"Emily...Thorne?" I heard behind me. I turned around to face the voice. It was Mr. Pendanski.

"Hey Mr. P," I said. The boys may call him 'Mom' but I had 'respect for adults' as my mother would say. Mr. P didn't call me 'Emily' either...if he could help it. The Warden told all of the counselors (so I heard from X- Ray) the night before I got to camp that I was to be treated 'as a queen' and the counselors better let their charges (the boys in their tent) know it too. My parents were paying for me to get the royal treatment at this place. The only reason I had no trouble with the boys at first was because "I had a pretty face" as X-Ray told me. (In boy language that means 'You're a girl. The only one we've got out here.) That wore off after a while. But by then we had learned to partially respect each other. But back to Mr. Pendanski.

"Thorne, you have a phone call. Mr. Sir's office," he told me. All of the boys gave me weird looks. NOBODY used the phone in Mr. Sir's office. Nobody but Mr. Sir. I went to the phone.

"Hello?" I asked. I heard my mother's voice.

"Emily? Emily Truth? Emily, is that you?" she asked.

"Yes mom, it's me" I almost said something sassy, but I knew better than to sas my mother.

"Emily, do you remember Stephanie Barnes?" she asked. "From L.A. You know her...Stephanie?" I bit my lip.

"Yeah, I remember Stephanie..." I said. (After I'd gotten in trouble the first few times we had moved from L.A. to New York. Then we'd taken a little vacation to Texas where I'd managed to get myself in some trouble.)

"Stephanie was in a car accident...Emily...Stephanie is dead." Immediately my ears stopped working. 'I must be dreaming,' I thought. I pinched my arm. It hurt. The last thing I heard my mom say before I dropped the phone was, "Emily, you're coming home for two days, to go to the funeral. They want you to speak." The phone clattered to the floor. I could see everyone in the Mess Hall from the window. They all looked up at the sound. I pressed my back up to the wall and slid down it. I pulled my knees up to my chin and wrapped my arms around my knees. Tears rolled down my cheeks. I pressed my head against my legs. A few seconds later I felt a hand on my shoulder, and then arms around my neck. I closed my eyes and pressed my head into the unknown person's shoulder and cried. They helped me to my feet and to my tent. I didn't open my eyes the whole way.

They led me to my bed and let me cry for about fifteen minutes before I pulled away and wiped my eyes. Normally I would have been very upset with myself. Crying was a sign of weakness. I didn't want anyone to think I was weak but I was in too much pain to care. Stephanie had been the only friend that had stuck by me after I moved to New York. Stephanie and I had been friends since we were children. We'd cut our hands and pressed them together so that we would be 'blood sisters' when we were fourteen. I hadn't let my mother put any medicine on it. It wasn't a deep cut. I still have the scar now. Its a little thin line, the only thing to blemish the perfect skin. I was sixteen then, and losing my best friend in the world was too much for me to handle. I wiped my eyes and looked at 'my rescuer.'

Sitting beside me was Zigzag. Under normal circumstances I would have been more surprised. Zig wasn't the type to be all chivalrous. Caveman was usually the comforter, maybe even X would try and make you feel better if he could. "Th-thanks...thanks for getting me out of there and letting me..." I pointed to his shoulder where there was a huge wet spot on his overalls. He nodded.

"You OK?" he asked.

"Yeah...no...I don't know," I told him. He nodded like he understood. Maybe he did understand. I had never even thought about the fact that Zigzag had to have had a past. I had been working on digging into everyone's pasts, but Zigzag hadn't been at the top of my list. I regarded him as a puppy dog; dumb and cute. I knew, of course, that Zigzag had feelings. Something had told me that when I was talking to Squid and Robyn about him...but I'd just realized it then.