Chapter 10

"Blah!" Jess pounded at her keyboard, trying to convince it that it was actually mistaken about the illegal action it said had just occurred. One day she would remember to save her work every two seconds, but at the moment three pages of post-able code would be going down the drain. She did have the first two pages on scrawled on pieces of paper, but that just put her exactly where she was when she started working.

"Everything okay?" Susanne poked her head around the door, blatantly ignoring the 'Do Not Disturb, Except for Catastrophe' sign that hung on the doorknob.

"I have my health," Jess replied, hanging her head. "But my computer hates me." Sighing heavily, she restarted the machine and winced as the text-filled screen flashed to black.

"Sorry," Susanne said. She was just about to duck out, when a thought came to mind. "Hey, has Alex gotten in touch yet?" The sudden cloudiness of her friend's face told her that she had just made a slight mistake.

"No," Jess admitted. "But hey, a week and a half isn't that long. He was supposed to be back in Montana yesterday though. I think I can assume what his response is."

"No you can't." Susanne brought her entire self into the room at this point. "Isn't that what he did when you didn't respond? Isn't this whole assuming-thing you guys have got going what created all this chaos in the first place?"

"What chaos?" Jess asked. "I'm fine."

"Oh yeah, of course," Susanne replied. "Excuse me, I must have misspoke." Jess smiled wryly.

"Hush," she said. She brought her original work back to the screen and clutched her notes. "But I'll get over it, right? All I have to do is work, work, work, and it'll slip my mind in a matter of days. It'll be old news, that's all."

"Maybe," Susanne admitted. "But I have a sneaky suspicion that that's exactly what you don't want to happen." She slipped her arms around Jess' shoulders and gave her a quick hug. "It's good to see you this way, though."

"That is so cruel of you," Jess observed, whirling around in her chair.

"Well, no," Susanne said, backtracking over her words. "I hate the fact that you're not getting that fairy tale romance you've always wanted, but it's great to see you finally getting googly over a guy. It's finally some proof that the even the intellectual geek has a soft spot."

"That's even crueler!" Jess cried, but she was giggling. "Now go away; I have work to do. You must have missed the sign."

"I heard screams. I thought it would be okay to come in and find out what was wrong," she explained. In response, she was pushed towards the door. "Okay, I'm gone. It's time to think about dinner anyway." In the hallway, she practically ran into Betsy, who was blinded by the pile of clothes in her hands. "Hey there, Bets; watch out."

"Whoops!" Betsy managed to peer out through the pile. "Sorry, didn't see you there. Do you know where the washer and dryer are around here?"

"Downstairs," Susanne replied. Her friend looked at her, utterly defeated. "And downstairs is this way. I can't believe you don't know this." She guided her into the kitchen and to the door adjacent to the screen door leading outside.

"Ah, so that's what that's for," Betsy replied, swinging it open with her two free fingers. It opened into a well-lit staircase leading to the large underbelly of the house. "Thanks. You don't think Jess'll mind me doing this, do you?" Instead of waiting for a response, she started down the stairs.

"Of course not," Susanne called after her. As an afterthought, she added, "Hey! Have you talked to your parents yet?"

"Uh, no," Betsy replied. "But.."

"Bets!" Susanne cried.

"I said 'but!'" Betsy called back. "Gimme a minute, and I'll show you what I have done!" She quickly separated her clothes into the two baskets she had found, and ran back upstairs. Instead of finding Susanne waiting for her, though, Katrie was pulling her nebulizers out of a pot on the stove. "Where's Susanne?" she asked breathlessly.

"Ah, um, she went outside to get some tomatoes from the garden, I think," Katrie replied. "That, or cucumbers. Maybe zucchini, so she'll make that bread of hers. Yum. Why do you ask?"

"She asked about my parents, and I was going to tell her about what I did yesterday," Betsy said.

"Which is?" Katrie asked. "Susanne's not the only one who's curious about your doings, you know."

"Okay, if you really want to know." Betsy hopped onto the table and fished a piece of paper out of her pocket. "I found there new address and phone number."

"Their what?" Katrie exclaimed. "You can't tell me that they actually moved without telling you!"

"Well, yeah," Betsy said. "But I never really gave them a way to reach me when I left, and they only moved because they were kind of forced out of the house. I guess some mall was built there. I can't believe Susanne's friend didn't mention it to her."

"Susanne didn't exactly talk to her after the wedding," Katrie replied. "Wow, though. How did you find this out?"

"Actually, Jess is going to kill me when she gets her phone bill," Betsy admitted. "First, I called home and this pizza place picked up. I figured I just had the wrong number, so I called again. Then I demanded to know what the hell a pizza place was doing in my house, and they told me about the new construction. Three more calls got me the new address, and a quick talk with 411 got me the phone number. Then, since I figured I was on a roll, I called my parents." Betsy smirked as Katrie's eyes lit up. "But I only got the answering machine, so I panicked and hung up."

"That is a really crappy ending," Katrie complained.

"Well, I don't know," Betsy said. "I just don't think that after two years of silence my parents should be greeted with a message on their answering machine from me. Besides, exactly how would I word that? Hi Mom, Dad. Um, I got your new phone number and I'm back in the States, so I thought I'd check in. I'm staying at Jess' for a while, so, ya know.."

"Okay, so maybe that wouldn't be the way to go." Katrie laughed. "But I'm glad you at least attempted communication. Maybe this calls for a celebration, you think?"

"Eh, you just want an excuse to get Jess to make those cupcakes," Betsy accused. "I saw you eyeing them when she came home from food shopping yesterday."

"Sh!" Katrie hissed. "She may hear you!" With that, she took her nebulizers and skipped out of kitchen. Pam was sitting at the dining room table when she plopped down and began filling the pieces of plastic with medicine. "Hey, dearie. What are you up to?"

"Oh, just looking through some of my old college notebooks," Pam replied. "I think I found some really great stuff in here that I can use."

"Sounds interesting." Katrie leaned forward to get a glimpse of the words on the white notebook pages.

"It's funny," Pam went on. "I thought I would have to go back into the far reaches of my mind to write out this story. Turns out, I've been writing the story of us for years; I've just been using different names."

"Like?" Katrie asked.

"Oh, I have the story of me falling in love, with the rest of you telling me I had no idea what I was getting myself into," she replied, flipping through the notebook. "And then there's the whole George catastrophe, which actually comes out as quite hilarious. Oh, and we have little descriptions of our parties. Later, there's graduation, that summer trip to Washington D.C., us all getting real jobs. I talk about how we all started moving away, and how that was dealt with. All of it is kind of dramatized, and half of the subjects would not be obvious to anyone but me, but it's there. So this is really going to make my job easy."

"Well, aren't you the lucky duck?" Katrie replied, smiling. "I can't wait to read this thing. And you just must promise to give me an autographed first edition when it comes out."

"Oh, definitely," she agreed. "This book will go nicely with the wedding gift I bought you."

"Ah!" Katrie cried. "Now, you stop that. Every gift is supposed to be a surprise, so there's no hints, no references. I don't even want to hear any reminders that you have bought me anything."

"Well, okay," Pam relented. "But can I tell you what I bought Paul?"

Giving her friend a nasty look as she plugged her nebulizer into the air machine and flipped the switch, Katrie said, "That is so cruel of you."

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