gonna hang out, you know. Talk. Have fun.”

I realized a second too late that perhaps I should have kept the last bit to myself. My mother tried her hardest not to frown with concern, and failed.

“Em.. is Jen better already?”

Or in other words, are you going to hang out with that creepy punk again?

“Yep. Amazing how quick she recovered, isn't it?” I smiled. “God must have watched over her.”

My mother's eyes went wide. That possibility, I could see, truly terrified her.

<3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3

After extracting permission from my mother (without the use of brute force!), I called the other two and took off. The only bus going in the direction I wanted stopped and turned when I was still more than a mile away from the mall. But that didn't matter. I was still so elated from the events of last night, I just ran the rest of the way. I had always been quick on my feet. One of my grandma's favorite sayings had been: what people don't have in their head, they have in their feet. That seemed to apply to me perfectly. I'd never been very smart, my marks were ample evidence of that – but I had always been quick on my feet. If I'd had longer legs, I might have joined the track team. As it was, all my speed did for me was get me to the mall in time, which wasn't too bad either.

Hardly out of breath I stopped before the huge white facade. Jen was already there. As soon as she saw me, she started running towards me. No doubt she wanted to hug me. Not wanting my ribs damaged, I took preemptive action and squeezed her as hard as I could. “It's so good to see you!” I gushed.

“Yea. And upright, too!”

“How did you get here so fast?” I asked.

“Hanging out with a motorcycle gang has its benefits, you know,” she said, freeing herself from my embrace and pointing to a leather-clad figure on a bike. The guy was just turning the corner. “Like free lifts for example.”

“Wow. That's nice.”

“I say. He was sitting behind me. It was very nice. And so is he.”

Luckily, Sandra arrived at that moment, saving me from having to make a reply.

“Jen!”

The normally shy Sandra either had similar concerns for her ribs as I, or was really overjoyed to see her funky friend again – probably both. Whatever the reason, she hugged Jen tightly and then backed away, looking at her concerned. “I'm so glad to see you. But should you be up already? Are you quite well yet? Perhaps your mother...”

“Well,” Jen said, loudly, cutting her short. “This is nice. All the girls together. Well, almost all the girls. Now we just have to wait half an hour for Anastasia to arrive.”

In the end, it didn't take quite that long. Anastasia arrived only ten minutes late, which in her book meant that she was being over-punctual. She was wearing her favorite Karma-increasing earrings in honor of the occasion and a smile that seemed almost too big for her narrow face.

“Jen! I knew you would get better.”

“Well, I'm not that easy to kill. So, girls, shall we go? It's high time we all had some fun again!”

Laughing and gossiping, we all went into the mall. It was time to semi-shop.