"Is it starting right now?" Brandi asked, hoping that she could walk home with Melissa and then maybe get Kim or her mom to give her a ride to Claire's house.
"No," Claire replied, much to Melissa's relief. Kevin broke in, "It's at my place."
Brandi felt a shiver of apprehension. Maybe she shouldn't go to something like this. She wouldn't be turning ten for another three months; this boy must be 12 or 13. Already, his voice was starting to sound strange. Maybe she could ask Kim's advice about going.
Twenty minutes later, as she was walking home with Melissa, she was hardly listening to her friend. She was thinking about the address and time that Kevin had written in her last year's Reading Exercise book and the whispered exchange she had partly overheard between Kevin and Claire. "I know," Claire had said, "but she totally will."
It was after four o'clock when Brandi finally got back to her apartment after escorting Melissa to her door. Melissa had detected a bit of Brandi's apprehension and asked why she was so worried, what with it being the start of summer. If anything, the apprehension had built in the half hour since leaving Melissa but some of it melted away when she saw that aunt Kim had come over. It looked like she had had one of those special jobs where she and Sandi had to work together, the way the two were cuddling on the couch.
Mon Jan 7 13:59:00 2002