Stoneybrook Ayr

"Honestly, the fact that they consider this to be a meal at all just shows how deluded they are," Kristy said, poking the mac and cheese, which didn't move.

"It's more like regurgitated slugs that have been swimming on some kind of stomach acid," she announced.

"And this bread roll... I bet I could crack Cary's head open with this," she said, smacking it on the table. She saw Sunny walk past and yelled, "yo Sunny! Come eat with us!"

Katie stood by Sunny's door, unsure whether to ring the bell or not. She wanted to see her friend but she also felt kind of weird about it. She'd been laying low for a while, whitdrawing from her friends and spending more time down at the trailor park with her drinking friends. She lit a cigarette while she considered ringing the doorbell. Finally her hand made its way up and rang, on its own it seemed. She waited.

It went without saying that the combination of the storm and the day spent watching scary movies had made Sunny a little hesitant about going to bed, so she'd been watching funny videos on youtube on her laptop.

When she saw that Kristy was online, she decided to IM her.

sunnydaydream: Hi Kristy, how are you guys doing with the storm and all? Congrats on co-president, btw.

Sunny had found the original Friday the 13th movie tucked in the back of her DVD collection, and she had been surprised that she still had it. She hadn't watched it in awhile.

She had put it in the DVD player and queued it up and waited for Cary to arrive.

Sunny still didn't quite know how she'd managed to be accepted into AP English -- though she had been on the honors track all through Vista and when she transfered in -- but she'd gotten in and she wanted to do well in it. Shannon had invited her over that afternoon for a study session and Sunny had accepted, which was why she'd found herself ringing the Kilbournes' doorbell about an hour after school ended.

She hoped Shannon would answer the door and not one of her family members, because that could have been awkward, considering they'd never met.

"Hi," she said as the door opened, flashing her winningest smile.

Claudia had spent most of her lunch period in the art room. She brought a Snickers bar (okay, make that 3 Snickers bars) to nibble on while she worked on a painting she was finishing up for class. If she was going to be accepted into any art school worth it's weight, she had to put her nose to the grindstone.

She had just cleaned up and was walking out of the art room to chat with some friends before lunch ended when she ran right into Sunny.

"Hey, Sunny!" she said happily. "You going to the caf?"

Dawn put two glasses of organic strawberry orange juice on the kitchen table before sitting across from Sunny. She had invited her oldest friend over to hang out and try some vegetarian recipes she had found. First she wanted to catch up with her friend. She finally had a homework light day. Dawn had been swamped with assignment after assignment over the past few weeks and hadn't able to focus as much on Sunny as she would have liked.

"It nice to be able to hang out like this," Dawn said happily before taking a sip of her juice. It was nice to have a friend around that understood why she ate the way that she did.

Sunny had made a promise to herself that she would be more outgoing her senior year, and she vowed to keep it. Well, to try, anyways. She decided that making new friends was as good a place as any to start.

Sunny spotted Howie, a boy who was in one of her classes, sitting in the cafeteria, already eating lunch, and she went up to him. "Do you mind if I sit with you," she asked.

Sunny was glad her father had left for the bookstore. His decision to become a somewhat present parent was beginning to grate on her, ever so slightly, and she was glad that a supposed emergency had needed his attention. Truthfully, Sunny didn't think that there could really be an emergency regarding books and magazines, but she didn't dare ask for the specific details. Instead, she had called Katie and invited her over.

The doorbell rang and she answered it, glad to see her friend standing there.

"Hi!" Sunny said, motioning for her to come inside.

Sunny sighed heavily as she took a bite of her chicken sandwich, more than slightly annoyed that there had been no real vegetarian options on the menu that day at lunch. She was totally bored. School was totally boring, even though she had friends in all her classes. She took another bite of her sandwich when Abby Stevenson came into view, and she motioned for her to join her.

"Hi, Abby," she said after she'd swallowed. "How are you?"

Afternoon at Southbank
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Bank,_Queensland

Morning: Darling Harbour
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darling_Harbour,_New_South_Wales

Dinner at the Waterfront Restaurant http://waterfrontrestaurant.com.au/

The flight from LA to Melbourne was long, but most of the travellers slept through the night. A full day was planned, which is an important step towards beating jetlag.

*

"You ready for this? I haven't gotten a thing done as far as getting ready for the trip." Abby asked Sunny as she picked her up that morning. They were going to Washington Mall.

Sunny had called Katie earlier that morning and asked to hang out, so Katie had suggested the mall. It was a hot summer day but Katie had no ambition to hang out by the pool where the entire "ace gang" (she had just read the Georgia Nicholson books she'd found in her little sister's room) would be. The mall would be safe today. So now they were in the food court, where Katie didn't eat but sipped on a black coffee. She'd spent last night at a party with College students and hooked up with a guy whose name she'd now forgotten, and regretted it. It felet like cheating on Alan, even though they were no longer together.

"So, what's new?" she asked Sunny.

Her father had extended his business trip.

Sunny wasn't really surprised by the fact that he had done so -- he had made it very clear that the move to Connecticut had really only been for her benefit -- but she was a bit annoyed with the fact that he had done so without even pretending to ask her if it was okay. She was therefore annoyed, exasperated, and exhausted, and quite frankly more than a bit fed up with the entire situation. She was barely seventeen, she wasn't meant to be staying at home alone for nearly a month. Dawn had been so certain that things between Sunny and her father would get better that Sunny had foolishly allowed herself to believe that that was so, even with all the evidence to the contrary. Things really hadn't changed.

If they had changed, it was only because they had somehow managed to get worse.

So Sunny had gone over to Dawn and Mary Anne's with the explicit intent of telling Dawn that things were not any better, that things would never be any better -- at least not in Sunny's point of view, and that -- since nothing was better and the whole 'Sunny alone in the whole huge house' thing was getting rather old after two weeks -- she wanted to spend at least the night there.

Dawn wasn't home. Sunny really wasn't surprised. But Mary Anne was. Sunny figured talking to her couldn't hurt.

"Hi, Mary Anne," she said, plastering a sunny smile on her face. "Do you think we could talk?"

Sometimes, Sunny Winslow was a bad friend. It wasn't most of the time, but sometimes Sunny being a bad friend occurred, even when Sunny didn't mean to. Still, with her father gone on vacation, Sunny had time to be a better friend, since she wasn't playing the role of the ever-perfect daughter. So in an effort to be a better friend, she had texted Heather and asked her to meet her at Thelma's.

"Hi," she said. "I'm glad you could come. How's your summer been?"