“Rub it in why don’t you?” Mary said.

“Hey, I’ll think about you, maybe even bring you back a snow ball."

“Gee, thanks.”

“Mary and I’ll be able to make do without you for two days I think. We’ll rent a few movies like maybe Alive and Touching the Void, and think of you in snowy Aspen,” he said.

"Rent movies?”

“Yeah, Mary’s coming over to watch movies and hang out.”

Rachel turned to Mary with raised eyebrows.

Mary suddenly found her shoes very interesting.

“Yeah, why watch TV at my house when I can do it someplace else?”

“Especially since at home, you can’t share popcorn with anyone,” Rachel said with a sly grin. Cy returned the grin. Mary scowled at both of them. What did they think they were getting at?

Rachel smacked her hands together. “Well, I gotta go home and pack.”

"Have fun,” Mary said.

"Yeah, build a snowman for us,” Cy said.

Rachel waved and headed off, leaving Cy and Mary standing awkwardly together. She remembered that she didn’t have his number or his address and got both from him. He got her info as well. After a few seconds of just staring dumbly at the scrap of paper with his address and number scrawled on it, Mary said to her shoes, “Well, I’ll see you this weekend.”

"Yeah, come over Saturday anytime, and we’ll hang out,” he said.

Then they went their separate ways.

~~ ~~ ~~

Mary was humming a happy tune as she let herself into the house. She’d started doing it on her walk home. If she’d stopped and thought about it, she would have realized that she’d never hummed on the way home. It was usually dark thoughts and imaginings of revenge. But she wasn’t thinking about humming or having foul thoughts about her classmates. She was thinking about Cy. He was so cool. He didn’t make fun of her, he didn’t act like she was a total reject of society, and he wasn’t afraid of her. It was neat. Rachel was the same way, but she was a girl. Mary smiled to herself. A boy liked her.