Mako's Message: . . . I spend way to much time on the internet. I had to keep reminding myself that emoticons are not punctuation and do not belong in stories. I'm going to make a conscious effort to cut back on them.

Anyway, here is the rest of what I wanted to go into the last chapter but couldn't figure out a way to segue into. If you combine the two, I think it would be my longest chapter, but that doesn't really say much. As always, let me know what you like, what you don't, and why.


I was invited to a party.

I'm trying to think of something else to say about this but I'm still trying to get over the fact that I was invited to a party.

Okay, how about this, I'll talk about how it happened.

So I'm sitting at a table during lunch reading my new issue of Risky Chix and generally ignoring the world when a girl sits next to me and asks, "Mindy Macready?"

I look up and say, "Yes."

And she goes, "Oh good. You never talk to anyone so I was worried I'd get your name wrong."

She just sort of stopped talking there so I said, "So…did you want something? Or did you just want know my name.

"Oh no! I wanted to invite you my Halloween slash Birthday party."

"'Halloween slash Birthday'?"

"Yeah. I was born on Halloween so I have this great excuse to throw twice the party," She handed me an invitation with the time, address, my name, and a note to show the invitation at the door.

I guess she must be pretty popular or something if she's worried about people crashing her party. That's the point when I realize I have no idea who this girl is. I don't feel like making a thing of this, since that would be rude and she did just invite me to a party and, well yeah, yeah. There was just no need for it. She says, "See you there." And starts to walk away then stops and turns back, "Hey, did you really hospitalize a couple of bullies who tried to steal your lunch money when you started?"

I tell her that I did, but mostly because they fell (I threw them) down the steps.

She smiles and says, "That is so awesome" then walks away and adds, "Say 'Hi' to Katie for me!"

The whole thing kind of left me in shock honestly, and I'm still not quite over it.

Now that I think about it, the last thing she said was kind of weird; "say hi to Katie"? Dave's girlfriend Katie? Why would I say hi to her for-

Oh.

Okay, I have this sort of weird theory that I'm gonna try and work out as I go.

Katie is one of, if not the, most popular girls at that school. Dave was…is a dork and used to get picked on a lot. Now he's dating Katie, and he no longer gets picked on. . . Now that I think about it, other people talk to him now too. Well, not talk to him, but say hi to him. Dave gained coolness points for dating Katie. I hang out with Dave, and thereby Katie… so I get cool points too? And now that I think about it, I was never treated like "the new kid" well, not after the first day. And she asked if I really beat those guys up…so people were obviously talking about it…and she said it was awesome. So, maybe I was not the weird new kid nobody talked to, but the lone wolf people that intimidated people… Ha. That's funny. Here I was feeling like the loser new kid who didn't know anyone, and everybody else was looking at me like the bad-ass lone wolf.

So, if all this time I've been cool and didn't know it, does that make Dave cooler too for being friends with the bad ass middle schooler? Hmm… he probably breaks even for hanging out with a middle schooler in the first place.

If only they knew it was his face under that mask on all those t-shirts.

Oh wait, this just keeps getting better. Dave's friend Marty is dating one of Katie's friends, who is also popular, so he gets cool points for that, and for hanging out with Katie. So, Dave is dating the most popular girl in school, friends with someone dating another really popular girl, and the first person to "tame" the lone wolf who kicked the asses of two guys twice her size on her first day. Dave may not be doing much on his own be popular, but he's turning into some sort of nexus of cool.

Actually, I bet he's gaining cool points just for somehow managing to make all this cool surround him. I just see people wondering what's so great about Dave that cool people are starting to surround him. We're starting our own little social circle clique thing! This is so awesome!

And now I'm ashamed of myself for saying that.

Well, I guess it's a good thing I killed that buzz because I almost forgot to mention something.

My costume came!

I just tried it on and it fits perfectly, which is a big relief because it's way too late to exchange. I'm not sure what to do with my hair though. I think the plan was to let my hair hang out so it'd be obvious I was a girl, but doing that makes the mask sit all wrong and fall forward. I was thinking about cutting it, but we'll have to be careful how we do that or we could damage the elastic and it wont stay on at all.

I noticed something else though when I was looking at myself in the mirror. I guess I didn't really notice because I don't usually wear clothes that are so form fitting, but my hips are getting wider. It's making the suit tighter there than anywhere else. I wonder if Dave will notice?