Willow was disrupted from her dull reverie when Lindsey Wade galloped up from behind and tapped her on the shoulder.
“Hey!” shouted Lindsey in a playful, sing-song voice. She was a short, stick-thin girl with a pretty face hid beneath a shaggy mane of mousey brown hair. She could have easily been a more popular girl had she cared to invest the time and energy in clothes, make-up, and climbing the social ladder at high school. But instead, Lindsey wore baggy, tomboyish clothes and showed no interest in cosmetics or girlish gossip. She obsessed over minutiae related to television, movies, and video games, and had earned herself a reputation around school as a friendly but geeky “Gamer Girl.”
“How come you didn't wait for me?” asked Lindsey, her words pouring out in a quick, mile-a-minute cadence. “I mean, you and me always walk to school together in the mornings, but today you didn't wait for me, and anyhow, I saw you down the block and what were you thinking talking to that Rob Bolstrum? I mean, he's such a creep and a bully too, always picking on people or playing juvenile practical jokes on the teachers and stuff.”
Willow frowned at her friend for a moment, as though she were trying to remember another life... but couldn't. There was something about Rob. What had she been doing talking to him?
“I... don't... remember,” Willow said slowly. She absent-mindedly reached up and scratched at a large zit on her greasy, fat chin. “He said... he said that... I've always been... always been like this?”
Lindsey shook her head and laughed, then brushed the shaggy hair from her eyes.
“You've always been perfectly fine I think,” she said. “Don't listen to that creep. Now c'mon! Let's see if we can beat Ellen to school for once. Pick up the pace, Willow. Let's go!”