On Saturday, a 13-year-old girl’s place is in the mall.

Saturday. If you are 13, it means a shopping mall, a glittering material paradise to bound through, which is what Jenny Sullivan, Nicole Parsons and Acacia Robles are doing this morning at Lakewood Center Mall.

Their pace is incredible. With arms linked, they walk rapidly from store to store on legs that before the day is over will feel the burden of what surely will add up to miles.

Unencumbered by adults, they roam freely. They have the delicious feeling, so frequent at that age and so infrequent after it, that comes from knowing you don’t have to do anything.

“We look for boys, say hi to people we know and if we see a shop we like, we go in it,” Jenny said.

They enter one that sells records, tapes and posters. There are posters of Donald Duck, Michael Jordan and Madonna, but the girls fasten their attention only on those of Heavy Metal rock stars posed unsmiling with their guitars.

One of those groups is Guns ‘N Roses, but Acacia already owns their poster. Their songs, she says, include “Paradise City” and “Sweet Child o’ Mine.”

The song playing over the store loud speaker system is a late-’70s number by Fleetwood Mac--another era.

“Never heard of them,” Jenny said, “. . . but my dad probably has.”

Footwear Is Black and White

She wears a plaid shirt and red knee-length shorts. Nicole has on a decorated T-shirt and denim shorts, Acacia a plaid shirt and jeans. All wear black socks and white sneakers.

Jenny and Acacia are 13, Nicole is almost 13. They wish they were older.

“Sixteen,” Jenny said, “so I could drive.”

“Sixteen,” Acacia said, “so I could get a job and a car.”

Nicole’s answer is 19, but she gives no reason.

They look at the tapes lining the shelves, and notice two boys standing nearby.

“Ask them if they skate,” Nicole whispered to Jenny.

Jenny walks over to the boys, but the conversation is brief. The boys look at her without expression. They look older than 13.

The girls say there are not many cute boys at their school, Jefferson Junior High in Long Beach. And Acacia adds, “Most of them are really short.”

At Sweat & Surf, they search through a rack of T-shirts on pink hangers. They prefer the black ones with skulls on them for $12.95. R-i-i-i-i-p . Velcro wallets are opened, allowances extracted. Jenny and Nicole each buy a shirt and some skateboarding magazines.

At school, Jenny says, because she and Nicole are the only two girl skateboarders, she is sometimes known as a “Skater Chick.”

Acacia, who is not a skateboarder, wants to find a copy of Hit Parader, a rock music magazine, so they go next to a bookstore.

“They’re boring,” Jenny says of bookstores. “I’ll wait outside.”

“They’re interesting,” says Nicole.

Lunch is eaten at Burger King, where they ponder what is important to them.

“I don’t have an important thing in my life . . . food, I guess,” Acacia said, looking at the hamburgers and French fries on the table in front of her.

“Probably making good friends,” Nicole offered.

“That’s corny,” Jenny said.

Jenny and Acacia throw french fries at each other.

The video game arcade is supposed to be the best place to meet boys, so they go there after lunch.

“I’ve got about three bucks left,” Acacia said.

The arcade is full of boys, but they have eyes only for the animated screens of the pulsing, beeping machines they are playing. The three girls leave quickly and go on to a department store where they buy a shopping bag for a quarter.

The carefree day continues.

“There’s nothing hard or anything,” Acacia says of life as she and her friends look at their reflections in the ceiling of an elevator.

But Jenny complains, “They (adults) treat us like we’re stupid or something.”

Because Acacia is the only one of the three who wears makeup, the others kid her as she goes into a drug store to look for some. Instead, she buys a small mirror.

Feet Start to Hurt

They walk outside and cross a street to see what is playing at a theater and how much it costs to get in. They decide against a movie. It is now past 3.

“This gets boring after a while,” Nicole said.

“Your feet start to hurt,” Acacia complained.

But back to the mall they go. They pass a merry-go-round that they are glad they have outgrown. They walk through patches of sun beneath a series of skylights, past juice bars, cookie and pretzel stands and the Steer Broiler.

They sit for a moment, resting like the grown-ups that surround them.

“OK, now it’s somebody else’s turn to choose,” Acacia said.

“Let’s walk,” Jenny decides.

They go back, slower now, to Sweat & Surf. Or is it Pacific Sunrise? There are no boys to meet, only more shirts and posters to buy, and so they do.

“I don’t have any money left,” Acacia said, signifying, along with weary legs, that this Saturday is about over.