Chapter Eleven: Making Friends

Were those bags under her eyes? Rachel might usually present herself as unconcerned with fashion and beauty, but in truth her appearance was really quite important to her. While she'd never admit it, she actually spent quite a bit of time admiring herself in the mirror when there was no one around to notice. Now she was realizing that she might not be able to take her youthful looks for granted much longer.

To prove to herself that she was still young and in her prime, she spent some extra time at the gym, finally earning her green belt.

Take that, wrinkles!

Now she would be prepared tomorrow to tackle her real goal.

Pancakes!

Well, actually, it was a promotion. But it was the weekend, and she always made sure to make a nice hot breakfast for her and Phoenix on weekends.

After that, though, it was straight to business.

"Mom, can we go to the park today?"

"Sorry sweety, I have to get these reports written up," Rachel apologized as she booted up the computer, "Why don't you see if Paulie wants to go with you?"

Phoenix begrudgingly left his mom to her work. He wasn't sure if he really wanted to play with Paulie, but he hadn't really made friends with any of his other classmates yet, so he trudged across the street anyway, for lack of anything better to do.

As he walked up the steps of the Jacobs' porch, Phoenix noticed that there was a girl putting a newspaper in front of the door.

"Hey, I know you, you're in my class!" Phoenix greeted her.

"Oh, yeah, you're Phoenix, right? You're the kid who forgot to clean out the bug cage."

"Yeah," he admitted guiltily, remembering the awful smell, "And you're...?"

"My name's Sadie."

Phoenix learned that Sadie Kapoor had just recently started working as a newspaper delivery girl on weekends when she didn't have school. She didn't really like the job, but she said that she did like helping out her family.

"I really gotta go, though," she said after they had been chatting for a bit, "I still have one more block after this one before I'm done."

"Oh, yeah. I was just coming to get my friend Paulie to go to the park. Hey, maybe after you're done you can come, too?"

"Um, okay," Sadie accepted the invitation, although Phoenix thought she sounded less than enthusiastic.

The two boys had already been at the park for awhile before Sadie finally joined them. Phoenix noticed that she must have gone home to change out of her newspaper delivery uniform first.

"Uh oh," Paulie whispered a little too loudly as he noticed her approaching, "Don't look, maybe she'll go away."

"Hey, I heard that!" Sadie accused.

"This is Sadie, I invited her," Phoenix explained.

"Ugh, what'd you do that for? I can't hang around with nerds like her," Paulie groaned, flinching away as if Sadie were carrying some sort of contagious disease.

"I'm not a nerd!" Sadie protested.

"I've seen you in the libary at school during recess, reading books, doing homework. Trust me Phoenix, if you know what's good for you, you'll stay away from her type," warned Paulie, who then demonstrated by sauntering away and over to the seesaw.

"I just go to the library because it's nice inside," Sadie defended herself to Phoenix, as her lower lip began to quiver, "outside is full of bugs and dirt and the sun is too bright -- just like this crummy park! I don't know why I even came!" and with that exclamation, she turned and fled.

"Hey, wait!" Phoenix called after her.

"Oh, let her go home," Paulie said, "cry baby said she doesn't like parks anyway."

Phoenix sighed and wondered why his friend always had to be so difficult.

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Short update after a long absence, but there will be more to come soon!

The part at the beginning about Rachel checking herself out in the mirror all the time is true. Since she has the snob trait, if I leave her alone for a little while she'll often end up in front of a mirror. I've just never really included it in the story before now.

Also, Phoenix really did get an opportunity to clean out the bug cages at school, but I didn't realize that the time limit on it was by the next day, so he got in trouble at school for not doing it. ^^;

Oh, and I don't think I mentioned it before, but Paulie got assigned as the Town Brat with Twallan's SP, which totally fits with the character I wanted to create with him, so that worked out well. :)