Susie Likes Purple, Chapter One

So...I'm having a hard time with my Lance story. I'm about twenty pages through, but I'm not doing so hot on it. And I deleted the chapter two that you guys read, changed the last half of the first chapter, and added a prologue. It would just be a pain for y'all to figure it out.


I'm also working on another story (that's actually plotted), and this is it. There's a prologue that introduces the whole Susie thing, his love of art, and the cat, Spruce. I haven't quite figure out how I want to do the prologue, so I'll introduce that later when it becomes important for you to understand the story. Here it is:

It was time.

            I rolled past the guards, stealthy as a shadow. The smell of freshly mowed grass invaded my nostrils as I invaded the mansion’s premises. I crouched low, waiting for the last guard to disappear behind the hedges.

            When he finally did disappear, I leapt up and ran towards the mansion. It was a tall building. From my angle, it blocked off the crescent moon. I hid behind a rose bush and pulled out a remote control.

            “Okay, kitty,” I said, “your turn.”

            I pressed the joystick on the remote forward. Spruce pushed through the gate, completely at my control. I moved him through all the difficult areas, places I couldn’t get through without setting off an alarm.

            I set my teeth into a clench as the going got difficult. I knew that there were some motion sensors ahead. I wasn’t sure what would happen if Spruce set off one of the motion sensors, but I wasn’t keen on finding out.

            A small screen lit my remote control, showing me everything that Spruce, my cat, could see. I turned his head to the right to look at the only motion sensor I could pick out from this distance. It was a black object sticking out of the ground. It looked almost like a sprinkler head, but it had a small, glass window on it that glowed. A light to pick out stealthy intruders.

            “Careful now,” I said. I wasn’t sure if I was talking to Spruce or myself. I decreased the speed of Spruce, thinking through the obstacles ahead.

            First there was getting Spruce into the castle-like mansion. That was the easiest part. Once he was in there, I could press the big, red button on the remote control. That would lead to the death of Spruce, and the death of all wireless connections. At a high tech place like the mansion, that knocked out most of the defenses. I would then sneak into the mansion, creep up some stairs, and steal a bunch of stuff.

            Spruce barely made it past the motion sensor. I saw a red light go off on in it, but, other than that, nothing happened. I breathed an uneasy sigh of relief, and pressed the joystick forward, hard. Spruce lurched forward.

            The guards came around the mansion again. I did my best to put Spruce into a hiding place, but it was no use. The guards were well-trained, and they saw the cat swaying on the lawn.

            “Look at him,” a tall, burly guard said. “He looks drunk.”

            “Yeah,” the other said wistfully. “My daughter has been wanting a cat for some time.” He stooped down to look for a tag while the other guard searched the lawn suspiciously. I crouched lower and covered the screen on my remote control with my right hand.

            “No tag,” announced the smaller guard. “I’m going to take him in. When my shift is over, he’s my daughter’s.”

            I caught the other guard saying something about a ‘pansy,’ but I didn’t focus on him for long. The pansy guard was taking Spruce inside! That made my plan so much more simple--except for the fact that the other guard hadn’t been fooled so easily. He stepped towards me, and for a brief moment, I thought he was coming for me. He stopped after walking only a few yards, shrugged, put something in the grass, and continued patrolling the area.

            I pressed the big, red button on the remote. The screen on my remote control died, but the audio system was still functioning. I heard the guard give a muffled cry when Spruce went limp in his arms. I felt a very, very brief pang of remorse. When it was over a nano-second later, I crept forward, still using rose bushes for cover.

            The burly guard doubled back suddenly. I ducked to hide behind some bushes, but the one I had been running to was still a few yards away. I fell to the ground instead, panting in the smell of warm grass.

            The guard turned his head in my direction. From his expression, I could tell he had heard something. That something was me.

            He pulled a taser from his belt and walked towards me. His eyes were not focused directly on me, so I knew he didn’t know my exact location. Flashing a light in my direction, he began to run.

            He spotted my exact location when I stood.

            I leapt toward him, flinging the remote control ahead of me. The remote smashed into his wrist. He didn’t even cry out, and he gripped the taser firmly in his right hand, aiming it at my neck. The taser dart is effective pretty much no matter where it hits, but the neck is particularly painful.

            I stopped mid-lunge.

            “Hello, Adam,” he said. “I thought it might be you.”

            Crap. He recognized me.

            “I just came to catch my cat,” I lied. “He got away, you see.”

            I took a small step forward with my left foot, getting into ready position. I hoped he didn’t notice--his eyes were focused on my face.

            “I don’t think so,” he said. “I’ve seen you pass this place more frequently than usual for the past week. Your father is a rascal, and I figured he would send you to do his dirty work soon enough.”

            “I’m not doing anyone’s dirty work,” I said coolly. “I’m getting my cat.”

            “Right, and that’s why you threw the remote at my face. Why do you have a remote, anyway?”

            I closed my eyes and counted to ten. “I threw the remote because you scared me. I thought you were going to taze me before I had explained. And I have a remote because--oh, there’s Spruce.”

            The guard turned slightly to look. I lashed out at his face, full force. My foot impacted with his nose, and he he fell back. I leapt up and used the side of my fist to smack him in the temple. His eyes rolled back. A neat, easy job, but it didn’t leave me much time.

            I dragged him behind a bush, ripped off part of my shirt, and used that strip of cloth to tie his arms behind his back. I also stuffed one of my socks into his mouth. It would have to do. I put my shoe back on and walked up to the mansion. The only person I had left to worry about was the second, ‘pansy’ guard. I wasn’t too worried about him.

            I opened the front door (conveniently unlocked by Mr. Pansy) and strolled in confidently. I was high on success.

            Looking around briefly, I didn’t see much to worry about. The kitchen light was on, but, other than that, the house was dark and apparently empty. I began to fell uneasy again. Where was Mr. Pansy?

            I snuck up the stairs, careful not to make a sound. Now that I was uneasy, my bloated ego was beginning to shrink into a corner. A stair creaked.

            I stopped.

            The stair was below me. I slowly turned around to face--nobody. Nobody was there. Maybe I had squeaked the stair after all.

            I continued up the flight of stairs--very nice stairs, too. They were red mahogany, although they looked almost black in the night time.

            The hallway upstairs was even more fancy than the stairway. Although I couldn’t see much, a window let some moonlight through. The moonlight illuminated rows of beautiful paintings. I would have stolen one, but I was here for something completely different.

            I opened a door to the right. It matched the description my father had given me. The room was sparsely decorated, but what decorations it had must have cost a lot. There was a pure gold hippo statue on an oak desk. There was an ivory chess set. There was even a sleek laptop on the desk; that’s what I had come for.

            I took my backpack off and threw the laptop in. On a whim, I also threw in the hippo and the chess set. When I tried to stand, the hippo weighed too much, and I had to take it back out. Pity.

            Just before I left the room, I caught sight of a small necklace. It was silver and had a blue gem in the center, and I wasn’t sure if it was worth anything, but I shrugged and took it anyway.

            I closed the door softly behind me and walked down the stairs. When I reached the bottom, something seemed wrong. I cast my eyes around, looking for the source of the problem, but I couldn’t see a thing in the blackness.

            In the blackness. I shuddered and whipped around just in time to see someone leap out at me. I cried out, but could do nothing in my surprise. A felt a sudden pain in my neck. In a millisecond, the fight was over.

            Totally not fair.

            I woke up in a small, brightly lit space. I leapt up, fell down, and clutched my head. My brain throbbed, and my vision was blurry.
            “Awake, huh?” someone outside my cell said.

            “Awake?” I said. “When did I fall asleep?”

            I heard a jangling of keys. There was a loud click, and the door to my cell swung open, revealing a portly policeman.

            “You’re awfully young for such a difficult job,” he said, grabbing me by the arms. He handcuffed me. “How old are you?”

            “Sixteen,” I said.

            He whistled. “You’re a pretty good thief for one so young. Your father put you up to it?”

            I was dragged into a cramped office. The smell of stale coffee and a half-eaten tomato sandwhich wafted into my nostrils. It was a shock after the clean, crisp smells of Mr. Gregorson’s property.

            “Well?” the policeman said again.

            “No,” I said.

            “You wouldn’t do something stupid like that by yourself, would you?” the policeman asked. He hung up a jacket and yawned. “After all, Mr. Gregorson is the richest man in the United States.”

            “I thought of it myself,” I said. “And I would have succeeded, too, if the guards hadn’t butted in.”

            The policeman laughed. “Well,” he said, “let’s have a talk. Sit down, Adam.”

            I sat across from him, looking around cautiously.

            “Tell me from the beginning,” he said. “Tell me how you got so skilled, and why your father sent you in.”

            “My--father--did--not--send--me. It was my idea.”

            The policeman looked suddenly weary. He took a bite of tomato sandwich. “Alright, Adam,” he said. “Have it your way. But until you speak up, we’ll keep you locked in that cell.”

           

           

           

           

I'm going somewhere with this, I promise.

Someone had innocently left a dish towel by the stove, and somebody else had innocently left the stove on. Fire, a naturally curious element, prodded the towel to see what would happen, and then crawled up its stained pattern and onto a nearby curtain. It crept across the window until it had burned through the material and fell on the living room's soft beige carpet.

James was downstairs, sleeping. His bedroom had been painted three months earlier a baby blue that was much less somber looking in the catalogue. He was seven years old, and an only child.

His father was upstairs, having just succumbed to exhaustion from insomnia. His wife had left him two and a half years ago. These nights with James were all he had left. He lay dreaming of the court case, and his wife's final words in her testimony kept echoing through his ears - You're irresponsible, Gordon.

The fire alarms broke last week.

The stairs were a loose, light carpet.

Gordon awoke when the smoke began to strangle his dreams and he snapped awake. His thoughts began to collect themselves, starting with: smoke. Smoke means heat. Heat and smoke mean fire. Fire means... Gordon threw off his sheets and sprinted out of his room. He could barely see.

James woke to the growing purrs of flame, and the creak of the load bearing post. Lights danced past his ajar door. He stood up and almost objectively noticed his own adrenaline set in. His room had no windows.

Hideous orange encased the stairway, but it wasn't made long, it was steep for the small house. Gordon jumped down. Fortuitously, the basement ground was concrete and cool. He grabbed his son from his doorway and held him tightly. They turned to the staircase. A slabe of roof above them nearly collided and succeded in knocking the man's glasses off. Gordon knelt and prayed.

The Winter Moon (revised beginning)

After last week's meeting, I gave some serious thinking to making a total overhaul of the beginning of my book. I've known for a while that my old beginning was bland and cold, and after last week's comments, I decided that it was time to scrap it and start the beginning over again. What was the first two paragraphs became over 4 pages of long-hand. I hope you guys like this new beginning as much as I do.

It had happened again last night. He had been studying a new text, and thought it might hold the cure. The only thing it held though was a fresh round of anger, flames, and grief.

He sat with slumped shoulders in front of the keyboard, his hands gracefully grazing the ivory and ebony keys. The music was the only sound that broke through the silence around him.

The tables had recently held many scattered, yet organized open books of various shapes and sizes. Now they laid overturned and their books thrown across the room in disarray. Many of them were charred along the edges.

The man was not paying attention to the melody he was playing. His ebony hair hung in his dark blue eyes, and behind those eyes lay a dissonance of emotion. He suddenly slammed his hands against the keys and stood, taking deep, dramatic sighs. He stared at the wreckage around him; and it was all his fault. It reaffirmed the choice he made years ago to isolate himself in this cave, away from the rest of the world where the only person he could hurt was himself.

The man was conflicted with frustration, hopelessness, and loneliness. Why couldn't he find a cure? Why, even though he always tried and tried, couldn't he figure out how to control it? What was the point, anyway? So he could go to people who already hated him and would never accept him?

He knew the reason. It was the pointless hope that, maybe, just maybe, if he could control his problem, perhaps someone, just one even, could bring him out of the dark loneliness that consumed him. He had been alone for so long. All he wanted was someone that would love him. A friend that would care for him when the rest of the world despised him. But no one could care for him in his current condition.

His breathing had fallen to calm waves compared to the tsunami it had been before. He looked around and began to reassemble the room, setting the tables and chairs back on their feet and fixing the books back to their places on the tables and shelves. He disposed of the burned parchment that littered the floor as well.

Following this, he walked out of the grotto and through the familiar tunnels leading to the outside. He stepped out into the night air, which granted a thrill of cold air into his lungs. The chill attacked his face, invigorating his senses. He looked up into the starry sky, which was so clear and magnificent that it allowed one to see every star and galaxy.

The moon was best of all. It was large and clear, the color of milk. It would soon be full. He had read of how the moon offered its own kind of celestial magic, and that it was the most potent on the solstice.

As his eyes scanned the sky, his eyes landed on the brightest star in the sky. The man had studied astrology and could name every star in the heavens. As a child, his mother would tell him that a wish made on the brightest star would result in miracles. Although the man new better, that miracles only existed for some, he wished anyways. He wished for love. He wished to the thing all human beings wish for, deep down inside. For he truly was, deep down inside, just as human as you or I.

A world away I sat beside my window, looking up into the same sky. I sat on the end of my bed, a blanket wrapped around my shoulders and my guitar sitting in my lap. I was endeavoring to write a new song, but there was no inspiration inside of me. I tucked a lock of red curly hair behind my ear and began to play around with a few chords.

I was stuck. I found no voice inside of me that gave me words to write. I found nothing around me to write about. I found myself not only unable to find words, but unable to get out of the slump of life I was in.

A knock at my door preceded my mother's entrance to my room. Her short brown hair was wet from a fresh shower, and lay untidily against her head. "Hey hon, I was just checking in to say good night." she said pleasantly.

"Alright, I'll get to bed soon." I told her.

"Are you working on a new song?" she asked.

"Trying to," I replied with a grimace.

"Can I help?"

"I don't think so. I can't find a muse tonight." I explained.

"Why not?"

"I just can't find anything... interesting in my life to write about!" I exclaimed.

She stood quietly for a moment, and then said, "Scoot over," I did so to make room for her on the bed beside me. Her hazel eyes matched to my own blue-grey ones. "What do you think is not interesting about your life?"

I pondered for a moment, and then said, "Everything! I get up, I got to school, I come home, do homework, help with dinner, make sure the twins get their work done, go to bed, and then start the whole, boring cycle over again! Its a plain, repetitive lifestyle that is nothing to stand out in the world!" I paused for a moment, noting the quiet interest expressed on her face. "I think its honestly so dull that that I'm ready to go bonkers!" My mother's face broke out into a smile followed by laughter.

"Mom, I don't think its very funny." I put in, though I found it hard not to laugh along with my mom.

"Okay, okay, I see your point," she said. She slid closer to me and put her arm around my shoulders, and held my hand with her free one. "Marina, sweetheart, I think you're taking so much for granted," she began.

"But that's just it, Mom, I'm not. I love my life. I love my family, my friends, I get along with people, and school's not a problem, it's just the whole, boring cycle of it. I want something to stand out, for something to mean something. I don't want to get trapped in the 'same-old, same-old'." I explained.

My mom thought silently for moment. "I see what you mean, Marina. But sweetheart, it's the everyday things that matter most. It's the love you share with others that means something. Someday you'll see that. I know you will."

I was skeptical at her statement, but I nodded my consent.

"In the meanwhile," she continued, "You'd better be getting to bed. School and the usual tomorrow, right?" She winked.

I nodded with a roll of my eyes and proceeded to place my guitar back into its place in the corner. I kissed my mother goodnight and slipped underneath the covers.

My thoughts ran over the conversation with my mother. Love? I was at a loss where romance was involved, but maybe the love she meant was something more than romance. The love I gave to my family and friends was easy, natural even. But the kind of love that lasted forever? That was hard. I had seen people try to imitate that kind of love with romance. All it was though was infatuation. No, the kind of love I believed to be true love was the give and take, the sacrifice and respect I saw everyday between my parents. Now that was true love. A love that was based on the hardships, triumphs, and joys of life lived together. When I saw my parents look deeply into each other's eyes, I knew that love grew with age, and that life was worth living if you had someone by your side.

Maybe that was the answer to my boring life that seemed meaningless. But I felt that love was far away for me. At 17, who really knows love? Especially when you haven't truly lived it. So I settled on the love I could offer my friends and family.

As I laid in bed, pondering, I continued to look up at the night sky. My eyes landed on a particularly bright star and inwardly recited, "Starlight, star bright, first star I see tonight, I wish I may, I wish I might, I wish the wish I wish tonight." Breaking out of the poetic rhythm, I thought of my wish. I wished for that kind of love I saw between my parents. The kind of love that made life meaningful. I wished for that kind of love to be mine. Someday, I hoped.

I just didn't know how soon that someday would be.

My Death, 5

It wasn’t the worst way to travel. First off, one of the dogs—Robin thought it was the same tall, willowy one—bent down to allow her to climb aboard. A few of the beast snapped at her in the process, but a cool glare from the hardly-a-spirit-at-all boy quickly stilled them. Second off, the creatures traveled much faster than the horse, as she saw earlier. Third off—and Robin’s personal favorite—was that the boy wasn’t riding behind her, with his arms…
In only a few minutes they reached their destination. Honestly, when she heard the boy say “home,” she thought he meant her home. Apparently not.
The castle was as gray and dull as the dusty land around it. It was wedged between two mountains, part of what Robin was now sure were the Sierra Mountains. The creatures slowed their pace and padded through the castle’s wide gate with ease. They entered a court yard, where Robin’s mount crouched down so she could slide down its waxy fur. The other beasts eyed her with greed, but only licked their chops in her direction. The fear of their master’s wrath must outweigh hunger, Robin thought.
Still, she was eager to put distance between her and her escorts. She scanned the walls around her, looking for an exit. The gates, without her noticing, had shut behind them. Leaving the castle would be pointless anyway, since the boy could just as easily send his dogs after her as he did the first time. Of course, he didn’t use his knife-stick like he had on the man. And he had been so surprised to see her. Robin had considered him one of those people who are never surprised, merely disappointed.
Ah, she found the way out. It was a staircase—wood, apparently—that lead from the court yard up to the second level of the castle. There was a balcony overlooking the yard. Robin wondered if it lead to the rest of the castle.
When she touched the stairs, she knew they couldn’t be wood. They felt like some light-weight, smooth stone. After running her hand up the banister, she discovered it was also covered in a light layer of dust. It was one of the stairs that looked like it should have creaked. She jumped after the first step; it didn’t make a sound. All the fear that she should have felt on the horse caught up with her and hammered in her heart. She ascended the rest of the stairs with great courage.
From the balcony, she saw every red eye of the massive dogs watching her. They followed her as she walked along the balcony to the only door she could see. Did a few of them whimper? One appealed to her by scratching at the wall below her. Don’t go, their eyes said. They seemed so lonely—even monster dogs want to be played with, Robin thought.
Now she reached the doorway. There was no door, just an arch that was totally black beyond. Robin stepped in. A dog barked behind her.
It was very dim inside. The floors were grey stone, as were the walls. The ceiling was very low and made Robin feel as if she were in a box. There were two empty windows looking into the courtyard, whose long velvet red drapes were drawn aside to show the red hazy sky outside. Without a sun (or moon—Robin briefly wondered about the time of day), the sky didn’t give much light. Posted on either side of each window and around the room like sentry guards on a constant vigil were gold candlesticks burning with dim yellow flames. Robin was struck with an epiphany. She checked each position of the white candles. If they were outlining a six-pointed star, she hoped… They weren’t. Not for the first time, Robin reflected on how she would get home, back to her Side.
By now her eyes adjusted to the gloom. She discovered the room was like a furnished entry way. Something about it reminded her of her front door at home, the one she and Tom never use. Robin didn’t know why, because there was nothing similar between the two places at all. This room was old-fashioned and extremely ornate compared to Tom’s simple, ugly, practical standards.
Childish with curiosity, Robin crept on tip-toe to a red velvet chaise longue opposite a matching red armchair that looked so cushy; Robin thought it could swallow her up if she dared sit in it. Between those was an ebony table on which laid a white and black marble chess board. The pieces appeared to be the standard shape, but as Robin snuck closer, they became far more detailed. There were curls coming off the ends of the crosses on the kings that looked so perfect and tiny, they had to be impossible to carve. The rooks had tiny cannons and soldiers in their towers and vines creeping up their brickwork. Robin thought the most beautiful, however, were the knights. She could see the veins in the horses’ heads and individual hairs in their manes.
The game looked half played; the way the white queen was toppled over seemed very recent, as if it had just stopped rocking. Robin knew next to nothing about chess, but it looked like the Whites were winning. The Blacks had almost no pieces left on the board, except for one knight, the rooks, and one pawn. Just as she noticed the pawn, the room changed.
The furniture did not move and the game did not change. The whole room remained conspiratorially silent. It was as if a sign were posted, Reserved. She couldn’t explain it to herself, except to say there was a particular the way the chairs faced each other, the angle of the game on the table, the texture of the white fur rug (Robin looked at its size and thought of the dogs outside. She decidedly averted her eyes). There was a meaning she couldn’t put her finger on.
Then Robin felt guilt sprout in her throat. She was an intruder on the intimacy of this room. No wind came from the open windows, but Robin felt an icy draft. She stubbornly grit her teeth to keep them from shaking. This room had personality and it didn’t like her. She rather felt she didn’t like it either. Gladly, she discovered an ebony door in the farthest corner and escaped.

She expecting a hallway, but stumbled into an adjacent room. This one instantly felt better by its sheer normality. It seemed so comfortable that it inspired Robin to lean against the wall. It was a bedroom for two. Robin didn’t know Spirits slept. Speaking of which, she hadn’t realized how tired she was until she found herself slinking down the wall to the floor. The beds were positioned against the wall in perfect symmetry. Unlike the first room, this one had all the personality of a hotel. In fact, the more she explored the room with her quickly drooping eyes, she almost believed she was in a hotel: some creepy resort for visitors to the Other Side. She noticed silly little things in the way you might see images in the clouds if you stare long enough.
There wasn’t a wrinkle in the bedspread. Oh, there wasn’t a bedspread at all. Or sheets. Or pillows. These were weird beds. Sometime after staring at them in a sort of open-eyed doze, Robin realized they were covered in the same white fur as the rug. Other than that, there wasn’t much else. One wardrobe loomed over the beds from across the room. It looked empty, even from the outside. With a yawn, Robin noticed there were no mirrors, just a night stand between the two beds and a single candle burnt to a nub.
Her were shut only a moment when a violent chill jolted her awake. She sat upright, rubbing her arms and blowing on her hands. Her backside tingled. She stood up, stiff and numb. She looked around again. The breeze couldn’t have come from any windows, unless there were some behind that drapery on the opposite wall. The bedroom suddenly seemed just as bad as the front room, only this was too inviting. The beds were silently calling to her in twin voices. To her relieved surprise, she spied another door tucked away in the far corner. She hadn’t seen it before because it was hidden by the empty wardrobe. With a hasty limp, she crossed the room, passed the two beds that she resolved to not look at. Robin was only too happy to find the third room.
The warmth shocked her after the intense cold of the bedroom. Robin wished she had something to tie her thick brown hair back with; it was like a blanket over the back of her neck. Instead of heatless candles, there was a roaring hearth, with two chairs made for slouching. One looked similar to the armchair in the front room, the other was brand new and antique at once. Its legs were short, its back was tall and there were no armrests. The rest of the room was taken up by shelves. They were majorly filled with books, but Robin spied a few burning candles, pocket watches, hourglasses, sundials, scrolls, and one egg timer. After the first rooms, Robin was beginning to wish she would stop noticing things, but here we go.
The shelves extended far down into the room so that the light of the fireplace could not reach its end. Nor could it light the ceiling, which stretched with the books and other oddities upward into darkness. In fact, the shelves were so closely packed and the space so great that Robin didn’t feel like she was in a room at all, merely a vast forest of books. At the same time, her palms went clammy with claustrophobia. The confusion made her head swim and hew nose prickle, as it does whenever she get nauseous. Bleary-eyed, she sought something to cure it and found long red velvet drapes on either side of the hearth. “Windows!” she gasped and ran to fling them open. “Fresh air…”
They weren’t windows. They were books. Before her, inside a small alcove, set on something like music stands, were three closed books in a row. The way they rested on their stands told Robin something of their weight. The book furthest left was white and something in Robin thought it was very, well, pretty. And Robin being Robin, not many things did that. She guessed the cover was either mother-of-pearl or ivory or marble. Its size made Robin think it was the fattest encyclopedia ever written. It didn’t have a title, so she guessed she would never know.
Robin stared at herself in the middle book. By the tarnish around its edges, she guessed it was silver. Unlike its companions, this one was much slimmer and somehow less attractive. Its smooth surface perfectly reflected Robin’s frizzing hair, olive-skinned face, masculine jaw, scowling eyebrows, downward-pointing corner of her mouth, and extra fat reserve under her chin. With a short “humph,” she turned to the last book.
The farthest right was blacker than night, like the pupil of an eye. Robin wanted to think obsidian or black marble. Like the others, there was no title, but this didn’t need one. Robin, in her deep gut, knew exactly what was written in this book. She knew she would find what she was looking for.
She took a step forward. She laid two fingers on the cover and whipped them back. She stuffed them in her mouth—partly to sooth and partly to stop herself screaming—and sucked. The book was so cold, it burnt her fingers. She stared in the cover. Gordon’s face reflected back at her. He was in the book.
Robin, touching the cover as little as possible, tried to flip it open with a single quick finger. It was heavier than she thought, because it rose only an inch and shut again with a sound like stone striking wood. Robin couldn’t feel her fingers. A quick glace told her they were still there, but a riotous noise made her jump around. Out in the court yard, the dogs were braying.

My Death, 4

Around the cottonwood grove, second row, third column. Robin dumped out her pack. Thanatos tumbled out like a Pelican with both wings broken, followed by her lunch, six white candles, and a silver necklace. Robin propped Thanatos against a nearby tombstone, holding it open by bending its spine several times on the correct page. The candles marked the ends of a six-pointed star surrounding Gordon’s grave. Sprinkled sage in each flame and the silver about her neck kept opportunistic ghosts away. Robin left her shoes and socks around her neck while she prostrated herself over the grave. Upward facing, her hands folded over her chest like as were dead herself, she lay there a few moments, running the words through her head to be sure she had it correct. Then she spoke.
She expected it to take several tries, like it did last week. Her eyes were shut as she whispered. A frigid breeze swept over her, brushing leaves into her hair and over her face. It must have been very cold, because slowly Robin lost feeling in her toes. However, it couldn’t have been so cold as to render all her limbs also numb, but slowly, like yoke oozing from a broken egg, an absolute dead feeling crept up from her toes, over her shins, up her thighs… It was a horrible feeling. Robin waited in silent submission for the feeling to overcome her. She didn’t think of moving or breaking the spell. She felt as though she could do nothing but wait for the coldness to envelop her as an empty beach patiently waits for the moon to wash the tide over it. In minutes, she felt nothing. How long had it been? A strange dread, quite different from her confused fear of the numbness, crept in and Robin knew the spirit boy must have arrived.
She opened her eyes, fully expecting to see him standing over her, him and his dreadful horse staring at her like they were seeing, not looking. He wasn’t there. In fact, nothing was there. Where were the cottonwood trees? Where was the sun and clouds? In their place was a deep red haze covering the sky.
Robin sat up. She saw, but didn’t understanding. There weren’t leaves in her hair, but a powdery gray dust. It was all over her back, too. Robin stood up and tried to dust it off as she looked around her. There was nothing: hills only, and shadowy mountains in the distance. There were no trees, no grass. The cemetery was gone—all the headstones, the iron fence, the entire town was gone. There was no wind, sun, or shadow—no light source at all. However, everything was visible in a brownish-gray, lifeless sort of way.
Robin dug her bare toes in the gray dust that was everywhere—was everything. She was still on the hill where the grave had been. She noticed the memorized small slopes of the cemetery and recognized the peaks of the Sierra Mountains. Then it dawned on her: she had left without leaving at all.
Thanatos’s spell was for visiting the dead on the Other Side. Was she there, the Other Side? If that were the case, where were they, all the dead? There wasn’t a soul in sight, least of all her brother or the spirit boy. In fact, never before had Robin felt so totally, incurably alone. Her chest began to ache with a sob she couldn’t get out. But that wasn’t the worst.
There was an oppressive hush. Robin had never been in total silence before. The perfect lack of sound actually made her ears ache and stung her eyes. She cupped her hands to her ears to block out the silence. With stifled horror, she realized she couldn’t hear her own heartbeat. Madly, she rustled her hair into her ears to fill the absence, but it was like curing world hunger with a pea. Tears began to form in her eyes, either from pain or fear. Then a sound, the very manna from heaven, made her laugh with relief and turn around.
In this barren landscape, under the line of dim mountains, Robin could just barely, squinting her eyes and straining her ears, make out that something was coming towards her.
They were about ten in number, give or take a few. They were running in long strides, their forelegs grabbing at the gray dust and their hind legs lurching their great bodies forward. Their heaving chests were like wine caskets underneath nearly white fur. Everything else about them varied. Some had long, trailing ears, while others had tiny points on their heads, like horns. A few were as tall as horses, long and willowy like cheetahs. Fewer still were short and long, dashing like weasels between the legs of the others. Most, however, were at least as tall as Robin, built like small cars, and nearly crushing the smaller ones under their great spatula-like paws.
They had teeth. She couldn’t see the dagger-like fangs at this distance, but she didn’t need to; she just knew they were there. Robin might have imagined the blood-red tongues streaming out between panting jaws like victory banners—they definitely seemed the kind of creatures that lolled out their tongues.
Robin stood dumbfounded, relieved and confused at this strange sight that was, she just noticed, barreling straight toward her. Then one of the beasts, still sprinting with its ears flapping, raised its monstrous head and roared.
It sounded jubilant, ecstatic, and impatient. Several other monsters in the throng answered. Their voices varied from sharp barks to slow howls, but all carried the same savage, merry tone. Robin, too afraid to be relieved, heard her heart pounding against its cage. After the first roar, she turned tail and ran.
Her sneakers bounced against her heaving chest and her bare heels warred for speed in the dust that absorbed her every step. It was like running the Indiana 500 in the Sahara desert. Behind her the rolling thunder of dozens of paws pounding the dust increased as they neared. She heard the beasts’ panting behind her. She felt their steaming breath on her hair. She saw them, on either side, coming around in a circle. At that moment, she considered the fate of a wounded elk. She tripped.
Before she could even think about pulling herself out of the deep dust, great maws from behind clamped entirely around her middle and snatched her from the ground. A beast held her nine feet aloft. This monster was far taller and thinner than its companions and kept Robin well out of reach of the snapping jaws and plaintive barks below her. Her captor reveled in the attention and paraded her around, bounding back and forth as the others tried in vain to claim her for themselves.
The pain was intense. The brute wasn’t really biting hard, but his constant bounding jostled Robin in his teeth. Each tooth burned her stomach. Oddly, she thought of the first time she used the iron and dropped it on her foot…
It was only for a few moments, as Robin—never crying out—grunted painfully. Then, as suddenly as she was snatched, Robin was dropped back into the dust, which clung to her slobbery clothes. She wrapped her arms around her stomach because she was certain she must be bleeding. To her surprise, none of the other beasts jumped at her, but backed away slowly, ears down and tails between their legs. They were retreating from the brilliantly white horse that dolefully plodded his way toward Robin. A cloaked figure dismounted.
“Come along,” said a bored voice, “it had to happen sometime. Could be worse.”
The figure neared Robin with a barefooted, businesslike step. Robin looked up and met the spirit boy square in the eye. He recognized her instantly. He tripped over his long, evil stick in surprise. Robin forgot her pain and stood up, although she kept her arms pressed tightly to her middle. She tried to not meet his eye again; his cool, heavy-lidded stare made her want to punch him. From where she glared just above his shoulder, she could tell the spirit boy recovered and leaned nonchalantly on his stick thing. There was a moment of awkward silence, where she glared above his left ear and he raised an eyebrow. The pack of monstrosities circled about them anxiously.
“You’re not dead,” said the spirit boy, repeating the accusation from their first meeting. She heard the smirk in his voice and pursed her lips.
“Why are you here?” she asked his feet.
“No,” he rounded on her in a demanding, but good-natured voice, “Why are you here?”
Robin shifted on her feet and coldly answered through clenched teeth, “None of your business.”
“Believe me,” he chuckled sarcastically, “it is.”
Robin refused to grace him with a reply, so he skulked back to his horse and mounted. Guiding it towards Robin, he stuck his hand out to help her up. Robin kept her arms tightly about her middle and scowled the other way. Lost as she was, without the slightest idea of how to get back home, the last thing she wanted was a ride, a favor from him. With a click of his tongue, the spirit boy leaned over, holding his stick-weapon with one hand, Robin felt his free arm snake around her waist. She cried out, partially in pain, but mostly in outrage. She attempted to escape by buckling her knees and being as dead a weight as possible, but his strength was surprising in one so skinny. Helpless, she was pulled side-saddle in front of the boy.
She had been abducted, plain as day, but she was hardly afraid. She was just angry. It made Robin sick to have his arms around her as he steered his hateful steed. She considered screaming bloody murder and really making a fuss—in which her teeth would play a primary role—but it would only hurt her sore stomach more and there was no one to come to her aid in this wasteland. Anyway, she didn’t want to give him the satisfaction.
They rode at an agonizingly slow trot. Her stomach complained, but Robin didn’t. She always thought of kidnappers as stealing their victims away at night in great haste, but the spirit boy hardly seemed in any hurry. On either side of them padded the white monsters, tongues streaming out of their panting smiles. The tallest one, which had snatched her up and shown off her like a hunting trophy, jogged abreast them and attempted to lick Robin’s dangling feet. With a sneer, she pulled her knees to her chin. Undeterred, it drew jogged closer to the horse to pursue her bare toes. It gave her a playful snapped. Remembering her burnt stomach, Robin cried out. From the corner of his eye, the spirit boy gave the beast a cold look. Whining apologetically, it gradually fell back and disappeared amongst the pack. It occurred to Robin he must be the master of the animals.
“Are these dogs?” Robin asked in disgust and disbelief. The spirit boy did not answer. Their progress came to an abrupt halt. Robin looked to see why, and discovered that they all—dog monstrosities, horse, and spirit boy—were pricking their ears, silently listening and watching something to their left.
This was the convenient direction Robin’s back was facing. She tried to twist around and find out what was so captivating. It turned out to be unnecessary, because the horse, without prompting, changed direction and started leftward at a gallop. She could be wrong, but Robin thought she heard the spirit boy let out a tired sigh.
The herd of monsters kept the pace of the horse, just holding back. Curious, Robin chanced a glance at her captor. His face remained stoic. She wondered if they fled something, if this boy finally decided to secret her off somewhere. By the slobbering, hungry smiles of the dogs, Robin doubted it.
While the rest of the company focused acutely on their prey, Robin had great difficulty keeping her balance on the sprinting horse. She would have had a better time of it if she were facing forwards and if the Spirit boys hadn’t then decided to raise his right arm from around her. Robin, her stomach smarting anew, desperately clung to the saddle horn. Midst her plight, she wanted to give the spirit boy a mean look and make him feel guilty, but instead she saw his right hand give a signal.
In an erupting of roars and howls, the pack of monsters surged ahead of them, outdistancing the galloping horse in seconds. They shrunk into the distance and soon all Robin could hear was the labored huffing of the white horse.


They rode together in silence. Eventually, the boy noticed her increasing discomfort: her left leg had fallen asleep long ago and her stomach throbbed with every stride of the horse. He helped her rotate to face forward.
“There,” was all he said. Robin would have liked to pummel him with questions, as much to annoy him as for curiosity, but she was too mesmerized by the landscape.
Itself, it was completely unremarkable—nothing but dull, gray dust everywhere—it streamed by at such speed, it made her stare. It was obvious she was riding no ordinary horse. The hills blurred together. The mountains zipped past in quick succession, far off into the distance as they were. Then they, too, smeared together. Suddenly remembering she had a slight tendency to motion sickness, Robin decided to focus on the one stationary object.
She twisted her neck around to look at him (when one is riding a horse in the realm of death, social politeness becomes frivolous. Either he didn’t notice or he didn’t care). For a spirit, he looked awfully fleshy. Skinny, yes, but tangible. Maybe all ghosts were solid here. Speaking of which, where was everybody?
Robin nearly broke her vow of silence and asked the spirit boy why he was the only person Robin could see, when she heard the now-familiar baying of the monster dogs. When they can into view, she could see them circled around a helpless victim. Robin heard pathetic moans under the joyous howls of the beasts. Then the horse stopped, going from impossible speeds to a stillness unnatural for an animal. Robin, meanwhile, flew off head first. She did a pretty little somersault and landed her rear in the dust. Behind her, the spirit boy coolly dismounted. As he passed her where she sat on the ground, Robin saw an expression on his face that was at once stoic, bored, and stern. The pack, of which Robin figured he was the master, parted at his approach. Robin thought she saw a few tremble.
“Fleeing is futile,” he said with all the emotion of Robin’s sneaker—a sneaker that was never disobeyed. He mostly blocked Robin’s view of the person to whom he was speaking, but she saw enough to know it was a small, slightly overweight man.
“No! I wasn’t running,” the man said. He had a strange accent. “I was looking.”
“For what?” the spirit boy sighed. Robin could tell he didn’t really listen to the answer. His knife-stick level in both hands. There wasn’t any bright light for the metal blade to catch, but it caught it. The little man also noticed, because he talked a lot faster.
“What about the tunnel? They said there was a tunnel and if you go up, that means… I was trying to go up, you see.”
“Of course,” the boy said. The weapon slowly raised at an angle. Like a doctor giving a small child a shot, he added, “Now hold still. This won’t hurt a—bit. Drat. Fetch!”
At “hurt,” the little man darted under the legs of the nearest beast and fled towards the nearby mountains. The part of Robin’s brain that wasn’t afraid for the man’s life considered him to be making great time. He would have gotten farther, of course, if he didn’t run with his arms flailing above his head like he was trying to swat invisible mosquitoes. It didn’t matter anyway. The dogs “fetched” him in a matter of moments.
Robin didn’t want to know what happened next, yet she found herself following the spirit boy—who was a lot more than a mere spirit, she’d figured out by now—to where the monster dogs held him incapacitated in the dust. One dogs held his feet in his jaws, another had his hands. Between them, the little man was stretched like a prisoner on the rack. With patient step, the more-than-spirit boy approached the man, Robin at his heels. The boy stopped and Robin peered from behind his shoulder. Slowly, the blade of the stick rose above his head. It fell—
“No!” the man cried, his pudgy round face contorted in desperation. He yanked at his hands and feet, all in vain. “Stop! Don’t take me, don’t—”
--above his head. Robin watched something white and sort of sweet-looking float from the crown of the easy-breathing man into the sleeve of the far-more-than-spirit boy. The man relaxed and the beasts released their grip. Slowly, he opened his eyes. He drew himself from the dirt fixed the boy with a look.
“You could have said.”
“It is time,” said the boy.
“If I’d known you were just going to—”
With the little man still protesting at his back, the boy returned to his horse. Wordless, he offered his hand. Planting her feet in front of the horse and shaking her head, Robin prepared to resist. She was rather surprised when the hand was taken by the little man, who awkwardly clambered behind the boy. To her embarrassment, both saw her defiant actions and gave her strange looks. The boy smirked with a straight face and the little man raised his eyebrows. Robin shuffled her feet in the dust.
Facing his beasts, the boy pointed at her and commanded, “Home!”

miles and the b-b gun

Once there was a little boy named Myles goehm. Myles was a normal boy with a mom, a dad & 3 sisters. This little boy had a good father, with an old truck. Not only was Myles a boy but he had a bee-bee gun. You can see where this is going.

One warm California day Myles went out side looking for squirrels & birds to shoot. Click, click, click Myles pumped his bee-bee gun so it would be full of pressure. As Myles walked by his dad’s old truck the bee-bee gun went off, BANG!!!!! Myles ran over to the spot where the bee-bee hit. There right in the middle of the fender was a bee-bee hole.

“Uh-oh” thought Myles “dad’s going to be mad at me”

So Myles ran inside & waited for his dad to come home. After a few hours, Myles dad came home. Myles ran outside to meet his doom.

“Son, what’s this?” Myles dad said as calmly as he could.

In the previous month Myles dads truck had been shot before, so myles thought he would use that for cover.

“Someone shot your truck dad” Myles grinned.

“Who shot my truck son” Myles dad asked

“I don’t know dad” Myles replied.

“Are you sure, because it looks like a bee-bee” his father countered.

Myles could hear his heart beating faster, but he had to come up with something.

“Huh, really” Myles smiled.

Myles dad knew what he did & he got off pretty easy, he even got to keep his bee-bee gun. Myles received no punishment, at first he wondered why but he decided not to push his luck. However from then on Myles was more careful where he pointed his gun.

this is a short children's story that i gave my dad for fathers day last year.

Belief - a villanelle

I really want to shake hands with the guy who invented these, he was evil.


I find this hard to believe
in the last we see of today
to the last of the paths we leave

for all the help we'd receive
for all these problems in play
I find this hard to believe

because the one who came to deceive
in his own, heart-broken way,
to the last of the paths we leave

... and when we find we can breathe
brought to the white that surrounds the gray
I find this hard to believe

the truth that we thought we'd cleave
became false when we thought to pray
to the last of the paths we leave

but all that we thought to perceive
is what we'd find would stay-
but I find this hard to believe
on the last of the paths we leave


I'll get another poem up here soon, too, since we're not meeting 'til next week.

Plain

Plain
written by: some guy in the yogurt commercial
submitted by Brooke Boehm

Plain was the same as it ever was the same.

Plainly plain…

Samely same…

But then…someone lit the flame.

Plain rode away on a lion’s mane.

Where plain met fruits with strangely names.

Such wonderful things they did contain.

A shot of life to a hungry vein.

The captive beast who broke the chain.

And there upon that fruited plane,

is where plain became what plain became.

So much more than plain.

Plain will never be the same.

Winter Moon Chronicles ~1

This is my baby. My book I have been conceiving, struggling, bending my mind over, editing, but no where close to finishing for hmm, 4, 5 years. Brandon read the old draft, but this is a newer version, so... I'd like to get back to work ^^'

The Winter Moon Chronicles

By Mary Ann Kirkpatrick

Inspired by Amy Holt

Have you ever wished that your life could be at least the slightest bit different? I have. I love my life, my friends and family. I do really well at school and church. But, I used to sometimes think that my life was extremely repetitive. It also seemed awfully similar to everybody else’s. I wished it could be different, just a little, so it would stand out from everything else. I wished it would be like the fantasy books I love to read, like Harry Potter or the Chronicles of Narnia. But like everybody else in the world, I thought magic only existed in the books and movies. Oh, how wrong I was. But I'm getting ahead of the story. Let me tell you about myself.

My name is Marina Kirk, I'm 17 years old and I live in Lincoln City, Oregon. I'm the youngest of four children. I have wild, curly, red hair the color of a copper penny and grey-blue eyes. I have five best friends- Amber, Andrea, Lina, Shania, and Corrine. My friends would play a big part in the adventure I would go through to be here where I am today.

Our story begins the last day of autumn. I woke up to an early, slightly misty morning. But that wasn't unusual weather for the Oregon Coast. I got out of bed, went to the window and opened the curtains. I stood there for a few moments watching the waves slowly lap up onto the beach while the mist hovered delicately over the surface of the water. I turned to face my closet and picked out an outfit of a soft, white top, a black, military-style jacket, a dark red scarf, and a pair of dark jeans. I headed down the stairs after stopping in the bathroom to do my hair- smooth and feathered around my face.

“Good morning sweet pea!” My mom greeted me.

“Morning,” I said groggily. “What’s for breakfast?”

“Just a bowl of cereal.” Mom said pouring milk into her own bowl.

“Great.” I said slightly sarcastic. I got up and went to the cupboard pulling out the box of Rice Crispies.

“Did you sleep well?” My mom asked.

“Yeah, but I had this weird dream that I woke up from at about 2:00 this morning.”

“What was the dream about?” she inquired.

“Well, I was on the beach just walking along, it was all foggy, and then I saw this bright light out a little bit toward the sea.” As I was explaining it to her, my dad and my brothers, Adam and Caleb, walked in one at a time. But they weren't listening, only focusing on breakfast, just like men.

“I turned to look at it and the light swirled around in mid-air. As I walked out to reach it, the waves separated for me. When I reached it, the white light turned this vivid blue. I reached out to touch it, and I woke up.” I explained.

“Wow.” she said.

“Yeah, I know, it just makes me wonder what it means.”

“Hmmm, well I don't know. But what I do know is if you don't hurry, you're going to miss the bus.”

“Right, okay.” I got up and rinsed my bowl out, put it in the dish washer and hurried to the bathroom to brush my teeth.

When I came back, Mom had placed my backpack on the counter stool. I picked it up, flung it over my shoulder and grabbed my flute where I left it on the counter.

“Love you Mom.” I told her.

“Love you too, have a good day!”

I rushed out the door and ran down to the bus stop. There I met Lina and Andrea. “Hey!” I greeted them.

“Hey!” They echoed in unison.

“Are you ready for the History test?” Lina asked me. She flipped her long ash-blond hair over her shoulder and looked worriedly at me from her clever blue eyes.

“Yeah and no,” I said hesitantly, “I pretty much know it all already so I just read it over and repeated it.”

“I'm so worried, I got like five wrong when I was quizzing with my sister, but I kept working on it and I think I'm ready, but I'm not sure.”

Lina most of the time gets awesome grades but she always stresses over them beforehand. I think she has a mild case of obsessive compulsive disorder.

“Well I spent about an hour and a half studying last night and I feel pretty confident.” Andrea said. She had her dark brown hair with auburn highlights in loose curls.

At that moment the bus pulled up. We clambered on and Lina started stressing again.

“If you're that worried about it, give me your notes, I'll quiz you.” I told her.

She reached in her backpack and drew out her purple history notebook. I took it from her and opened it to the Post-it note.

“Okay, in what year did Napoleon Bonaparte declare the French Revolutionary War?”

Andrea and I took turns asking Lina questions for the remainder of the bus ride. Finally we reached the red brick building that was Taft High School, home of the Tigers. When we got inside, we walked to our lockers together while Lina and Andrea were laughing. But, I was thinking about the dream I had last night again. It was like I was off in my own little world; I didn't hear a single thing they were talking about and Andrea had to say my name three times before I looked at her.

“Marina? What about you? Don’t you think Josh is the biggest jerk?” she asked me. Josh is the football jock in our homeroom that is always butting in and disrupting class with rude comments.

“Oh, yeah he is so annoying.” I said.

“Marina, are you okay? You were spacing off again.” Lina asked me.

“Oh, yeah, it's just,” I lowered my voice to a whisper, “I was thinking about this dream I had last night.” I told them about the dream and they stared at me in awe.

“It sounds just like a fantasy book!” Andrea exclaimed.

“Yeah, that's so cool!” Lina added.

“It's weirder than fantasy, to me at least.” I told them.

“Okay, enough with the fantasy comparison, let's analyze it.” Andrea said. Andrea is the psychologist of our group of friends.

“Why?” Lina asked her.

“Well, most dreams mean something, so if we analyze it we can come up with a possible meaning.” Andrea explained.

“Do you know how to analyze dreams?” I asked her.

“Um...” She hesitated, “No, but I'll go check the library for a book about dream analyzing.” She resolved. If Andrea doesn't know the answer to something, she'll find it at the library.

When she finished saying this we arrived at our homeroom, Mrs. Carter.

“Well, well, if it isn't the book club!” came a voice from behind us. We turned to see who it was, and, not to our surprise, it was Josh.

“Shut up, Josh.” I said.

“Hey, hey, I'm just making a comment.” Josh said moving past us running his hand through his light brown hair. His dark eyes had their usual sly glint.

“Well, you know what they say, better seen than heard.” I retorted venomously. Andrea and Lina giggled nervously.

“Ouch, that hurts, Marina.” he said, faking remorse.

“Josh, just for once, can you just leave us alone?” I asked.

He hesitated before answering, as though he wanted to say something, but instead retorted, “How could I leave such pretty girls alone without anyone to talk to except each other and their books?”

“Maybe by paying attention to any of the swooning girls who worship the ground you walk on?” This was true, even though he was a jerk; he was a cute jerk who manipulated all the cheerleaders and majorettes.

“Speaking of pretty girls,” he said as though he hadn't heard a word I had just said, “You know there's a bonfire tonight on the beach, and I was wondering if you would care to accompany me?”

I broke into spasms of laughter, unable to even breathe. “Seriously, who dared you to do this?” I asked between gasps.

“Nobody, I just thought you might want to go and spend some time with the half-back of the football team.” he said innocently, his face was impassable, and I could have sworn (if I hadn't known any better) that he was blushing.

“Whatever, I know there's no way you would do this of your own accord.”

“So is that a yes or a no?” He asked shyly, which was an odd tone to my ears coming from him.

I took a step toward him. “Josh, even if you really wanted to go out with me, I would never go out with such a crude jerk like you.”

I pushed past him to my seat in the front of the class. I focused on pulling my notebook out of my bag and staring at the title of the lesson on the board, resisting looking back at him. Just then my friend Corrine took her seat diagonally to the right of mine.

“Hey!” she greeted me.

“Hey.” I grumbled in return. Corrine knows me well enough to know that when I'm in a bad mood she should let me cool off before she asks any questions.

Then Mrs. Carter entered the classroom smiling and said, “Good morning class!”

“Good morning Mrs. Carter!” We echoed back.

“For today's lesson, we'll be reading and discussing some of Shakespeare's first sonnets.” She said.

As she continued with the lesson, I tried to pay attention, but I had my thoughts elsewhere. I tried to resist, but eventually I took out my calculator and used the reflective glass to look at the room behind me. I focused it so that I could see Josh a few seats back. He was slouched in his seat, with a grim, depressed look on his face. His expression was one I had never seen before on Josh. He looked like he wanted to fall into a pit and die. Suddenly, he glanced my direction, and in surprise, I dropped the calculator, which made a loud noise as it hit the floor. Mrs. Carter looked up from the literature book that she had been reading from to look directly at me. I muttered a, “Sorry,” and picked up the calculator. She frowned and returned to the book without comment. As I felt my cheeks grow pink, I hoped that Josh hadn't realized I was watching him.