Robin watched as Leah walked to a seat in the back of the room. Although she usually sat between Riley and Jordan, she walked to the back and sat beside Leah, who seemed completely oblivious to her presence.
Class proceeded as usual until Mrs. French asked the students if they remembered the motivational stickers their teachers had sometimes put on their classwork and homework when they were little. Leah's face instantly came to life, and she waved her hand frantically and started speaking before Mrs. French even had time to call on her.
"Oh, yes! I still love stickers. I have gobs of them at home. I've been collecting them since I was five years old. Some of them are really rare, like my angel stickers from Japan. My Aunt Judy who's in the navy sent those to me. I have some Qbert stickers that were made in 1983, too."
Several students snickered, but Leah seemed not to notice them.
"And then there are my psychedelic mushroom stickers from the early nineteen seventies - "
"All right, Leah, that's about enough. Mrs. French chuckled. "Now, as I was saying, you're all practically adults now and shouldn't have to be reminded of when your assignments are due."
Class ended soon afterwards, and Robin headed for her final class of the day. Leah tagged along beside her.
"I really do have all those stickers I mentioned," she told Robin. "If you'd like to come over to my house this evening, I'll show them to you."
"OK."
Leah gave Robin directions to her house. It turned out she lived about a thirty minute walk from Robin's house. "I'll come over before dinner," Robin promised.
When she entered the house that afternoon, she saw Helen wasn't back from her beauty salon job yet. She left her mother a brief note telling her where she was going, grabbed an apple, and left the house, making sure to lock the front door behind herself.
She arrived at Leah's house to see that it was similar to her own - small and made of wood that was obviously weather-worn. She rang the bell, and a plump woman with colorless short hair and bags under her eyes opened the door.
"H, I'm Robin," she told the woman. "I'm Leah's friend from school."
The woman tilted her head to the left and stepped back so Robin could enter. "She's back there in her room."
Robin walked through the living room to Leah's bedroom. The door was open, so she walked in. Leah was sitting cross-legged on the bed, rocking back and forth. Rows of stickers in neat piles were in front of her, and she stared at them with a grin on her face as she rocked.
"Leah?" asked Robin. The other girl looked up, and her smile vanished. "Why are you doing that?"
"Doing what?"
"Rocking back and forth."
Leah's face blushed a deep red. "I just do that when I'm really excited sometimes," she mumbled.
Robin walked around the bed and sat on its edge. "So are those all your stickers?"
"Gosh, no!" Leah laughed. "These are just my favorites. The rest are in file boxes in the closet, organized according to category." She went to the closet and opened the door, revealing a row of neatly hanging clothes. Two shelves were above the clothes, and each shelf held four file boxes each. On the floor underneath the clothes were six more file boxes. Leah pointed to them in turn. "My animal stickers are in this one - this one has my food stickers - this one, my holiday stickers - "
"But why do you have so many? What do you do with all of them?"
"Sometimes I swap them with other collectors. I belong to sixteen different online sticker clubs, and I've met lots of people that way. Or sometimes, when I get bored or lonely, I just take them out and look at them, or rearrange them."
"Isn't the postage awfully expensive?"
"Not so much if it's inside the U.S.A. I save up my allowance, and sometimes my family members give me money for my birthday or Christmas." Leah began to take the file boxes from the closet one by one and show Robin their contents. The girls were less than halfway through when Leah's mother called her for dinner.
Leah grimaced. "I guess I'll just have to show you the rest of them another time. Thanks for coming over."
"Thanks for inviting me. It was fun."
"I had a friend back in Minnesota. Her name was Abby. I can't believe I've already got a friend here now."
When Robin opened the door, she was alarmed to see that it was almost dark. Leah's enthusiasm had proven to be contagious, and she'd gotten so caught up in looking at stickers with her new friend she'd lost all track of time. With a shiver, she walked down the porch steps and began her journey home.
When she reached the road, she felt a presence beside her and turned to look into Danny's smiling face. "I can't tell you how glad I am to see you!" she exclaimed.
"You didn't seriously think I'd leave you to walk home alone in the dark, did you?" he replied. "How did it go with Leah?"
"All right. I've never known anyone before with anywhere near as many stickers as her!" They both laughed.
They were about two thirds of the way to Robin's house when a man dressed all in black with a black ski mask pulled over his face jumped out in front of them and pointed a pistol at them. "Your money or your life!" he growled.
Robin froze in place, but Danny remained calm and kept walking. "Come on, Robin." He reached back for her.
Once Robin got over her initial shock, she saw that the mugger hadn't moved an inch since he'd spoken. Incredulous, she stepped around him and joined Danny, and a few seconds later, she glanced back to see that he was still standing there, frozen in place.
"How'd you do that?" she asked Danny, who merely laughed in response. "Are you just gonna let him stand there forever?"
"Only until the police get there," Danny told her.