The Amanda Project: Book One

The Amanda Project: Chapter Fifteen

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

As soon as he saw me, Hal said something, but I couldn't hear. I tried opening the window, but the storm window was stuck, so I couldn't lift it. Hal watched me struggle for a minute, then gestured for me to come down. I held up my index finger hoping Hal would recognize the universal symbol for I'll be down in a minute, then went out into the hallway. Heading downstairs, I wondered what I'd tell my dad if I passed him, but even though his truck was still parked in the driveway, he wasn't around. I didn't exactly mind. It was bad enough that Hal had seen the state of my lawn. I didn't need him seeing the state of my dad.

Hal waiting for me made me remember all the times when we were kids and would meet up in the woods-so even though it was weird that he was standing there, it also kind of wasn't.

Hal moved to Orion the summer before sixth grade, which was coincidentally the most boring summer of my life. All of my friends were away at camp or doing stuff with their families, so I had no one to hang out with, and I used to go exploring in the woods behind my house alone. One afternoon, while I was making my way across a stream via this really old, mossy log, I saw Hal. We talked for a while, and then we spent the day climbing trees and exploring this creepy cave he'd discovered earlier in the summer.

I didn't notice stuff like his haircut or his high-waisted pants. The truth is I was kind of a fashion disaster back then too, with my baggy T-shirts and cargo shorts and my hair in two asymmetrical pigtails. Hal was fun-he didn't talk a lot then either, but he taught me how to fish and he was good at climbing the hills of rocks in the woods that were equidistant from each of our houses.

And then one day while Hal and I were making our way across that same log, I somehow lost my balance and fell and broke my arm. It was a pretty bad break (I had to have pins in it and surgery and everything), so I couldn't climb around in the woods anymore-instead, I started going to the bookstore at the Galleria for something to do. And that was where I ran into Heidi, Traci, and Kelli (not at the bookstore, of course, at the food court). They were shopping for school clothes and Heidi said hi to me, which was really surprising since the three of them were super popular and I . . . well, I wasn't a loser or anything, but I was definitely a neutral.

I couldn't believe it when Heidi invited me to come over to her house and hang out with them poolside-it was like being invited to be on your favorite reality TV show or something. Their lives were just so cool. I couldn't swim because of my arm, but I could definitely enjoy lounging on the fancy white chairs that lined the pool and drinking the Oranginas her maid brought us in these fancy plastic glasses with little palm trees all around the base. That was the day Heidi pointed out that all of our names ended with "i" (except mine, but she was nice enough to let me drop the "e") and she said we should be the I-Girls.

I'd never had a group of girlfriends like the I-Girls before. Heidi called me every morning and we'd either meet up at her house or go to the mall or the movies. When my other friends came back from their summer sojourns, I didn't make plans with them, and after a while they stopped calling. Meanwhile, I completely forgot about Hal. By the time school started, I looked like a completely different person. The I-Girls had taken me shopping for cool clothes, and I'd gotten my hair cut by the person who cut Heidi's and her mom's hair. Sometimes, when I passed Hal in the hallways and pretended not to recognize him, I wondered if maybe I'd been so transformed since our time together that he really didn't recognize me as the girl he used to meet in the woods.