We didn't have much money to use to buy supplies for school, but we made do with that we had. Max and I would be in 10th grade and Iggy in 9th at the same school. Angel was in 6th grade and Nudge and Gazzy were in 8th at the middle school down the street. We all flew part way to the bus stop then walked the rest of the way and rode the bus to school. We didn't want people to know about us so we had to appear to be going to school normal.

Angel Nudge and Gazzy seemed to like school well enough. Iggy was miserable here. Since he was blind, he had this really old lady following him around trying to teach him how to walk around without bumping into thing and how to read brail. The way they talked to him made him feel like they thought he was retarded.

Max seemed to really be enjoying her self, and had made a few friends. I kept to myself for the most part. Even though I was in the same grade as Max, I only had one class with her. She had a different lunch period than me, but Iggy had the same one as me so I often spent lunch with him. We still slept in the cave because we couldn't afford a house, but the three oldest of us all had jobs and were saving up.

Over winter break, Iggy came up with the idea for us to build our own house. He had been taking a woodshop class in school and thought it couldn't be too hard. We set about to build it. We decided it wouldn't be too big. We figured we could make it out here in the forest so that we would still have our privacy. We roped off an area of land and started work on cutting all the trees in that area down. We would use the wood from those trees to build the house. It took the six of us all of a day to cut down all the trees and dig up the stumps.

That night, Nudge and Max started making blue prints for the house, while Gazzy and Iggy went out to the store to buy hammers and nails and things like that, that we would need. Angel and I went to a furniture store and started picking out what we wanted to furnish the house, but we didn't buy anything.

When we got back to the cave, we all discussed the house and explained the blue prints to Iggy since he was in charge of this project. We decided on making the house two stories, with two of the bed rooms on the second floor, two on the bottom floor, and the fifth bed room in the attic. I would be in the attic, and Angel and Nudge would share a room on the second floor and Max would have the other bedroom on that floor. They would have a bathroom in-between the two bed rooms and a study on that floor as well. Gazzy and Iggy would have the two rooms on the bottom floor. They would also share a bathroom. We would have a small living room and kitchen on the bottom floor with them.

We all went to sleep that night and dreamt about the house we were building. First thing in the morning, everyone headed over to start working on the actual building of the house except for me. I took some of the money we had saved up and went to buy us all breakfast since we were running low on food again. By the afternoon, we had the frame work up, so Max, Iggy and I went to work, and the other three went swimming. By the end of the first week of break, the house was almost done. The girls went to a store out in town to pick out paint to paint the walls. Painting the house was a lot of fun, but I have a feeling more painted ended up on us than on the house.

Finally, everything was done and all we needed was furniture. We were running really low on money by this point, we couldn't get any yet. We brought our sleeping bags and all our other possessions from the cave over to our house and put them in our respective rooms.

After winter break, when we went back to school, I started to see less and less of Iggy at lunch. I started spending most of my lunch periods reading or sketching pictures. Some days I ate with a few people I was friendly with, but no one really worth keeping around. Days became monotonous. I woke up, ate breakfast, went to school, went to work, came home, did homework, ate dinner, and went to bed. I spent time with Max at work since we both worked at the same clothing store. I don't really know why we worked there of all places, but it paid us very nicely. Iggy worked in the back of a warehouse down the street. We were both kind of worried about him hurting himself since he is blind, but he didn't seem to let it affect him at all.

As we got our paychecks, we took out a little bit each week to buy furniture. We started with basics like a fridge and toilets and lights. The toilets were pretty cool, even if I didn't really notice why for a bit. They have seat warmers in them so you don't freeze while taking a dump I guess. I laughed at it when Gazzy was telling me, it was him apparently that picked them out. Next we started getting beds and covers and sheets.

First we got a bunk bed for Nudge and Angel. It was wooden and Nudge got the top since she was older. Angel chose a set of green and purple covers that where in an argyle pattern. Nudge got a pink and blue checkerboard patterned set of covers. Next we got a bed for Gazzy. His was a metal frame queen-sized bed. It was high enough of the ground that he could easily crawl under it. His sheets and covers were denim, but really deep blue. Next we got beds for Iggy and Max, I said I was fine with sleeping bag for a few more weeks so they got them before me. Iggy had a wooden frame queen-sized bed with simple grey and red striped sheets and covers. Max got a wooden frame bed as well. Her sheets and covers of choice reminded me of quilts that old people made, but she seemed to love them. Finally we got my bed. It was a queen sized metal bunk bed, but instead of having a second bed on the bottom, it had a desk.

After we got the beds, we gave everyone a small amount of money each week to spend on other things for their rooms. We also made sure to have enough money for food and everything. Nudge and Gazzy had gotten jobs as babysitters so we had a little bit more money to work with.

By the time we finished getting everything for the house, the school year was almost over. Max and I didn't have a lot of time to talk anymore because we were both spending a lot of time studying for finals. I still hadn't asked her out like I wanted to, but we spent a lot of time together when we could. Iggy had met a girl that we sometimes heard him talking to on the phone, but we didn't know much about her. Not even her name, Iggy was private about his life like that I guess.

With prom just around the corner, it seemed to be all any of the girls could talk about. Apparently our school is different than most since it has all high school grades can go to prom, not just seniors or whatever. This meant Max, Iggy and I would all go. I really want to go with Max but I'm too scared to ask her. I don't want things to get awkward between us again and I defiantly don't want her to get hurt again. Oh well, I still had two weeks before prom.