It was growing late, and, as usual, the darkness and the hour bade Max pay that much more attention to her phone. 

The grayish thing was supposed to be chrome, but the ten-year-old hand-me-down, a flip phone from the prehistoric era, still had its uses. She didn't use it much. In fact, she only had a handful of numbers in the programmed into the phone, anyway. Her mother's cell, and the number for Bradbury Grace Memorial where she worked (because phone bills went unpaid just slightly more often than either Max or her mother felt comfortable with). The house, cell, and work numbers for Jim Darcy, the middle-aged widower who lived down the hall from their small apartment at the north end of town. The apartment super, and the number at the boys' preschool downtown. 

Shooting Stars Preschool and Daycare was open to Jack and Cody Jackson on a scholarship that was supposed to put them ahead when they started kindergarten next year, which basically had Max over the moon, even though she knew her little brothers well enough to know they didn't need a fancy school for all that. But it made her feel better about leaving the boys with their mother on days when Dominique came back from a triple shift too exhausted to tell the twins apart. They'd been at the preschool for a couple months now, and seemed to like it. And they got free lunch and breakfast there, so that was cool. 

Meanwhile, their fifth birthdays were next week, and Max had left BGA -- Baile's Gymnastic Academy -- an hour early to get to the mall in time to find them something suitable. She'd been saving up for two months (pretty easy when you didn't go out much, anyway) buy them gifts. Ideally, loud, with flashing lights and motorized, moving parts. 

That way, she could play with it, too. 

But the fates had thus far conspired against her. Almost an hour and a half here at the mall, and she hadn't found anything but cheesy t-shirts, sticker books, and last year's best sellers from the $2 DVD bin. Also, a cup of frozen yogurt, a giant pretzel, and two cookies...but that had all been for Max. She'd be getting home too late for dinner. Probably. 

She was about to give up and just head home -- shopping or not, she hated leaving her mother and brothers home alone so long...especially when her father was in town "on business" -- when she spotted a familiar face through the sea of yellow 'Sharing' shirts, and brightened. 

Calmly, politely pushing past the gently insistent brochures-with-legs, Max barreled through one couple and two groups of middle school kids, ("Oops...sorry. Sorry! I...um...forgot!") to catch Iikka and Jason Bertrand before she lost sight of them again. 

"Jason! Iikka! Wait up! It's Max! From school! Where we all go together!"