𝐅𝐈𝐃𝐄𝐋𝐈𝐓𝐘 • Randall Floyd

𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐮𝐞!

JODI was just as ready as she would ever be for the final day of junior year. With a day of freshman hazing ahead and messing around in classrooms until that final bell rang, she was just as unbothered as one would imagine.

She headed out the house that Friday morning with a messenger bag swung over her shoulder and a denim button-down tied at her belly button. A pickup truck with her friends waiting behind the wheel was parked at the curb. But as she made her way across the lawn, her attention was caught by the brown Bimmer across the street.

A tall man with round glasses and a head of dark curls stepped out the driver's seat. That was Mr Dolinsky. At the same time from the passenger's side emerged Mrs Dolinsky—her hair as darkly blonde and shiny as ever, even from a distance.

But the last of three to leave the car was a tall girl in an earth-toned Baja jacket drowning her frame and hiding the upper hem of her bell-bottom jeans. She had feathered, shaggy hair that didn't stop very far below her shoulders and was almost a fawn tone that was barely mistakable for blonde.

That was Willa. Mr and Mrs Dolinsky's only daughter.

She stretched her arms above her head in a wide, guttural yawn that pulled her onto her tiptoes.

Although they spoke over the phone often, Jodi hadn't seen Willa in three whole summers. From this distance, Jodi could see Willa hadn't changed much. She had grown into a woman but she had always been a precocious child.

Willa uncoiled and shut the car door then turned to head up the pathway towards her grandparents' house.

Mrs Dolinsky had grown up in that home, but at the earliest chance she got she left and never looked back. She married the nice guy from Canada that she met in college, they bought a big suburban house in the Midwest and then they made it a home with a child.

Jodi told her friends in the truck, "Wait a second," and jogged across the open road.

"Willa!" she called, grabbing the attention of the girl and her parents alike. "Hey!"

A smile spread across the face of the visibly tired brunette. "No way! Hey, man." She hugged Jodi once they were within reach of one another.

"Heya, Jodi," said Mrs Dolinsky, who was steps ahead of her husband holding a suitcase he pulled out from the trunk.

"Hey, Mr and Mrs D. Glad to have you back." Jodi turned her attention back to Willa. "D'you just get here?"

"Yeah," Willa replied as she wedged her hands in her back pockets and shifted her weight onto her left leg. "You headed to school?"

"Last day of the year, baby. I thought you'd be here tomorrow."

"My dad's time off covered today so my parents decided the earlier the better."

"Lucky for some." Willa only shrugged. "Look, there's a huge party later. Total end of the year blowout, it should be fun. You wanna come?"

Willa scrunched up her nose. "Maybe. I'll think about it."

"That's still better than a no," said Jodi, and she turned away to head towards her friend's truck.

"Enjoy first period," Willa called out teasingly.

"If I don't shoot myself first," Jodi replied.

Once Jodi slipped into the last vacant seat in the front of the car, her friends inevitably asked her who "that girl" was. And Jodi was just as glad to answer them as she was glad thinking about the prospect of them meeting "that girl" for themselves.