Good friends are difficult to come by. Some people learn this the hard way. Jack Frost is one of those people. He lived his entire afterlife without any friends to speak of. That all changed when the guardians needed his help. Then he got used to being wanted, used to being needed, used to being loved. While he's on the job, he sometimes runs across his friends and fellow guardians as they go about their own duties. He can remember joking with the Sandman in the middle of the night in Djibouti, and paying the Tooth Fairy a surprise visit as he coated the mountains in a freak snow storm.

Another moment to relax. Another moment to spend in Burgess. Jack hadn't been to the town in almost a year. Jamie was in seventh grade now, the awkward grade between being new to the world of middle school and being ready to bolt out the doors, ready for high school. When Jack got to town, Jamie was still in class. Jack circled the school, looking into each window until he found his young friend.

Jamie looked weary. He was stooped over his desk, writing franticly in his notebook. He only looked up three times, twice to look at the clock and once to look at his notes. Jack could see a small action figure sticking out of his backpack.

After a while, the bell rang to signal the end of the school day. Jack was ready to fly to the front of the school to meet Jamie, but he stopped himself. Jamie wasn't moving from his seat. He was slowly putting his things in his backpack, taking his sweet time. Jack sighed quietly before zipping around the front of the school and through the front door, bringing a gust of cold air with him. He scoured the halls until he found the only classroom that still held a student. He had slung his backpack over his shoulders and was headed to the door, but when he saw Jack he stopped short. Any sign that he had been tired vanished as he smiled at his personal guardian.

"What's up, Jamie?" He greeted, falling into step with his young friend as he walked out the doorway and through the halls.

"Nothing much. School and stuff, you know?" He muttered.

"Why are you so quiet?" the winter spirit asked, hardly able to hear Jamie over the clamor of the other prepubescent children.

"Well to the others it would look like I'm talking to myself, and I don't want them to…" he started.

"Want them to what?" Jack asked after a moment of silence between the two.

Jamie gave Jack a wide smile. "It's nothing! I just lost my train of thought."

"Oh. Okay then. Hey, how about you get you friends together for a snowball fight or something?" Jack proposed. He needed something to put his mind off of the recent global warming crisis.

"Sure! I'll get everyone together once I finish my homework!" Jamie said. As they walked home together, Jamie told Jack about his new grade, new teachers, and new friends. "I swear Mrs. Peterson must be a harpy or something! She's got the eyes of a hawk! It's just not normal. And don't even get me started on Coach Turnstein. He keeps on telling me that if I worked out more I wouldn't be so short! I mean seriously! Exercise adds muscles, buddy, not meters!"

Jack was amused by his account of his life. "So tell me about the guys. How is everyone?"

"Well Caleb is going to try out for the seventh grade basketball team in the spring, and Claude is starting to read a lot about plants. Monty got contacts and braces. Cupcake is taking a Tae Kwan Do class at Pippa's dad's studio. And Pippa's been carrying this bug black book everywhere. She won't show me what's in it."

"Does it have the title on the cover?" Jack inquired.

"No. It's just a big black book with spirals along the top, like a notebook."

"Oh!" Jack, exclaimed, "It's a sketchbook, Jamie. She's getting into art!"

"Is she? That's so cool! But why won't she show any of us her drawings?"

"Well maybe she's embarrassed by them. She probably doesn't think that she's very good." Jack offered, hopping onto a wooden fence and balancing on the top.

"But she shows the book to Bradley Henson!"

"Bradley Henson?"

"He's this kid in our history class. He's a huge jerk, but Pippa's always laughing at his jokes and hanging around him! And she shows him her book!"

"She's probably just got a crush on him." Jack shrugged. "Give her some time and she'll come to her senses."

"A crush? No way! Pippa wouldn't like a jerk like that!" Jamie retorted.

"Well what does he look like?" Jack asked.

"He's really tall, and pretty muscley."
"Muscley?"

"Shut up, it's a word. So anyway, he's pretty muscley and he's got green eyes and his hair is kinda long and it curls at the ends and-"

"Oooooh he sounds soooooo dreamy!" Jack cooed, pretending to faint. Jamie burst out laughing at the sudden change in the atmosphere. "Oh Bradley Henson, marry me!" Jack continued in a falsetto voice. They both had to stop walking so they could laugh until their sides hurt. The people passing by stared at Jamie curiously. They all knew that he was an odd duck, but this was on an entirely different level.

Jamie started his homework as soon as he got home. Math, then science, then newspaper. He finished in forty-five minutes. He asked his mom if he could play outside and she told him to bring Sophie along. Jamie ran to each of his friends' houses and Jack cruised along beside him. Jamie was getting faster, but he was still just a mortal kid. Each of the children greeted Jack with a tight hug and they all went to the park. A snowball fight ensued, as they always did when Jack visited. This went on for a while until Claude spoke up.

"Did you guys feel that?" He asked, looking around.

"Feel what?" His brother asked.

"A raindrop! I swear I just felt one on my nose!"

"Whoa, me too!" Monty exclaimed. Soon everyone else could feel the rain and it started to sprinkle. "My mom wouldn't want me to play out in the rain!" Monty squeaked, covering his head with his hands.

"Come on, my house is closest!" Pippa called, already on the move. Everyone else raced after her. They reached her home right before the rain really started coming down, pouring buckets over the snowy landscape. The kids, wrapped in blankets, sighed.

"Well there goes our fun." Caleb grumbled, tightening a towel around his shoulders. Pippa's mother had put towels in the dryer as soon as she noticed the start of the rain, and handed them to the children, warm and fluffy, when they arrived. She had called their parents to tell them that she would drive them home when the rain stopped, because the children insisted on staying together during the storm.

"So what do we do now?" Jamie asked from his seat in a beanbag chair. The seven friends and the guardian had gathered in Pippa's room.

"What? You guys have never been stuck indoors before?" Jack asked.

"Well yeah, but Pippa doesn't have any video games!" Monty said.

"Excuse me," Pippa snorted, "But they just don't interest me."
"Okay, so mindless CGI violence is out of the question." Jack interrupted. "But how about I tell you all a story?" The kids all nodded excitedly. Having lived through quite a bit of history, Jack had some stories to tell.

He had just finished the second one when Pippa's mom came into the room, ready to drive them home. The group walked next door to say goodbye to Monty, then piled into Pippa'smom's car to go home. Jack followed the car quietly.

Once Jamie was dropped off, Jack ran up to him. "Hey, I've got to go now. Duty calls, you know?"

"Yeah I understand," Jamie responded, smiling sadly. Jack was about to take off, but Jamie grabbed hold of his sleeve. "You're coming to my birthday, though, right?" He asked.

"Birthday?" Jack asked.

"Yeah, next month is my birthday. The seventeenth. You can make it, right?" His eyes widened.

"Well duh I can make it!" Jack snorted. "I wouldn't miss my big guy turning thirteen for all the free time in the world!" Jamie smiled at his response and let go of his frosty sleeve. Jack took off, his mind already preoccupied with what to get Jamie for his birthday.