“Hey guys!” Cilena ran to catch up with the rest of her new friends. On her way, she saw a phone in the middle of the floor-someone had probably dropped it.

                Right where it can get trampled, too, she thought, as she rescued the phone before the stampede of students. Flipping it open, she saw that it was Aelita’s.

                Finally catching up to the others, Cilena handed Aelita’s phone back to her. “You may want to be more careful-it almost got trampled.”

                Aelita looked a bit horrified at what could have happened to her phone as she took it from Cilena. “Thanks! I tend to have it it my pocket… I suppose it just fell out and I didn't notice.” She looked back up. "Thanks again!”

                “No problem. By the way-sorry if I’m being a bit too curious, but would XANA have anything to do with Xanadou? I love that movie!” Cilena was, luckily, too excited to notice the look of horror on the other’s faces.

                “Well than,” said Jeremie quickly, ”You must be two of a kind. I’m not much of a Xanadou person myself, but Aelita on the other hand…”

                The others picked up the hint quickly-not that it was hard (Unfortunately, Aelita had seen Xanadou and wasn’t really all that fond of it). They were saved from having to continue their pretending, however, by Yumi looking at the clock and saying, “Um… we’ve only got 4 minutes to get to class.”

                “What was Sissi bothering you for, by the way?” Cilena looked around; it was Ulrich who had asked the question.

                Odd raised an eyebrow. “Really? She’s always annoying us until we die-especially Ulrich. She has this idea-correction, delusion-that she can get him to go out with her.”

                Cilena cocked her head. “Are you sure we’re not thinking of different people?”

                “Pretty sure,” answered Yumi.

                “Hm… weird. This is my first day at Kadic, of course. Maybe she just wanted a friend.”

                “Friend, my eye.” Ulrich shook his head.

                “Oh, your eye is a good friend?” Odd joked. In return, he received four glares and one laugh. Hey, he’d made someone laugh!

                “No. I mean that if Sissi is trying to be your friend, she probably wants something.”

                Cilena shrugged. She could tell it would be hard, but she’d do her best to work out a way to keep her friends-all of them.

***

                Class was pretty boring-mostly just more of the “Welcome to 8th grade!” nonsense from earlier classes. It didn’t help that Cilena kept wanting to nod off-her lack of substantial sleep last night was catching up to her. Hopefully she’d make it to the end of the day.

                She was a bit confused, though. Sissi had been in the class, and though there was no “real” confrontation it quickly became obvious that Sissi rather did hate the rest of Cilena’s friends-and the feeling was mutual. If Sissi knew that Cilena was friends with the rest, why did she bother talking to her at all?

                It could be Ulrich was right, and Sissi was using her. But Cilena could generally tell when that was going on, and it just… didn’t feel like it. Besides, who goes to all the trouble of looking upset for almost all of free period just to get someone to think you’re their friend? It would be pretty boring.

                This wasn’t making any sense. And on top of that, Cilena was getting sleepier by the minute. Thank goodness this was 7th period… only 1 more to go… or was it two? In any case, the bell rang, and Cilena waved to her friends-all six-checked her schedule, and headed off to her next class, all the while nearly dead on her feet.