It was still festive in the Quimbys' household when Howie decided to leave for the evening. He let himself out through the front door and came to a halt when he saw Ramona sitting on the porch. The hunched slope of her shoulders and the way she had wrapped her arms around her knees disquieted him.

"Hey," he said. "Are you okay?"

If anything, Ramona seemed to hunch down even further. She rubbed the sleeve of her shirt across her face like a young child, and he waited. He knew Ramona of old. It didn't take much encouragement for her to spill out all her emotions.

"It's just..." she started. "It's just that everything's changing. Things will never be the same again."

"Oh, Ramona," he said awkwardly.

She looked up at him, her eyes bright with unshed tears. "Beezus is getting married and moving away. And you're going away for college. So's Daisy. I'm going to be the only one still here!"

And left behind.

Howie knew better than anyone how much Ramona would hate being left behind. "Roberta's here," he said. "And Willa Jean."

It wasn't much comfort and he knew it. He made a silent grimace to himself. Ramona treated Willa Jean like she was another sister, but she was younger than Ramona and Howie, and it probably wasn't comforting to know that everyone she had grown up with was about to leave. He watched Ramona place one cheek on her knee and pity stirred in him. He slowly eased himself down on the porch step next to her.

"You won't even be here for Beezus's wedding," Ramona wailed. "Be-because you have to go on that stupid senior trip."

"Yeah," he said, wisely ignoring her insult. "It's too bad that Beezus couldn't move the wedding up a bit. The school council planned this senior trip half a year ago."

They both contemplated this gloomily. Beezus wanted a perfect June wedding, which meant that Howie and Daisy wouldn't even be around for it.

"I probably won't even see you when you get back," Ramona grumbled. "We talked about our road trip for forever, and now it won't even happen."

Now she was being melodramatic. Usually he might ignore her when she was like this, but she was right. Things were changing. Her Aunt Beatrice had come back to celebrate Beezus's engagement and soon, there would be the usual chaos associated with weddings, with Uncle Hobart also coming into town, along with Ramona's Grandpa Day - but he wouldn't be around for any of that. He would be off on the senior trip abroad, and poor Ramona would still be here for the rest of the summer. Although he didn't say it, he was glad he wouldn't be around for the fuss.

"You can always come visit me in college," he suggested. "It's not that far away." He would be attending college in southern California. A long drive or short flight away.

She seemed to perk up a bit at that. "Really?"

"Sure," he said. "There's Disneyland and Universal Studios, and whatever else you want to do there."

"And go on our road trip?" she asked, giving one last sniff.

"Sure," he said.

"Really, Howie? You think we could really do all that?" She sounded excited, and he glanced at her. Any moment now, and she would jump up and run inside to announce to everyone that she would be going to Hollywood. She would go crazy overboard with her plans. As usual.

What he really thought was that their road trip wasn't very likely. The chances were slim to none, was what his statistics/economics teacher liked to say. But if he said that now, the chances of getting bopped on the head were astoundingly high.

"Will...will you miss me, Howie?" she said, her tone going back to being a bit forlorn.

He didn't have to think about that at all. "Of course I'll miss you, Ramona," he said.

Ramona had been a part of his life ever since he could remember. He used to regard her as a sort of Willa Jean - loud, messy, annoying, and always making a fuss about something, except, of course, she was bigger, so she was capable of making a bigger fuss than Willa Jean. But somehow, they were still friends after all this time, and yet closer than mere friends. Cousins, sort of, because of Uncle Hobart and her Aunt Beatrice. He really couldn't imagine life without Ramona in it, probably because she had a way of making sure everyone around knew of her existence and opinions.

He had thought that their friendship would suffer a severe blow when she started dating Danny. To tell the truth, he had been a bit jealous - not that he wanted to date Ramona himself - but just that he felt he was being edged out as Ramona's best male friend. But when Danny's parents divorced and he moved away to live with his dad, that problem seemed to resolve itself, and Howie's life was back to the semi-calm that it had always been. He hated fuss as much as she hated being left out of things.

"We'll always be friends, Ramona," he promised.

But one thing he couldn't promise was that things weren't going to change.

They were changing, and they would never be the same again.