Fia stood outside the classroom with her arms crossed. She huffed at every student passing by who dared look at her during her punishment.

   Eight minutes ago.

   "I don't want to," she futilely told her classmates.

   The class rampaged.

   Mr. Stirling could hardly get his class to settle. He didn't want to hear the story badly enough to make his class chaotic. Before he could take back his class, a boy who'd been kind of close to Alfonso spoke first when Fia refused again.

   "Alfonso's red string appeared earlier this year, sir and—"

   "Shut up!" Fia shouted, ready to pounce with her tightly wound fists.

   "Enough!" He commanded, bringing the class to a halt, a stillness that the children had never found themselves trapped in. "If Miss Östberg wishes to keep silent, everyone will respect that wish. As a way to make amends to your classmate, each one of you will write a one-page apology. And Miss Östberg, you are aware, I told you not to say that, didn't I?"

   Fia furrowed her brow before responding, "I was only defending myself, Mr. Stirling."

   "There are better ways to go about it. Why don't you spend this time to learn them."

   Mr. Stirling rummaged through a file of workbooks and pulled out one entitled, "Curbing Curses". He handed it to Fia with a smile.

   "You can work on this while the rest write their letter."

   She accepted the workbook and flipped through it on her way back to her desk. Her face grimacing little by little the longer she read when finally, she dropped her pencil angrily to the floor.

   "Why am I being punished!" She demanded from Mr. Stirling. "I'm the one they were messing with!"

   A lot of talking and explaining happened before Mr. Stirling finally called it quits and sent her out to the hallway to spend the rest of class. He tried to get her to think about why she was wrong, to make her understand that he wasn't punishing her before even if he was now. However, Fia couldn't wrap her head around it and continued to be crossed the entire 15 minutes she spent outside before the bell rang for a quick recess.

   Being seven was completely different from being six, and Fia could feel the big difference right from day 1.

   "Hi!" Bri waved over at her. "Where's Beth and Indy?"

   The two girls mentioned came out from their class, briefing Bri with the exact details of the morning, enough to eat up half the time.

   "I'm gonna get a snack from the vending machine," Fia told them, running off as she did to burn some of her anger away.

   "I think, we should stop talking about Alfonso," Bri said.

   "I'm just dying to know what happened to him," Beth said back.

   "I think Bri is right, Beth. We should stop bringing it up."

   Beth defeatedly agreed, "Fine. You guys are right."

   However, the second month into school, Alfonso returned, looking healthier than he'd ever been. He easily became the popular boy whose red string appeared but without a girl on the other end, at least nowhere to be seen. The girls all knew he would be taken one day, and approached him.

   He became their confidant. Beth was one of them.

   "You doing good," Louis told him. 

   He was at least thankfully in a different class from Fia.

   "Yeah," he responded. "I'm just glad that my red string is still connected to someone. I kept having nightmares about being alone. In the news, they talk about the people who die alone, and I just kept wondering if that was going to be me."

   "People can die alone?" Bri asked them.

   "Oh yeah," Alfonso nodded vigorously.

   "I didn't know that was possible," Louis added.

   In truth, the kids hadn't been aware of life outside their circle which they believed to already have been big, but Alfonso was introduced to a whole new world when his red string appeared. It had been the same for Amber and Tobias.

   They realized that there were more people than they thought.

   "Lyall has never seen alone people before, and he's been everywhere."

   "Can't people be alone sometimes?"

   "Yeah, but not all the time."

   "What is all the time?"

   Alfonso thought deeply about his answer and said, "I think it means all," he elongated his words, "the time."

   "All the time!" Bri copied him. "Then... that means Uncle Olly is alone?"

   "Your Uncle Oliver?" Louis asked.

   She nodded in confirmation.

   "I didn't know your uncle wasn't married," Alfonso said.

   "I don't know for sure, but he's home all the time," Bri said, elongating her words at the end again.

   "Doesn't that mean he's alone?" Louis asked Alfonso.

   "It could be," Arian answered them as he'd been listening in. "Or not. Maybe they're just living far from each other, like your parents, Louis."

   "Oh yeah!" Louis laughed.

   Bri sighed with relief. She wouldn't know what to do if he really was alone. Now that she knew there could be a possibility though, she made a mental note to later ask about his red string.

   However, no matter how many times she did ask, he'd throw her for a loop until she forgot. It happened many times until hers broke at fifteen, but that wouldn't be a conversation they'd have now.

   For now, Bri chased after the mystery that was her uncle with the girls. She told exactly what the boys had told her in class.

   "Don't you talk to the other girls?" Beth asked when the topic of Uncle Oliver was over with.

   "Uhhh," Bri looked to Indy and Fia. "I do. Whenever they ask for Alfonso, they as me!"

   "Other than that, Bri," Indy said.

   "Isn't that girl with glasses in that class?" Beth questioned.

   "No, she's in the other class. What about the girl with the really long hair, I think her name was Kiki."

   "Kiki moved," Bri told them. "In the summer, she said goodbye."

   "Oh yeah," the other girls said together.

   Bri wasn't talkative. She mostly relied on the other person to fill the gaps or incite her to talk more.

   "Try to get along with them more, Bri."

   So, Bri did just that.

   She tried not to stick around Louis and Arian and attached herself to Alfonso, who had girls flocking all over him.

   As Alfonso grew in popularity, Bri became his right hand. The girls would talk to Bri like she was collateral until they talked to her just to talk to her.

   "So, Hilde said she's been to her mom's motherland. She says, over there, there's a lot of happy couples and never saw a lonely person. Do you think they lie on the news?" Bri brought it up one day during a study date with the girls.

   "Maybe," Beth answered.

   She'd never been outside of the state before, not that she ever thought of traveling.

   "Does she go there often?" Indy inquired.

   "Once a year."

   "That's so cool," Fia said. "I wish I could travel the world.

   "Not me," Indy got up to get a snack, "I'm okay where I am."

   "But what if your soulmate is across the world?" Beth asked.

   "Then, I guess, we'll never meet."

   Fia gasped followed by Beth.

   "Come to the dark side!" Fia cheered.

   "Stop it, you guys!" Beth scolded.

   "I can't imagine having to look for him all over the world..." Bri started to say, "What if that's what happened to Uncle Olly? She's out there, but they can't meet?"

   Beth gasped again and said, "Say it ain't so, Bri! What if one of us ends up like that? I can't imagine it. I won't."

   Beth stopped thinking entirely and was unable to continue studying anymore.

   "I've gotta go home," she soon said.

   "Same, let's go together."

   Fia stayed behind to talk longer with Bri.

   "You know Bri, your uncle seems okay, you know. He's not as lonely as you might think."

   Bri turned her body to look up the stairs.

   "Maybe..."

   The school days were normal for the most part after that. Holidays passed with Fia's eighth birthday without much ado. Spring came and so did Bri's birthday. Since getting close to Alfonso, her birthday became a little more decorated than before.

   "It'll be helpful for her, Mrs. Richard. Girls like a little more for their birthday."

   Phoebe laughed, "Alright, Alfie. I'll decorate it a bit more."

   Then it was Joanna's turn to throw a big birthday followed by Beth, then Indy's. 

   However, Mona led Indy's party differently than she had before. She kept whispering to parents and pulling them aside especially her girlfriends Lina, Phoebe, and Greta.

   There was even a long wait for the cake that was double its usual size and a speech that had never been more than a few words congratulating Indy. Except, it was a little longer this time.

   "We would like to thank you, our longtime friends for always coming to Indigo's birthday. We've appreciated your presence every year as well as attending your children's important birthdays." Mona wrapped her arms around Indy. "This will be Indy's last birthday here for a while- Frank has been asked to travel for two years."

   Indy's stomach dropped. She looked up at her mom who hadn't talked to her about it at all, not once during summer or during spring break. The hand on her shoulder grew heavy as she thought about how life would be without her friends, how the red string would feel.

   Her eyes grew wide at the thought.

   'What if she meets him, the one connected with her since they were five?'

   She felt a tug on her pinky. It felt heavier too.

   Her lips were dry and her hands grew shaky the more she thought about the what-ifs that could happen with their move.

   She didn't notice Bri and Beth crying beside her or when Fia gave her a long hug.

   "We're going to really really really miss you, Indy!"