4

“We've known each other forever, since before I can remember. We went to the same daycare, the same schools, we all graduated from Manhattan High School for Girls just before… before it all started. In fact, though we never talked about it, this trip was going to be our last hurrah as a group before our lives tossed us in different directions. 

Lacey was going on to college. We all knew that was coming. She wanted to be a scientist of some kind, something about physics, but cool… like the real Twilight Zone, Star Trek kind of stuff. If you could get her talking about it, and if you could get her to not use all the fancy math terms, it was really neat to hear about. She wanted to find out if there were really other dimensions, you know, like other worlds that were almost totally like ours, with little tiny differences. 

You know what I mean, right? 

Anyway, she was going to a college that none of us even had a prayer of getting into with our grades.

Me and Kelly had applied to a few of them too, but neither one of us had heard anything back. We weren't sure what we were going to do after we graduated, but we talked about going to the same college and rooming together. 

Who knows if it would have ended up that way? 

Julia… well, who knows what Julia was going to do. At one time she wanted to be a dancer, and another time said she was going to move to Portland to become a rock singer. We always sort of figured that she was going to end up as one of those rich girls that survived off their trust, constantly moving from one thing to another before landing in some condo with a husband and three kids. But we never told her that. 

But yeah, with all of our heads going in different directions, the House seemed like the perfect way to mark the end of an era. Sure, we all talked about staying in touch, discussing about having weekend outings together and stuff, but deep down we knew life didn't work that way. 

I guess we'll never get a chance to test that...

Shit, sorry. 

Give me a minute.”