WANTED: Love of my Life

03. The good, the bad, the quite pretty and the gaga

Yeah, I know, a kick on the shins is not the most usual way to start a friendship. So what? Even if Jen's next step were the words 'Hey, what's up, freak?', so what? She's a very special kind of person. And after we became friends, she only ever kicked other people, and only if they got on her nerves (which tended to happen rather a lot). If it hadn't been for Sandra, her, and Anastasia, I don't know what I would have done – though continuing on a futile search for snipers would probably have been at the top of my list.

Coming out of my reminiscences, I jumped off the cable cart only a few blocks away from Salesian. With a last wave at the grumbling Enrique, I dashed off in the direction of my church turned school. Not that I cared how late I was for school now that I had escaped my mother's culinary clutches. But there were other people's feelings to be considered, daft as they might be.

The three of them were waiting for me in front of the left of the two huge white towers. Jen, Sandra and Anastasia. My only friends in this place, ever since Jen had introduced herself to my lower legbone several years ago.

“Hurry!” Sandra called anxiously. “We'll be late for class!”

“Now why,” Jen asked in a voice dripping with boredom, “should that make anybody hurry?” Leaning against the white outer wall, she stuck her forefinger in her nose and turned it a few times. Apparently, she found what she was looking for in there, because she pulled it out and examined it with interest.

I came to an abrupt halt and held my sides, panting. “Sorry,” I wheezed. “Felt sleepy... trouble waking... time just flew by...”

“Time is just an illusion of the mind,” Anastasia remarked, staring off into the far distance. Or maybe into another realm. Or perhaps she was having visions of the future. Who knew with her. “There is only the now, the infinitely short moment of the present. Whenever it is upon us, the past is just a distant memory and the future hidden behind a veil.”

“Except for those with second sight, of course?” Jen asked, smirking and rolling her eyes. She snipped her snotty discovery away into the road. I hoped it wasn't inflammable, or at least not illegal. I had never actually caught her snorting drugs, but hey, she was Jen. She didn't get caught doing something illegal, she was far too clever for that. Her studs jingled, as she pushed herself away from the wall.

“Of course,” Anastasia confirmed. “Those with special sensitivity to the messages of...”

“Guys?!” Sandra's voice was pleading. “Class? Please? Now?”

I rolled my eyes. Sandra had definitely gotten her geek sign, right after birth. It was huge, blinking, and simply not to be overlooked, supported by her huge horn-rimmed glasses and her blue. knit sweater.

“Okay, okay.” I skipped past the aged security guard at the entrance to the chain-link fence inclosure around the school grounds and pushed open the side entrance to the school. Sandra was right at my heels, with the other two of our little gang lagging behind, not quite so eager to get to class – Anastasia probably because she was admiring some speck of dust floating in the air, and Jen because she couldn't care less how late she would be.

A nerd, a punk, a freak of nature and a pseudo-psychic – all friends? Okay, I guess that requires some explanation. Unfortunately, I don't have one. As mentioned above, I have no Idea how the four of us became friends. Sandra has a theory though. She has a lot of those. Theories, I mean. She even came up with a name for our little gang: she calls us the 'residual quantity'. Don't ask me for the details, but her theory goes something like this: in math, which for some reason is Sandra's favorite subject, everything that isn't part of a group such as the jocks, the cheerleaders, the chess club, the class principle's board, the church choir or the Warcraft club, is part of the residual quantity. The leftovers, so to speak. So that's who we are. The leftovers of the school, friends with each other because nobody else would want to be friends with us. What a very encouraging thought. Thank you, Sandra.