Free Journey, The by John A. Heldt Page B

however, were quite reasonable, unless you ordered food by the truckload, which is why Michelle had no qualms about picking up the tab for her party of four.
    "Thanks, Miss Jennings," Brian Johnson said as he finished a bite of a double cheeseburger. "I didn't eat lunch today, so this is definitely a bonus."
    "You're welcome, Brian. I'm just doing my part to fight world hunger."
    April and Shelly laughed.
    The girls sat opposite Michelle and Brian in a booth that featured padded vinyl seats and half the colors of a rainbow. More than twenty others occupied similar tables in the air-conditioned dining area of the fast-food restaurant, while, outside, drivers of cars stated and repeated their orders to speakers embedded in lighted plastic menus.
    Michelle's transition from authority figure to high school buddy had been pleasantly seamless, thanks in part to fast thinking. She had answered open mouths and skeptical glances, during the introductions, with an offer to be as sparing with her judgments as she was generous with her money. She knew that a quick wit and a friendly smile did wonders in situations like this and knew that teens could be surprisingly accommodating when someone else paid the bill.
    Michelle smiled at the sight of April laughing. She had missed that face and the delightfully complex personality behind it.
    "Shelly tells me that we are neighbors," she said to April as she sampled her root beer float. "I just moved into Apartment A-6, the studio."
    "We're in C-6, just across the parking lot. It's the Taj Mahal."
    "You don't like it?"
    "It's all right," April said. "I have a big bedroom and the living room's pretty nice. We even got cable last week. But it's not the same as a house. I'd really like to have a house someday, with a large yard, and not have to move every time my mom changes boyfriends."
    Michelle considered a follow-up but let the matter drop. She knew April's story as well as her own. Following the shooting death of her father in Yakima, April, then nine years old, had followed Delores Burke and a slick-talking man named Earl Pratt to Unionville. The adults had found jobs in a food processing plant and a slice of paradise in a double-wide on the outskirts of town. But their union in Unionville had lasted less than two years. By the time April had reached the eighth grade, she had lived in five different homes with five different men she could never call Dad.
    "How do you like living there?" April asked.
    "I like it a lot. I searched the city for a place with a squeaky bed, carpenter ants, and a running toilet and I found it in an hour. If I could get the TV to work, it would be perfect."
    "You sound like my mother," April said with a wide grin. "She's always making fun of our place. I think you'd like her. You even have the same smirk."
    "I'll take that as a compliment," Michelle said.
    Michelle looked at April again and smiled. Even in jeans and a Rally Club T-shirt she looked like a princess. Her braided hair alone was worth a fortune. Michelle laughed to herself when she thought of the women who paid hundreds of dollars to get what April got at birth.
    "Your mother must be very pretty to have such a pretty daughter," Michelle said.
    April blushed and gave Shelly a sidelong glance before returning to her elder.
    "She is," April said. "But not like she used to be. She's had a hard life."
    April cocked her head and looked at Michelle more closely.
    "You're very pretty too, Miss Jennings. In fact, you look a lot like Shelly's mom, a lot like her. You two could be sisters."
    "I'm fairly certain they were separated at birth," Shelly said. She smiled softly at Michelle and April and then returned to the window, where she stared blankly at the street beyond. "Thankfully, the similarities end there."
    Michelle looked closely at Shelly and noticed that she had lost much of the spark she had brought into the restaurant. She looked very much like a young woman who had more on her mind than pretty peers,