July 30

Later that evening, just after I wrote that, Amberly invited me to dinner with her. I was actually surprised. I was tempted to ask if Kay was coming too, but then remembered Kay was practicing at the course with Amanda and Faris. So, over veggie burgers, we had ourselves a little chat. Amberly told me she was from a town called Moonlight Falls, she attends the School of Peace and Love, she used to compete in show jumping, and work at a stable. Her grandparents had come from China and neither of her parents ride. She's an only child. "You have how many brothers and sisters?" she marveled for about the third time. "I have two brothers and two sisters," I repeated. "I wish I had a sister." Ha, I thought. She'd think twice if she came to my house. We talked about art, painting, my grandma being a famous artist, animal portraits, basically whatever. We stayed there for nearly two and a half hours. "You're not trying out for the national team?" I asked Amberly. She laughed. "Oh no! Not in show jumping, I fell off my horse and got injured!" "That sucks." "Good for Kayleigh though, I'm sure she'll make it, with her skill set." "I love where we live now, but we used to have this place by the lake in Sunset Valley," I told her, "I used to love going over there and collecting butterflies and insects and whatever --" "You sound like my friend Paige," Amberly said, "she used to lead nature walks at the school I went to. You'd never look at a tree or plant the same after spending any amount of time with her." After dinner, I went outside with my tablet (Mom had given each of us one) and uploaded some pix to my Simbook page, checked my email, wrote a couple emails to some of my Simbook friends, and emailed a couple to Sierra. The last email I had gotten from her was, she hated me and she hated AJ and she hated my mom and my dad and she was planning to run away. Thing is, I know none of this is true. She's angry at something, I just don't quite know what it is. I just want to figure out what I can do to help her.