“Am I not good enough anymore? Do you need me AND Perry to be with you all the time?”

IT’S

not that I thought ninth grade would be easy. But I thought, with Mindy coming with me, it would be easier.

“We’re still gonna be friends, right?” Mindy asked, as she watched me straighten my hair from her perch on my bed.

“Duh!” I snorted, “Always!”

The truth is, we were both nervous about starting a new school, but Mindy was more anxious than I was. Shy by nature, she tended to follow me wherever I went, her slow and steady disposition tempering my impulsivity and keeping me in check. A faithful friend like her was hard to come by. I knew I’d always have Mindy.

The first couple weeks of high school went relatively smoothly. My classmates and I bumbled between classrooms, leaving things in our lockers that shouldn’t be there, trying to remember all our teachers’ names and each of their million and one rules. “Is it Chumash now or Navi?” I panted to Mindy, while trying to catch three folders and a large hole-puncher cascading out of my messy locker. “Navi,” Mindy said, calmly pointing at her schedule stuck neatly on her loose-leaf. “Come on, you’re going to be late!” Good old Mindy.