"Sounds like Rick," Christy said under her breath.

"We'd better go to the hospital," Katie said, urgently returning to her mission of retrieving the car keys. "Do you know how to get there?"

"I don't think it would help much for you to go. Todd and Doug took him more than an hour ago. I imagine they'll be back before you could get to the hospital."

"Got it!" Katie popped the door open and reached for the keys. "Are you sure we shouldn't go?"

"I guess you could if you wanted. I think they'll be back any minute though. Or you could stay here and help me with dinner. I told the guys I'd have a spaghetti feast for them when they came back."

Christy turned to Katie, who still looked worried, and said, "The way this afternoon has been, I don't think you and I should be driving around San Diego trying to find the hospital. It seems to me we should stay here and helpa" She paused, realizing she didn't know the girl's name.

"I'm Stephanie," the girl filled in the blank for her. "And you must be Christy. I've heard a lot about you."

Christy felt her cheeks warming. "And this is Katie."

"Did you happen to hear anything about me, say, from Rick maybe?" Katie asked.

Stephanie smiled a delicate, mysterious smile. Her face reminded Christy of a soft pink apple blossom.

"Rick has lots to say about a lot of things. Perhaps he has mentioned you."

Christy glanced at Katie, concerned about the way her friend might take such an answer. A bit of a relationship had sprouted between Rick and Katie at the Rose Parade on New Year's Day, but that was five months ago. Katie had tried to further the relationship since then, but nothing had brought Rick back into her life. This weekend was designed to be the test. Christy could tell it hurt Katie that Rick hadn't spoken of her the way Todd had talked about Christy. But then Christy and Todd had almost two years of relationship history to draw from.

"I guess we'll stay then," Katie decided, locking the door again, this time with the keys in her hand.

"Bring up your suitcases," Stephanie said. "You're both staying with me tonight. I'm in number ten. Two doors down from the nuthouse."

"Thanks for letting us sleep at your place," Christy said. "Todd told me he would make arrangements with one of the girls in the complex. I'm just glad you're the first one we ran into!"

"It's pretty quiet around here," Stephanie explained as they headed for her place. "School was out more than a week ago, and almost everyone has gone home for the summer. I work at the same restaurant as the guys. The Blue Parachute. Did they tell you about it?"

Christy nodded. Katie looked a little left out.

Stephanie unlocked her apartment door. "We all agreed when we took the jobs to stay until June so the restaurant could switch over to its summer help. Here we are," she announced, opening the door and revealing a tidy, nicely decorated apartment.

"Welcome to my humble home. Please make yourselves comfortable. My roommate left yesterday, so the empty room is all yours."

Christy and Katie lugged their bags into the bedroom on the right. The only thing in the room was a standing lamp in the corner.

"Todd didn't tell me we were supposed to bring sleeping bags," Christy whispered.

"1'11 ask Rick if I can borrow his," Katie said. "Maybe Stephanie has one too."

Soft cla.s.sical music floated into their room, and the girls followed its sound back to the living room where Stephanie had turned on the stereo.

"This is a really cute apartment." Christy surveyed the blue and white striped futon couch, the hanging lamps covered with blue and peach flowered fabric, and the variety of intriguing pictures on the walls.

One of the larger pictures caught Christy's eye. A young woma was wearing a long, pink, lacy dress, with her hair puffed on top of her head like a cloud. From the surrounding garden scenery, it looked like summer, and the woman was seated on a bench, wistfully looking out to the ocean.

"I love this picture!" Christy said.

The scene stirred something inside her. It was the hint of another time and place. A time when women were praised for looking feminine and being dreamers. A place for tea parties and parasols and wearing long, white gloves for a stroll in the garden.

I think I was born a hundred years too late.

"Thanks," Stephanie called out from the kitchen, where she was unloading her groceries. "Would you two like something to drink? Have you ever had iced ginseng tea?"

The two girls made a face at each other and cautiously approached the kitchen.

"Whatever you have is fine," Christy said graciously.

"Do you happen to have any c.o.ke? Pepsi?" Katie ventured.

"I don't," Stephanie said. "But I'm sure the guys do. I have a key to their place. Do you want to go over and get "Are you sure it's okay?" Katie asked.

"I'm sure they won't mind. They gave me the key because they kept locking themselves out. Sometimes those guys seem like Peter Pan and the Lost Boys, and they think I'm their Wendy."

Christy liked Stephanie. She seemed awfully sweet. There was an international flair about her, and she was intriguing.

"Come on," Katie said. "Let's go raid the guys' refrigerator. This ought to be fun."

Stephanie handed them the key. As Christy turned it in the guys' door, she looked over her shoulder to make sure they hadn't returned.

"Doesn't this feel sneaky to you?" she asked Katie.

"Yeah, it's fun! Let's freeze their underwear or something. "

"Katie!"

"What? It was only a suggestion."

"Where do you come up with these things?" Christy asked as the door opened, and the two of them glanced around the room. 'What a mess!" Christy said under her breath.

The two spies entered slowly and took in the full spectrum. To their right, in the kitchen area, were folding chairs at a card table with a box of sugary cereal in the middle. Surrounding the box were three bowls with puddles of pink soured milk from the dissolved cereal. A half-full bottle of generic cola stood next to the cereal box.

"I feel like Goldilocks," Christy whispered.

"Me too," Katie giggled. "Let's see where the three bears sleep."

"Katie!"

"I'm not going to steal their underwear, I promise. I was only kidding. Come on. I'm curious."

They stuck close together as they made their way through the living room, which hosted a long brown couch, an overstuffed plaid chair, a small TV balanced precariously on a cement block bookcase, and an old trunk covered with surfing magazines, which served as a coffee table in the center of the room.

"Very stylish," Katie quipped. "It's the ever popular 'early slob' decor."

Christy noticed Todd's orange surfboard in the corner, serving as a coat rack at the moment.

"This must be Rick and Doug's room." Katie peeked around the half-opened door on the right.

Two unmade beds hugged the walls. The floor between the beds was covered with clothes, books, empty potato chips bags, and a neon yellow Frisbee. A bike was tucked behind the door, and a guitar was propped up in the corner with a Padres baseball cap balanced on top.

"How can you tell?" Christy asked.

"Easy. The guitar is Doug's, and the bike is Rick's."

"Todd plays the guitar too."

"This doesn't look like Todd. Come on. Let's see what the room of a surf rat looks like."

Christy felt hesitant to follow Katie. Doug and Rick were two of the neatest dressers she knew. If they could live in such a messy room and appear so tidy in public, then what would "Mr. Casual's" room look like?

"Christy," Katie called from the bedroom on the right, "you have to see this!"

Christy looked into Todd's room but couldn't believe what she saw.

The room was immaculate.

"Do you really think this is Todd's room?" she whispered.

"What's that?" Katie pointed to a peculiar box in the center of the room. Standing only a few inches up from the floor, the large, wooden-framed box was covered with a rippled sheet and had a neatly folded blanket at one end.

"It's too small to be a water bed."

Katie poked it, and the substance under the sheet gave way. "It feels likea" She pulled back the corner of the sheet and announced, "It is. It's sand. I don't believe it!"

Christy joined in the examination and felt Todd's unique sand mattress.

Katie started to laugh. "Only Todd would sleep in a giant kitty litter box!"

"I'll bet it's really comfortable," Christy said, quickly coming to his defense. "After sleeping out on the Hawaiian beach while he was in the surfing compet.i.tion, he's probably more comfortable in the sand than on a mattress."

Katie turned to Christy and smiled, her bright green eyes doing a merry dance. "Like I said, only Todd."

Christy noticed a grouping of pictures and posters on the wall behind the bed. In the center was a poster of a waterfall on Maui where Todd, Christy, her friend Paula, and her Uttle brother, David, had spent a day last summer. The three other posters were surfing shots. A half-dozen photographs surrounded the posters, all stuck to the wall with thumbtacks.

"They're all of you," Katie said. "Look at that. All these pictures are of you."

Christy was amazed. Over the years she had sent Todd a picture here or there, but she never would have guessed he would save them or would create a place of honor for them.

"Isn't that your picture from the eighth grade?" Katie pointed to a wallet-size picture at the top.

"Oh no, look at that! It's from ninth grade. That is such a pathetic picture. I must have sent that to him right after we met. That's about the time he left Newport Beach and went to live with his mom in Florida."

Katie took a close look at the small photo and then looked at Christy. "May I just say you've improved over the years?"

Christy laughed at the little-girl expression on her face in the picture. Her hair was long then, almost to her waist, and hung straight down in an uncomplimentary fashion.

"This one must be tenth grade," Katie said. "That's when I met you, when you moved to Escondido. Look how different you looked with short hair! It was too short then, if you ask me. I like the way you wear your hair now."

Christy had been growing her hair out ever since she had let her aunt talk her into whacking it all off the summer before her soph.o.m.ore year. Now, at the end of her junior year, it was past her shoulders.

"I can't believe Todd has all these pictures. I don't even remember sending some of them to him," Christy said. "I do remember this one though." She pointed to a snapshot of the two of them at the Hawaiian waterfall in the poster.

"Listen," Katie said. "Is that them coming?"

Christy heard the thump of heavy footsteps coming down the corridor outside the apartment. They both heard loud, male voices approaching.

"Do you think they'll go to Stephanie's first?" Christy asked.

"Why? They don't know we're here. It sounds like they're coming inside. Quick, hide!" Katie dove for Todd's closet. The minute she opened it, a mound of clothes and junk tumbled out, showering her with damp swimming trunks and a sprinkling of sand.

"Ewww!"

"Shhh," Christy said. "They're coming in!"

Katie quickly stuffed the clothes back into the closet and whispered, "What should we do?"

"Act natural!" Christy stood perfectly still in the middle of Todd's room, her hands behind her back and a nervous grin pasted on her face.

They could hear the front door of the apartment open. One of the guys said, "Hey, it was unlocked. Is somebody here?"

"What should we say?" Katie asked under her breath. She took her place by Christy's side, looking like her mirror image, with hands behind her back and a goofy grin frozen on her face.

Christy could tell by the pounding footsteps that the three bears were about to discover them. There was no way to look anything other than stupid.

"Katie, think of something. Quick!"

heard the guys coming down the hallway toward Todd's bedroom, Katie, quick thinker that she was, shouted, "Surprise!"

Christy quickly joined in. "Surprise!"

She spotted Todd's screaming silver-blue eyes opened wide in surprise. He started to laugh, and in two giant steps, he had his arms around Christy. She hugged him back, her ear pressed against his chest where his deep laugh rumbled. She wondered if he could feel her heart about to pound out of her chest.

"You sure surprised us!" Todd said, giving Katie a quick hug. He ran his fingers through his bleached blond hair.

Doug and Rick followed with hugs for both the girls. There were lots of explanations and laughter and lots of sympathy, especially on Katie's part, when they saw the bandage around Rick's sprained wrist.

"So Stephanie knows you're here?" Doug asked. He stood a little taller than Todd, but not as tall as Rick.

Seeing the three of them all lined up, Christy realized Rick was the most striking of the three. His dark, wavy hair, deep brown eyes, and athletic build had been the obsession of many girls at her high school last year, including her. No wonder Katie couldn't get Rick out of her mind. In any room, any situation, his looks commanded full attention.

If Christy hadn't dated Rick for a short time and experienced some of the not-so-pleasant sides of his personality, she too might have been staring at him now the way Katie was.

As far as Christy was concerned, she would choose Todd or Doug over Rick any day. Katie, she knew, would have to come to her own conclusion on that, just as Christy had.

'We were supposed to be raiding your refrigerator for soda," Katie explained, her blunt-cut copper hair swishing dramatically as she looked to Christy for support and then back at the guys. "Only we thought we would do a little room inspection first. We were pleased to find your kitty litter box so nice and clean. Only one question though. Where's the cat?"