It was a crowded table in the Nelson household that evening. As usual, all the family was there, but tonight they had an extra chair to accommodate. Watts came over often after school, and her eating with Keith's family was becoming a regular thing. Plates of meatloaf, dishes of creamed potato and vegetables were passed around haphazardly, and like always, Cliff ended up holding the dish for which there no longer seemed to be a place on the table. Figuring that if anyone wanted any more carrots they would ask, he put the dish on the floor next to his chair, and reached for the salt.

"So…" he started, ignoring the look he was getting form his wife Carol, who knew what he was about to say, "This whole college thing…"

"Dad!" replied Keith with a sigh. "We spoke about that. I'm going to go next year, and I'm staying local."

"Where local? Northfield? Smithson?"

"I haven't decided yet. All I know is that I've got… different priorities now" Keith said, while his hand moved under the table to lightly rest on Watt's thigh.

"I think we ALL know that one" his sister Laura threw out. Inside, she was delighted for her brother – not least because she had managed to raise her own reputation by association. No girl really needed to be known as "The one with the nerdy brother", but "Keith Nelson's sister" was carrying her pretty high at the moment. Secretly, she had started planning how she would change this so that she was better known than he was. For now, she's happy to be better known than her friends.

No need to let on, though…..

"Still, Keith," his father persisted, "I'd feel happier if you'd settle on an actual school, and an actual curriculum."

"Ok, Dad. I'll get onto that – just not this week? I've got stuff that's kinda taking up my time right now..."

All eyes around the table rolled in union. However, it wasn't all about Watts, as Keith alone knew.

A half hour later, the dishes drying in the kitchen, two figures walked hand in hand alongside the railroad tracks. Dust rose as the wind picked up the dry earth, covering every surface a muted red-brown, as if they were walking through an old sepia-colored photograph.

"I saw Amanda earlier today", Keith said, squeezing Watts' hand just a little tighter as he spoke. "She's…. not doing so well."

"I kinda guessed so. She's acting pretty different these days" replied Watts, still aware of the newness of their relationship, and that things could well have turned out differently, had Amanda Jones not been so honest, or had Keith really been as dumb as he'd previously appeared.

"In what way different?"

"Well…. Before, when she was part of the in-crowd, she would…."

"What?"

"Well, she would show off when getting changed after Gym class. You know – taking the bench in the middle of the room, and taking her time over drying her hair and stuff. Just so's people would notice her."

"And you… noticed her?" asked Keith, seeing the red flush spread from Watts' face down her neck and (he guessed) across her chest. She only ever did this when she was really embarrassed.

"Yeah, OK? I did!" answered Watts, a little loudly, a little defensively. "I wanted to see what you saw in her. How she was different from me. And don't you DARE say a word!"

Keith choked back the comments that had sprung unbidden into his mind. He had studied both girls in enough detail to know that he well understood the differences between his fantasy and his reality, his picture of perfection and the perfect girl that had been in front of his eyes all the time. Now was not the time to run through the list, however.

Watts continued. "Now she's much less open, way less obvious. She hides in the corner or nearest the door so she can make a quick getaway. Won't dry her hair or stand there in her, you know, things, like she used to."

"I know what you mean" said Keith, desperately trying to get these new images out of his head. "I saw her at the tennis courts earlier, and she was all alone – not a single person even looked her way. She may as well not have been there at all. I'm getting worried about her, you know? We've come out of this one OK – people like us, and we've got each other. But I don't think Amanda has a friend in the whole school right now."

"But I don't know what we can do, Keith. Can you really see her hanging with us? Running for pizza, and watching you changing the oil on your bosses' Mercedes Benz? Is that what you want?" asked Watts, hoping for him to quickly say no.

"I can't see her being around all that grease and stuff, no. But I can't help thinking that I'm responsible, and that I should do something…"

As they walked on in silence, Watts hoped that he'd only avoided answering her question by accident.

Amanda Jones sat on the front step of her house, pretending to read the text book in her lap. Whilst her eyes scanned the page, her mind was elsewhere. From inside the house, sounds of normal domesticity were muted by the closed door – her mother in the kitchen, making bread for the local church ladies' circle. Her father in the den, watching the game on the TV. In her head, Amanda heard these sounds echo and fade. It was as if her previous life had counted for nothing, had amounted to zip. All the time she had spent dragging herself up to the level of Shayne and the others, believing them to be the ideal she should strive to copy. And she'd got there. Oh, she knew that they were the real deal, with the money, the cars and the jewels. Just as she understood that they knew about her as well. The working parents, the small house in the housing sector east of the tracks, no car, no money, no prospects. But she'd worked at it, focused on the important things – style over substance, attitude over friendship, and most of all, availability over common sense. That had brought her to Hardy's attention, and from there it was a short trip to full acceptance – or so she had assumed.

Only now was she realizing that everything that she'd treasured during those three years had been false – they knew who she was, and tolerated her, first because it was all a joke, because the little poor kid wants to join in with us. After that, it was the Hardy Jenns factor that prevented them from dropping her – so as soon as she was no longer with him, they simply closed the door on her.

"Amanda! Come here and give me a hand, will you please?" called her mother from the kitchen.

Amanda stood, and used her sleeve to wipe the tears from her eyes before turning and going back inside.

Across the street, leaning against the streetlight, Hardy Jenns watched with growing interest, and a satisfied smile on his face. Things were setting themselves up very nicely. Two people who are so wrapped in each other, they can't see what's going on, and the third one so mixed up inside her head, that she'd never see what was happening until it was too late.

Just a couple of calls to make and we can get started, he thought, as he walked away around the corner to his car.