“Girls, six-year-old girls,” I interrupted her. “With wobbly ankles.”

“Oh.” Crystal’s nose twitched, a little like a rabbit’s. “Kids. Yeah. Probably.”

“Just once I’d like to meet a guy with wobbly ankles. He’d need to lean on me. A ton,” I said. “He’d be an even worse skater than me and I’d hold him up around the rink and laugh at him when he fell down.”

“Somehow that doesn’t sound like the kind of guy we’d fall for,” Emma said.

“But…wait a second. Back to this skating class idea.” Emma tapped her chopsticks against her bowl of mac and cheese. She insisted on using chopsticks every time we ate here, no matter what type of noodles she ordered and no matter how difficult they were to pick up. “I think we’re onto something. Because I wonder who would be teaching the class. Maybe one of those hotties on the skating squad from today.”

“What was the deal with those rink police guys?” Jones complained. “Some people should not be allowed to have power. They completely let it go to their head.”

I smiled, thinking of the way the one guy had pulled my hat over my ears. Maybe he was a bit obnoxious, but he was cute, too. I quickly told everyone the story, pointing out he couldn’t be that terrible of a person, since he bothered to find me to return my hat.

Then again, he hadn’t been all that suave about it, had he. Especially not after he’d tried to be nice and I’d been rude in return.

“He brought your hat back? Cool. That means he likes you,” Emma said.

“No, I don’t think so,” I said. At least, not so much anymore.

“Yes, of course,” she said. “Otherwise, why would he bother? He was looking for an excuse to talk to you.”

“Or to harass me,” I said. “Come to think of it, if he really liked me, he wouldn’t have made fun of me. And, he would have kept the hat in the Lost & Found, so I’d have to come back and he could see me again.”

“Well, drop your hat again the next time you go skating at the lake with Brett. Just in case he wants to keep it. As ransom,” Emma said with a grin.

Jones rolled her eyes. “Guys don’t do that.”

“Can it hurt to try?” Crystal wondered. “The dude was cute. Leave your phone number inside the hat next time, maybe.”

“Oh, yeah. Sew it in,” Jones said, rolling her eyes.

“I think actually it would be a knitting project,” I told her. “And I can’t knit, so don’t worry. Anyway, I’ll see if he’s around the next time I go.”

“Go tomorrow,” Emma urged. “Or maybe tonight. Skating on New Year’s Eve’s so romantic.”

More romantic than my current New Year’s Eve plans, anyway, I thought. Emma and Crystal both had plans to go out with their boyfriends that night. Jones was going to a big party with them, too. I’d be sitting around home with Gretchen and Brett.

Just once I wanted to have romantic New Year’s Eve plans. Was that so much to ask?

“I know you hate New Year’s resolutions, Jones. But I was thinking, if we all wrote something down, it would be a great start to my writing project. You know, for my Independent Study—it’s going to be a collection of different forms of writing.” I was compiling poems, stories, and various fragments of writing: mine, as well as famous people’s, as well as not-so-famous people’s (my friends). I had told my English teacher and project adviser, Mrs. McCutcheon, that I’d study how editors decided to do anthologies by deciding what to put in and what to keep out. The theme of the project was “Life & Times: Mine and Others.”

“You guys can help me kick it off. We can check in later with a progress report—just a sentence or two, no big deal. Write down a goal, a wish…anything.” I got a small, striped notebook out of my bag along with a pen and gently pushed it to the center of the table.

“Why do we have to have goals?” Jones complained. “Can’t we just exist? Isn’t that hard enough in January?”

“Hey, I’m the one who hates winter. You’re not allowed to,” Crystal said.

“Maybe your goal for the new year could be not to hate winter so much, Crystal,” Emma suggested. “You could buy a new, warmer coat. And get out in the cold and just—”

“Embrace it? You weren’t going to say ‘embrace it,’ were you?” Jones asked her.

I laughed. “You know how she hates that phrase.”

“Unless the word embrace is connected to the words Topher Grace, then yeah, I do.” She sipped her soda. “Embrace Topher Grace. It’s a mini-poem. Hey, Kirsten, put that down in your book.”

“No, you do it.” I pushed the notebook toward her plate.

I wouldn’t be surprised if she took up a few pages; Jones’s obsession with the actor was well-documented. Her normally cool and detached attitude didn’t apply where he was concerned. She had a “Toph-oto” Album, full of pictures of him. She’d even tried to convince her ex-boyfriend, Chris, to go by the name “Topher” instead. The fact that he hadn’t didn’t make her break up with him, but it didn’t help his cause, either. She actually had never forgiven him for saying that Topher was “just sort of okay” in Win a Date with Tad Hamilton.

“Since you’re so interested in goals, Kirsten, you know what your goal for the next month should be?” Emma asked.

“Get along with my sister, even when she’s being a pain?” I asked. That sounded like a worthy aspiration. Gretchen had this thing where she treated me like she was my mother sometimes. She didn’t see it, whenever I called her on it, but trust me—it was there.

“No. Actually, I say don’t make a huge effort to get along with her. You’re doing her a huge favor by staying here and helping her with Brett, and if she’s so self-centered that she can’t appreciate it—”

“I know, I know. Look, things with my sister will be fine.” I stood up and went to refill my cola. I knew my friends were only trying to be supportive, but somehow there’s something different about me dissing my sister and other people doing it. Like, if I joked about how horrible she was, that was one thing. But if someone else commented on it, I felt the need to defend her, like she was a lion in my pride. Not that I know much about lions. Or pride, after the way I’d fallen ten times that morning.

I sat back down at the table, resolved to change the subject if necessary.

“We’ve talked it over and we decided we’re going to give you a task,” Crystal said.

“Darn it.” I snapped my fingers. “I was at the pop machine too long, wasn’t I?”

“You like New Year’s resolutions, right? You said so.” Emma smiled at me.

I started to get that sinking feeling you get when you know your friends are about to dare you. “Okay…” I said slowly.

“So, starting tomorrow, you’re going back to that lake. You’re—”

“Learning how to skate better, first of all,” Jones said. “Or not, because you did meet lots of guys today when you knocked them down. Anyway, we want you to meet a guy there at the rink. Preferably one with several good-looking friends—”

“One of whom bears an uncanny resemblance to Topher Grace, so that I can hook you up, too?” I interrupted.

“Well. That wouldn’t hurt your case any.” Jones grinned at me.

“I know I said I liked resolutions, but I was thinking more along the lines of ‘Be more outgoing in the new year.’ How about if I just say something like, ‘I’ll be more outgoing’?” I offered.

“That’s nice. That’s wonderful,” Emma said. “And best of all, it’ll help you meet a guy you can invite to come with us on Groundhog Getaway.”

“No,” I said. “Impossible.”

“It’s not impossible,” Emma said. “Don’t be ridiculous. You have a month.”

Groundhog Getaway was a weekend trip to a cabin resort, and it was supposed to be our first major “adult” trip. Our parents had given us the okay to go there for a long weekend, right around Valentine’s Day.

But, natural procrastinators that we all were, we hadn’t gotten around to booking the reservation until too late, and by the time we got around to it, the weekend closest to Valentine’s Day was full…and the only weekend even remotely close that was available was Groundhog Day.