Honey (Shooting Stars 4)

It was as if my eyes were washed with a good

dose of reality and opened wider. Susie Weaver

wasn't as sophisticated as I had thought. None of them

were. Maybe they were out there, doing things I never

did: drinking, smoking, hanging out late into the

night, being sexually active, but that didn't make them

sophisticated. They suddenly all looked like immature

people dressed in adult clothes. Most of them were

just as insecure as I was, if not more so. and what they

did was mock me or someone else in order to cover up

the truth about themselves.

I used to feel terrible about not having loads of

friends, not being invited to parties, not dating

regularly, not being Miss Popularity, and being

thought of as a prude, too religious, too moral, but

now I felt relieved, even lucky. What I felt terrible about missing looked more than simply insignificant. It looked foolish, wasteful. Maybe there was too much

Grandad in me. but I wasn't feeling sorry about it. I guess I really was an outsider, a loner of sorts.

I guess Chandler and I did appear made for each

other. I hurried to my locker after class and waited

eagerly for him. He deliberately lingered until most of

the school had left. When that bell ending the day

rang, it was often like a stampede. Anyone watching

outside would think we had all just been released from

doing hard time in a state penitentiary.

"What happened in the lunch room?" he asked

me as soon as he approached.

I told him how Karen Jacobs had seen him pass

me the note and then had made a big thing of it with

the others who enjoyed teasing me.

"What did they say?"