That night, we went over to my aunt Heather and my uncle Rob's house for supper, which meant in our special family language that we would be staying at their house, visiting and hanging out with them, until after midnight. For the first time in a long time, I was actually looking forward to it.

When we arrived, Jill was waiting right in the coatroom for us, and flung open the door to greet us before we even reached the doorstep. She was definitely acting like she used to. As soon as I had kicked off my sneakers and placed them right beside Jill's, we ran into the living room, where Jill had been playing video games. We picked out a two-player game, and started to play. I noticed my mom and my aunt Heather whispering very quietly to each other and occasionally glancing over at us with smiles on their faces out of the corner of my eye, but I ignored them. I think Jill noticed them, too, because she nudged me and made a subtle gesture with her head towards the kitchen, where our moms were sitting at the table. I nodded, and shrugged slightly, signalling that I had no clue what they were talking about, either. All I knew was that both Jill and I were acting like we used to, and I liked it that way. No pranks, no unfriendly friends, no having to sit with the adults at the kitchen table, just me and my best friend.

At dinnertime, my uncle handed us each a plate with what appeared to be a wrap of some sort on it. I was a little weary. My uncle didn't usually make dinner, that was more of my aunt's job, but tonight my uncle had volunteered to do it for her so that she could sit and chat with my mom. Let's just say that when he did make dinner, it wasn't exactly what you would call a delicacy. I sniffed the food uncertainly. It sure smelt okay.

"Don't worry, this isn't some weird experimental dish like my mom likes to try, my dad gave up on those when he actually tasted some of his own food and realized how awful it tasted. Now he just sticks to normal recipes that he has tried before. This is just a wrap. No weird ingredients or anything, just an ordinary wrap," Jill assured me. I picked it up to take a bite, then hesitated. What if this was another one of Jill's pranks? I decided to trust her, she was being nice today after all, and took a bite. I was relieved to find that it was delicious. I ate the whole thing, and Jill did, too. When we took our plates into the kitchen, I made sure to compliment my uncle Rob on the food.

"That was awesome, uncle Rob!" I said, setting my plate down in the sink.

"Thank you. I thought that you would like it. It's one of Jillibean's favorites," he replied. My jaw dropped. Jillibean? As in my author-buddy? I followed Jill back into the living room, where she shut off the game.

"Jillibean?" I asked.

"Oh, yeah, that's one of my nicknames," Jill replied. "It's kind of silly, I know, but it's great to use for usernames on websites and stuff."

"Jill? Have you ever heard of .com?" I questioned her.

"Yeah, actually, I have," Jill answered. "In fact, I'm a member of your site. It's funny you mention that because my username is jillibean on there. Why?"

"Do you have an author-buddy whose username is cryssiebear?" I asked her.

"Yeah, I do," Jill said. I could tell that she was starting to think that this was a little weird. She was probably wondering how I knew all these things. "I thought that that was a little odd, too, because my dad calls you Cryssiebear."

"Cryssiebear is my username on the website," I told her. "And my author-buddy's username is jillibean, which means that we have been chatting to each other online and we didn't even know it."

"Whoa. Small world, huh?" Jill commented. Then, after pausing to think for a moment, she added, "So, that story that you wrote, that wasn't about Candace or Amber by any chance, was it?" I froze. I had forgotten all about the story that I had written and posted. Jill had read my story about her, and I had said some really awful stuff about her in it!

"Not exactly," I replied, looking down at my blue and purple toe- socks, feeling majorly guilty. Then I looked up.

"Who were you writing about in your story?" I asked.

"You," confessed Jill. She sat down on the couch, and I sat down next to her.

"You wrote all that nice stuff about me?" I questioned, surprised.

"Yeah, and it was non-fiction," Jill replied.

"But...why? Why would you write such nice things about me when you hate me?"

"I don't hate you. Where did you get that idea?"

"The practical jokes, the deliberately ignoring me...that's why I wrote those mean things about you in my story."

"I think we need to do the traditional, boring, old-fashioned thing and talk," Jill said. "I wasn't playing those jokes on you because I hated you, I was playing them on you because you forgot how much fun we used to have together, and I thought that by playing some of the jokes that we used to make up on you, I would be able to remind you. And I only ignored you when I had a copy of TeenStar in front of my face, because of two reasons. Number one is that whenever I read that magazine I don't notice anything else that is happening around me, and number two is because that used to be our favorite magazine and I was hoping that you would see the cover, and remember how much fun we used to have reading it together," she explained.

"I was only being unfriendly to you because I thought that you were being unfriendly to me, when really you just wanted me to remember when we were friends?" I asked, trying to get it straight. I had totally been assuming wrong! Jill nodded.

"Yup, that's about it," she said.

"Jill, how could I ever forget how much fun we had together?" I asked. "I mean, I never forgot that at all, I thought that you had chosen to forget it. I thought that maybe since you were getting older you wouldn't want to hang out with me anymore, and you always having friends over didn't exactly prove to me that my assumption was wrong."

"Not want to hang out with you anymore? Never. The reason I always had friends over when you came over was because I had told them all about you and they wanted to meet you."

"Okay, I think that the next time we have something to talk about, we should just tell the other person that, and sit down and chat, like we are now. It's way too confusing if we try to use creative ways to tell each other something," I suggested.

"Sounds like a plan," agreed Jill.

"Best friends forever?"

"Best friends forever," Jill repeated. I glanced over at my mom and my aunt, who were both watching us with huge grins on their faces.

"What do you keep smiling at us for?" Jill asked the exact same thing I was about to ask.

"We are just so happy that you took our advice and did the old- fashioned, 'boring' thing and talked," my mom said.

"We told you that it would work," my aunt put in.

"Wait, you guys knew that Jill was trying to come up with a creative way of telling me that she missed the old days when we used to hang out all the time, and didn't bother to tell me when I took it the wrong way?" I asked.

"Maybe," was their reply.

"Why didn't you tell us?" questioned Jill.

"We wanted you two to figure it out for yourself. We knew that you two would eventually realize that you have a lot in common, and that you were bound to be friends forever," explained my aunt. I smiled, realizing that when you have sneakers and magazines in common, sometimes it means a lot more than you think it does.