Just Friends by Dyan Sheldon Page A

General marched in. He’d ditched the gardening gloves, but he still wore the scowl. Apparently Josh hadn’t made a very good first impression.
    “Dad!” At least one of them was glad to see him. “You haven’t been introduced. This is Josh Shine.” She turned the spotlight of her smile on Josh. “This is my dad—”
    “General Capistrano,” said her father.
    Should he salute? Probably not. Stand up? To do what, sit down again? He was too far away for a handshake. A headshake would have to do. “Pleased to meet you, sir.”
    The second impression was no improvement on the first. The General also nodded, but didn’t suggest by word or expression that he was pleased to meet Josh.
    “I’m sorry about climbing your tree, but the dog…”
    The General, however, was no longer looking at Josh, which had the effect of making him disappear. “Came in for my lunch,” he said to Jena, and looked from her to the clock on the wall.
    This statement was followed by a silence so awkward it was virtually tripping on its own feet and knocking over everything not nailed down.
    “Gosh, is that the time?” Josh stood up. “I better get going.”
    The last thing Jena said when she showed him out was, “It was really nice talking to you.”
    And she hasn’t talked to him since. She waves. She smiles. When he or someone else says something funny in class, she looks his way. But except for a quick nod or low “Hi!” if they pass in the hall, not a word has been exchanged. How could it be? She’s always with Tilda Kopel; part bodyguard, part white noise. He can tell from the way Tilda glares over his head (the closest she’s ever come to meeting his eyes) that she doesn’t approve of even that little communication between Jena and him. If he could get Jena alone for just ten minutes, then maybe they could pick up where they left off. He’s been praying all week that Tilda would catch the flu that’s been going around, but her immune system seems to be as strong as her ego.
    Josh comes out of the music store, slipping the harmonica box into his satchel. He can’t wait to get home to try it out, and starts to stride up the street when, suddenly, there’s Jena, coming out of the deli. She sees him at the same second that he sees her, but though he stops short, unsure what to do next, she hurries towards him. “Josh! Hi!”
    He says, “Hi!” And then, because he’s been caught off guard and can’t think of anything else, says, “Your hair doesn’t have any pink in it any more.” Just in case she hasn’t noticed.
    “I washed it out.” She holds up one hand. “Now the only pink on me is my nails.” The same shade as Tilda Kopel’s, though this is not something Josh would be likely to notice. “The hair was just a spray. It was the thing to do at my last school but Tilda says it’s way passé.”
    He liked it, but what does he know? His mother still trims his hair.
    Jena says she’s really glad she ran into him. She enjoyed talking to him the other day.
    “Me, too.” Out of the corner of his eye, he looks for Tilda Kopel. She has to be around here somewhere, ready to pounce. “I never get a chance to talk to you at school. We’re always rushing off to class or whatever.” The whatever being Tilda, of course.
    Jena shrugs. “I guess that’s why they call it school. Because of all the classes.”
    “And here I thought it was because of all the fish,” says Josh.
    There’s a second’s time lapse between the joke and her laughter. “You have such a different sense of humour to most people I know.”
    “That’s what they said about King Henry the Eighth,” says Josh, and she laughs again.
    She thinks he’s really funny. “Nobody’s ever made me laugh so much. Except on TV or in a movie.” And then, while he’s convincing himself that she means this in a good way – that she’s laughing with him, not at him – she suggests that they go to Hava Java for a coffee. “We deserve it. End of the