This was a good but sad year. Christina still worked there, but only on day shifts most of the time, so we rarely saw her. Joe was fired or something, so we never saw him. I have seen him around town...he’s all pierced now, so I obviously do not hold any crush on him whatsoever, but the memory of how he used to look still lives.

Doug had actually quit for that year, I don’t know why.

Who’d that leave? No one, for a while.

Until Tim came along. Heheh, this is gonna be good...

Tim was a scrawny high school junior when we first met. Julia actually “discovered” him first. She was at Friendly’s with her family, and she kept noticing that a guy who looked like a girl kept muttering “bad sign.” Must’ve been his first day, she noted and we all laughed. This was in Mrs. Merrit’s study hall period, and just after she told us her story two older boys appeared in Mrs. Merrit’s doorway, asking if any of us wanted to join them in a “discussion group” at the library. No one volunteered so they left. After this excitement, Katherine and I looked at Julia who was visibly shaking with laughter.

“What?” We asked. We waited for Julia to calm down (and that takes forever when Julia is having a laughing fit).

“That was the ‘bad sign’ guy!”

“Which one?”

“The smaller one.”

“Oh!” We all laughed, and I believe that very day Katherine and I decided to go to Friendly’s and see if “Bad Sign” guy was there. He was.

“Hey, aren’t you doing the discussion group thing at JFK?” Katherine asked.

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“Oh, you see I was caught with a bag of marijuana in my car, and they’re making me do this for punishment.”

“Yeah, right.”

And so on so on. The next day we went to his discussion group with Julia and a few other girls, where we proceeded to hassle and annoy him for the whole time.

On to Ninth Grade.