"Oh, sorry," she offered. "Maybe she likes you too, but really, we need aplace to stay for the weekend. We had a little fire at our place and it won't...e ready until Monday." "Fire?" "Yeah, damn hair dryers. I mean, after what happened at the party, we shouldn'treally stay at the Smothers' place. Never mind that Amanda stole Derek's car." "I see?" I said, while also remembering the story about the party, and shehad a point. It also explained a lot. "So, can I come with you, I mean come too?" She. We'd planned to head down to the rib place, Jelly's, I think, but the girls had surprised me with the cooler full of clams. They'd liked my quick and easy version, but now they wanted the real thing, so we did up a big batch of angel hair pasta with fresh clam sauce. They scrubbed up the clams, so I had it easy! They loved it, and now I'm in trouble, because I made the mistake of telling them about my home made New England clam chowder. But that's for the fall.Richelle still seemed like she was. I'm becoming smaller." Like your personality? Is this some kind of euphemism for depression?Are you on drugs?" No. I'm not on drugs. I'm physically shrinking. I think I'm 5'8." "No. You're more around 6'1"." That what I'm saying. I'm loosing my height." Well I told you that you should have been exercising more. All thosecomputer games are wasting away your muscles." No mom. I'm serious. I am loosing inches." Oh honey. I'm sure it's just your posture. If you stand up straightyou'll probably. Lines. Squares. It was a brick wall. No, a cinder-block wall. Moving as far as she could to both the right and to the left, she felt no other break on the surface aside from the regular lines of the mortared bricks. She felt the urge to slam her fist into the stone to break it, but a small voice at the back of her head advised against it. If the wall shared the unnatural resistance of the chain, she would break her hand.Shampoo got up, her knees crackling as they straightened. The chain was.