Unheard Magazine Issue 1 by Unheard Magazine

Volume 1, Issue 1

All content belongs solely to, and is copyright by, the various authors. Work has been published with permission. Design is ÂŠ 2009 TAROBOT

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About Us

Mother-Tongue by Nickolas Fields

Tell Me by Leah Clark

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Breaking Sound (Ch.1) by Sarah Alsgaard

7-14

Casey by Kellia Moore

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Unheard Magazine is an independently produced and FREE downloadable creative writing magazine. Our mission is to introduce fresh and new creative writing, that might be missed otherwise, to a worldwide audience. We believe: • Creativity matters. • Bringing something beautiful into someone’s day is more important, more powerful, and more meaningful than money. • Writers need more opportunities than “record label” publishers who only seek to live off of any profit to be made. (Our editors have day jobs for that.) • Everyone should learn who makes something they can love. We stand behind the authors published herein. All content belongs solely to, and is copyrighted by, the various authors. We published their work with their permission. All images used with permission. We hope you like what you read and that you may commission the authors profiled for future work. Please direct all queries or requests to Unheard Magazine by email. unheardmag@gmail.com

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Mother–Tongue by Nickolas Fields

This wind that with eldritch fingers creeps through barren trees and, pooling in the shadows, lingers in the hollows of the earth, whispers half-forgotten hymns begun before the birth of heaven’s stars. It drips incessant from icy skies collects among the gaps between the stones, and lies chanting out the charms of frost still spoken by those who shift the feet of trees, their words now lost to all men’s tongues. It lifts the drifting leaves and flings them skywards, hovering fast then dropping towards the dirt, left to softly float, whispering the stories that the star-gods once wrote in their primal adoration of the earth.

[Tell Me}

by Leah Clark

Tell me you’re tired and don’t wanna talk Tell me I’ve misread the hands on the clock again Tell me the reasons we should be apart Remind me she’s still the one holding your heart, and then My love, tell me once more Why I’m still outside your door I need you to be the better man Cause when it comes to letting you go, I just know that I can’t Your voice is so sweet when it sounds in my ear Makes me wish the whole world Would just disappear So tell me to go And please don’t be swayed by my tears Tell me we must exercise some restraint Tell me you’ve got the patience of a saint, it’s true Tell me your skin doesn’t heat when I’m close Remind me I’m waging a war with a ghost, what a fool My love, tell me again Why I’m still living this pain I need you to be the better man Cause when it comes to letting you go, I just know that I can’t Your voice is so sweet when it sounds in my ear Makes me wish the whole world Would just disappear So tell me to go And please don’t be swayed by my tears Maybe it’s kinder To leave you alone I’ll forget you faster Once you are gone Fly away into the night And I will continue this fight Tell me our passion has been a mistake Tell me the dream has been startled awake for now Tell me the timing for our love is wrong Remind me to finish the words of this song somehow My love, tell me the lie And then softly tell me goodbye I guess you’re truly the better man Cause when it comes to letting us go, You have done what I can’t Your voice in my ear’s just a sweet memory And I’ll make my way in this world With my soul incomplete Now it is done And I have admitted defeat

had taken to pacing, staring out at the deep folds of the black lake when my watch alarm went off at 1 a.m. Of course he was late. I’d called the A Faction president directly, and she’d laughed at me on the phone. After hearing my frantic story for a half hour, however, the president agreed to send a messenger wherever I wanted. Across Berger Lake, I could see the home of the E Faction’s president. He had a swimming pool built right alongside the lake, which, despite the intense fear pulsing through my body, nearly made me laugh. What was the point of putting a pool next to water? My parents’ faction always liked to compensate their lack of power with needless luxury. One of the many reasons why I saw no reason to join them. In an instant, I felt him standing behind me. Alone. So close that I felt his folded arms brush against my back when I turned around. He extended his hand out to me, and I shook it. “Why did you choose this place?” he asked. His American accent was nearly flawless. “I don’t even know where I am; I have never gone this far west.” Deep breaths. “Signor, this may not be the best place to show off Salem but, welcome to Salem, Oregon. I hope you find your –” “What do you know?” he asked, barely polite over his impatience.

Breaking Sound

Chapter One Aihi, Suppression (Measure 1)

by Sarah Alsgaard

Steadying my voice, I managed to look the messenger directly in the eye, wondering if the president could see me too. He stood nearly a head taller in his thick boots, a wool scarf wrapped tightly around his neck. His cold eyes almost seemed black in the darkness. “You’ve noticed that I have some power, right?” I said. “From what my apparently feeble senses can detect, yes,” he snapped. My heart seemed to tear its way up my throat. I fought the fear, however, and kept talking. Don’t look at him, I thought. Don’t think about how many people he’d probably slaughtered just out of annoyance. This had to work. My peace of mind depended on it. “Forgive me, signor,” I said quickly, lowering my eyes. “I think you will find me a worthy person for the A Faction, though. I could be of great use to your president.” “In what way?” “I believe I’ve been born and raised around a voice from the Sound.” For a split-second, the messenger’s eyebrow twitched. His face seemed perfectly composed otherwise; an intimidating mask of cruelty. The messenger’s eyes narrowed as he leaned down toward me, as if examining a dead bird. “What was your name again?” “Aihi Raker,” I said.

Breaking Sound

“Mr. Raker, why did you drag me from my lovely, cozy little home on this fine morning, for this…this obvious lie?” His words sent me reeling. I had to cling to that one facial twitch, though; that one sign that my words had meant something to him. He was testing me. Surely he knew about the Sound. There was a reason why the A Faction was the top faction. “It’s been called a myth, yes,” I said slowly, “but–” “From what faction are your parents?” he asked. His body had half turned away from me, ready to leave if I couldn’t talk fast enough. “The E Faction but –” “A disgustingly low faction,” he said. His hand, battered with bruises racing up his thick arm, rose from his side, one finger pointing across Berger Lake. “That is their headquarters, is it not?” “How do you even know that?” The messenger smiled. “Madame has her own spies.” He pulled one hand through his hair before shoving it into his coat’s pockets. “Go and join the E Faction; stay with tradition.” With a small wave of his hand, he bid me a good night and took one step off the ground, into the black sky. I saw him walking up into the air, and felt my fear pushed aside by a new fear; one of being ignored. “WAIT!” I screamed. This was all going wrong. The messenger for the president of the A Faction twisted himself around, as if he stood on a staircase rather than halfway into the air. His face showed nothing but fury. However, he kept his lips tightly shut, his eyebrows raised in barely controlled impatience. “When my sister turned seven, someone visited our house and said she was part of the Sound.” I was talking faster than even I could comprehend, but the messenger didn’t move one muscle. “We were supposed to have had our memories erased but no one bothered to ask what qualities made me a psychic.” To my deep relief, the messenger took exactly one step off the seemingly invisible staircase and back on to the inlet jutting into the lake. His eyes were still unreadable. “Explain,” he said. “No memory of mine can be erased,” I said. “I realized it then, when no one else recalled that one day. I thought it was a dream for a while until I started digging into some corners here and there. I don’t know exactly how deep into the Sound my sister is, but your faction could always find out. They made her change her name and told her she was extremely important.”

Aihi, Suppression ::Measure 1:: “No one knows the Sound exists,” he said. “People believe that it does, however, will surely fight over her from the mere belief that she holds some importance. You realize that telling me this could have her eventually killed by paranoid psychics?” I swallowed hard. “That…that’s my hope, signor.” The messenger tilted his head to one side, eyeing me from behind his blank mask. “Please, listen. Starting next year, every faction will lose their most precious members. That’s why, I’m warning you, don’t send anyone to our house. Even when you hear about my sister’s power, don’t send anyone. Pretend you’re not interested. Keep your bestskilled guards safe.” “Oh I doubt–” “She can kill anyone right now. Her power’s that great. I’ve yet to meet a psychic better than her.” For the first time since our conversation had begun, the messenger let his mask slip for more than a second, revealing shock underneath. “Even more than me? You must be lying.” “More than the president of the A Faction, more than whatever the Corporation keeps locked away,” I said. “It means she’s probably pretty deep into the Sound to be that powerful.” He took a cell phone out of his pocket, waited a few seconds, and then muttered quickly into the phone in Italian. After a few minutes of silence, he looked up at me. “Madame is intrigued by you,” he said. “Please, do visit Italy when you have the chance.” I couldn’t help but smile, barely able to contain my complete joy. For once in my life, something had worked. Someone had finally listened. “Certainly,” I said. For a second time, the messenger turned to go. He stopped again, however, and listened to the voice on the other end of the phone. “Ah, di chi nome? Si.” He was now four steps up into the air. There was a pause before he turned halfway back toward me, one eyebrow raised. He cleared his throat. “What is the name of your sister?” Ah right. “Auryon Raker, signor.” From what I could see of his face, his lips curled into something of a smile, though his eyes reflected nothing. “Well, the A Faction looks forward to hearing about the deaths of our enemies, Mr. Raker.”

to be continued

Mamoru’s real name was Buster, and he was Mrs. Pollard’s hamster. He was cuddly and orange and adorable, but we only got to play with him once a week, when we finished class early on Fridays. And usually, we didn’t even get to play with him then, because the boys got to him first to put him in Lego houses or make him go through obstacle courses of Lincoln Logs. The wouldn’t even give him up when Kat told them they were acting like 5th graders, which was usually an insult that worked on everyone. When Kat told Mrs. Pollard that they were abusing him, and that it was our turn already, she just laughed and said that the boys were giving him some exercise. I tended to side with Kat, especially after the time I saw one of the boys hold the hamster so tight that his eyes bugged out. Plus, the boys called him “Fatty,” which was just mean. I thought Kat’s name for him, “Mamoru,” was better, since it was Tuxedo Mask’s name in the Japanese version of Sailor Moon. Even though Mamoru wasn’t a cute animated boy (or a human), I thought the comparison was fitting, since Tuxedo Mask is strong and courageous, and I figured you had to be pretty brave to play with boys who almost squeeze you to death. “Well, then how about we just talk to Mrs. Pollard today to make sure we get him first on Friday?” Sabrina said reasonably. Usually Kat’s ideas were relatively safe. Like the time she convinced us to speak only Pig Latin for a day (except to teachers). No one could really punish us for that. It just got us some weird looks, which only made it funnier. Or like the time we wore our Sailor Moon outfits to school. Sabrina refused to join in, but it was still harmless, minus the near dress code violation. Who wouldn’t want to spend PE yelling, “In the name of the moon!” every time you hit the volleyball? Even the time Kat wanted to catch a seagull at lunch wasn’t that dangerous. It could’ve been bad, except that Kat thought trapping the bird in a box was cruel, and she insisted on trying to lure it to her with soothing words and bits of sandwich. So when it didn’t work, no one got their eyes pecked out. So, yes, she had a good track record of thinking up things that were fun and that also wouldn’t land us in the principal’s office. But I wasn’t too sure about this idea. “Mamoru loves us best!” Kat insisted. “And we never get to play with him!”

“We tried that at the beginning of the year, remember? And she just forgot we talked to her,” Kat countered. She took a sip of orange juice. We were in the cafeteria, where everyone hung out before school started and talked, ate, messed around, and cheated on homework. I remembered being overwhelmed at the beginning of the year by the sheer mass of middle school life going on in the room, but by now I had gotten used to it. “Well, we could talk to her on Thursday, then,” Sabrina said logically. Kat turned to me. “Could I have some support here, Casey?” The idea was this: we would sneak into Mrs. Pollard’s room during lunch so we could play with Mamoru for a whole half hour and teach him that not all humans are abusive. On one hand, it sounded totally fun. On the other hand, I wasn’t too sure that sneaking into classrooms was allowed.

“It would be pretty awesome, Sabrina,” I admitted. Kat beamed

in triumph. Her face was almost perfectly round, and the smile fit in nicely and made her cheeks even fuller. She had generous, brown eyes and rather overlarge front teeth. Her hair was long, brown, and a little stringy, and it never seemed to know quite how to settle around the curves of her face. She always said she wished she had my hair, even though it was too wavy and had all sorts of fly-aways. “Well, how are we going to get into the classroom?” Sabrina said calmly. Sabrina said most things calmly. Kat and I were medium, but she was tall, with big hands and feet. Her face and nose were both long and somewhat angular, and her thick, curly hair was almost black. Kat and I—especially Kat—were always on the move, chatting excitedly about this and that and going through dramatic highs and lows. But Sabrina preferred to observe and comment. A lot of people didn’t realize that even though she was low-key, she was also really fun to be around, and she could be hilarious in her own unruffled way. “Aren’t the classrooms locked?” she continued. “Not necessarily,” Kat said. “Are you kidding? At this school? Of course they are. People steal stuff, man,” Sabrina said. “Like what? The slide projector?” I broke in. “Um, yeah. And the tests. And the gradebook,” Sabrina said. “Ok, ok, fine, so maybe it’ll be locked,” I admitted. Sabrina returned to the problem. “So if it’s locked, how do we get in?” “I’m working on it!” Kat exclaimed. She pushed aside her juice carton and put her head in her hands. Sabrina shook her head and helped herself to Kat’s tater tots. “So how’s the clarinet solo coming?” she asked me. “Are you ready to play it in front of the class today?” Sabrina liked to tease me about sucking at the clarinet by pretending that I had solos. Or that we ever did anything in band class. “Ha. Ha,” I returned, and took a tot myself. “If Mr. David actually tried to make me play a solo, I think I’d crawl into one of the band cabinets.” Suddenly, Kat made a noise from behind her hands and a curtain of hair. “That’s a great idea!” she cried, emerging from her thinking pose. “What?” Sabrina asked. “I’m not playing a real solo,” I said. “No, we could hide in the band cabinets!” Kat said, her enthusiasm undimmed. “Why?”

“We could hide until everyone leaves for lunch, and then we’d be home free!” She raised her arms in triumph. “But we still wouldn’t have a way to get into Mrs. Pollard’s room,” Sabrina said. “Wouldn’t Mr. David notice if we disappeared?” I asked. “Are you kidding? He didn’t even notice when Carrie fainted on purpose that one time,” Kat remarked. “That’s true. Man, I wish I knew how to do that,” I said. “Why?” Sabrina asked. “It’s bad for you, man.” “But I want to know what it’s like to faint!” I explained. “But you don’t know what it’s like when you faint. You’re not conscious. That’s what fainting is,” Sabrina said. “Can we focus here?” Kat complained. “Casey, do you have any carrots in your lunch today? We could feed them to Mamoru.” I pulled out my lunchbox while Kat and Sabrina continued the argument about the door. I did have carrots. I noticed a folded piece of paper wedged between the applesauce and the brownies—Mom must have written me a note. I was surprised; it’d been awhile since Mom had urged me to “Have a great day!” or “Eat the fruit too!” on her pink stationary. Casey, I hope you’ve been thinking about whether or not you want to go to OTMS next year. Dad and I would like you to talk to your guidance counselor today about it — maybe Mrs. Shauf could help you decide. Have a wonderful day! –Mom I felt something spidery crawl around in my stomach. I had actually been trying pretty hard not to think about OTMS. It was a charter school, which I knew meant something about the government letting it do what it wanted. It was supposed to be really good, and I had applied to get into it for sixth grade. When they didn’t want me, I went to Rawlings instead. It turned out that OTMS had kept my name, though, and this year I did get in. Dad kept talking to me about not wasting my mind, about small class sizes and individual attention. But there was no way I was leaving Kat and Sabrina. “What is it?” Kat and Sabrina must have seen something interesting in my face, because they were both looking at me and at the small, pink note that dangled from my hand. “Nothing,” I said quickly. “Mom was just telling me to eat my vegetables and stuff.” The last thing I wanted to do was to tell them about this.

“Oooh, is it from a boy?” Kat effused. “Why would a boy put a note in my lunchbox?” I asked incredulously. I refolded the note and stuck it back in my lunchbox. “Because he thinks you’re sexaaay,” Sabrina informed me. “Ok, well, no one thinks I’m sexay,” I said. “Oooh, is it from Jeff?” Kat interjected. “It’s not from a boy! Will you just let it go?” I shoved my lunchbox under my chair. “Ok, ok,” Kat said, suddenly backing off. “So, back to the task at hand,” I said firmly. “Is or isn’t Mrs. Pollard’s room going to be locked?” Suddenly, Kat darted sideways in her chair and snatched my lunchbox. “Hey!” I shot over to grab it back. After a short but fierce skirmish, I had the lunchbox but Kat had the note. She scrabbled to get it open with one hand, laughing breathlessly while staving me off. “Kat!” I said desperately. But she had already stood up to get out of reach; she was reading it. There was a collective pause. “What’s OTMS?” she asked, her voice quite different than before. This was bad. “Oak Terrace Middle School,” Sabrina said. “I tried to get in, but I didn’t.” She still looked bemused, and hadn’t caught on to Kat’s mood yet. “Why? What does the note say?” Kat turned to me, her round face dangerous. “You’re going to a different school?” “No,” I said quickly. “No. My parents want me to, but I’m not going to.” “Why not?” Sabrina asked. Kat whipped over to her. “What?” Kat demanded, eyebrows furrowed. Sabrina shrugged. “Kat,” I insisted, “I’m not going.” She turned back to me. “What—why didn’t you tell us?” Her hair hung dramatically in her face. “Because it doesn’t matter,” I said. “I told my parents I wasn’t going to leave you guys.” Kat breathed in and out a few times. She was still standing. “Well what if they make you go?” she asked. “They can’t make me go,” I said, feeling a hint of relief trickle through me. Kat flopped back into her chair and flung the note aside. I saw Sabrina pick it up curiously. “Well if they do,” Kat said darkly, “I’ll sic Jake on them.” I laughed

uncomfortably, not actually wanting Kat to make her neighbor’s dog attack my parents. I hated it when Kat got into moods like this. The last time she was in one, she had called her archenemy, Julia Long, a prostitute. With the timing of the gods, the bell rang. “Alright!” I said with fake cheer, grabbing the note from Sabrina and slinging on my backpack. “I’m going to get to English!” “But you hate English!” Kat yelled over the scraping of a hundred chairs. I just waved and headed out, escaping. I weaved my way through tables, backpacks, trashcans, laughter, and smooshed tater tots. I felt some of the noise slide away as I stepped outside and extricated myself from the buzzing crowd. Rawlings was ancient — there was even a rumor going around that it had been built on an old landfill. The school was a blue-accented behemoth, the product of some earlier era that had thought that rectangles and massive amounts of concrete were cool. There was a courtyard between the science and English buildings, but its grass was patchy at best, and it was further defamed by a deformed statue of a cougar. Years back, when we actually had a good basketball team, our rival school had duct-taped a bunch of firecrackers into the cougar’s mouth, lit them, and run away. But we had recovered the pieces and reconstructed the Rawlings Cougar, continuing to display it order to show our pride, or something. Besides the courtyard, there were also little patches for vegetation, but no one could stop middle schoolers from stepping through them and kicking the mulch around. A few pieces skittered by me as I skirted the crowds on my way to class. I didn’t actually hate English. It was just that the way they did it here was awful. Mrs. Edwards could care less, and I was pretty sure I could learn more from Reading Rainbow than from her. We were doing Hamlet, which was good, but instead of having us all actually read it, she was having us read one act each. For this whole week, we were sitting through group presentations that told the class what happened in their act. I would’ve been less annoyed if the group presentations were good, but they were terrible as a rule. I’d read the play over the summer when Dad had told me that it’s what The Lion King was based on, and I had then spent a few weeks saying things like, “O heat, dry up my brains!” and, “I am but mad north-north-west,” and, much to Mom’s annoyance, “Frailty, thy name is woman!” So it really bothered me when the groups didn’t care or got things wrong. I never spoke up though, not even when the Act III group said that Hamlet killed Polonius because he thought

he was a rat. Usually I contented myself with the thought that my group’s Act V presentation would be great. (I was sure of it—I had done almost the whole project myself.) But today was slated to be especially bad; I had it on good authority that most of the Act IV people had gotten their information from the Wishbone version. “Hamlet cookie?” Chris Hartnett asked me in a weird voice as he put one on my desk. I raised my eyebrows. Apparently the Act IV group was distributing cookies. He smirked, apparently finding himself hilarious. Chris Hartnett was a jerk. Kat had a crush on him, even though he made fun of substitute teachers and was best friends with the guy who squeezed the hamster. Kat thought he was “so cute,” but I didn’t think he was cute at all. I thought he was mean and illiterate. As Chris moved on, I stared at my cookie. What did cookies have to do with Shakespeare? Q By the time English was over and I was finally in band class with Kat and Sabrina, I was seriously annoyed. Chris Hartnett and his cronies had gotten Laertes all wrong. They said that he was a scumbag because he turned against Hamlet. But I was pretty sure he had his reasons, considering Hamlet had murdered his father and made his sister go crazy. Laertes did some bad stuff, but he wasn’t a bad guy. Sometimes when you’re mad, you just get dumb. I actually liked Laertes better than Hamlet; he was bold and did all sorts of things, whereas Hamlet just whined a lot about not being able to do things. And then killed people. Of course, I didn’t say any of this in English class. For some reason I could never get myself to speak up, not about anything. But at least I was able to tell Kat and Sabrina some of this during band. Well, Sabrina, at least. Kat wasn’t too interested in Laertes. Band was pretty perfect for discussions like this because Mr. David barely made us do anything. Usually we all just sat around on the floor and played cards while he did stuff in his office. When supervisors came, we had proper practices, though. Those were tough for me because I couldn’t generally get a noise out of my clarinet, especially not under pressure. I had to concentrate really hard on breathing at the same time as everyone else in my section to give the impression that I was just playing very, very quietly. “You realize that before the end of the period we’ve got to get into the cabinets without anyone seeing us,” Kat whispered intensely once I was done talking about Laertes. Sabrina just shook her head. “I am not getting into a cabinet,” she said firmly. “I’ll go with you

to see if Mrs. Pollard’s door’s open, but I am not getting into a cabinet.” “Why not?” Kat asked, still whispering. “Those cabinets are for instruments, man! I am not the size of an instrument,” Sabrina protested. “Shh!” Kat said urgently, which just made more people glance over. She turned to me. “Don’t you think we could fit ok, Casey?” Even though hiding in the cabinets was sort of my idea, I was actually on Sabrina’s side. I was a bit claustrophobic, and being in an instrumentsized cabinet didn’t sound fun at all. Besides, there was no way to get into them without the whole class seeing. But what came out of my mouth was, “Yeah. Yeah, we could fit ok.” The discussion between Sabrina and Kat continued — neither one would back down — and it got dangerously close to a real argument. I hated arguments. Thankfully, Sabrina came up with the idea of hiding in the music storage room, which was not only pleasing to Kat but also possible. We then decided what to do with our backpacks — stuff them under the stacked chairs in the corner. Kat, who was worried someone would steal her really cute jacket, decided just to wear it for the adventure. I put my Ziploc bag of carrots in my pocket. Everything was in order. “I can’t wait to see Mamoru. He’s so cute!” Kat said dreamily as Sabrina dealt out the cards for Egyptian Rat Screw. Kat really liked animals. She walked her neighbor’s dog all the time, and every time she came over to my house, we had to go in search of my cat, even though he mostly lived outside and only really liked my dad. For some reason, Kat’s parents wouldn’t let her have any pets. Well, I guess her mom might’ve. She was nice and blonde and was always taking care of Kat’s two little sisters. But her Dad wasn’t ok with it. He was a little scary — he was really quiet, but then sometimes he would yell at Kat for little things, like leaving her homework on the kitchen table. Kat always talked back to everyone, even to teachers, but for some reason she never talked back to him. After about half an hour of Egyptian Rat Screw, we casually relocated ourselves to the music storage room. It was the tiny, cramped home of all the sheet music we never used. The door to it was in the hallway between Mr. David’s office and the band room, so no one noticed us go in, but after the door was safely shut, we broke into relieved giggles anyway. Sabrina requested that we turn on a light, but Kat was sure that that would give us away. So we all fell over each other trying to sit down and spent the next fifteen minutes in the

dark. Kat suggested holding a séance, but I got freaked out when she started invoking the spirits of the dead, so instead Sabrina and I told Kat the plot of Lord of the Rings, halting every time we heard anyone walk by. There was something about being in the dark that made all the characters seem more real. The bell rang just as Frodo had made it to Rivendell, and we plunged into a profound silence. We heard the muffled sounds of activity, of scraping chairs and quick footsteps. We heard doors open and close again and again, and the rumble died down. We waited. Here and there we heard a straggler, and then there was silence. I started to feel a nervous, illicit excitement slipping through my veins. “Ok,” Kat said. “Let’s go.” We all scrambled to stand, and someone found the door handle. The light in the hallway was unbearable. When the bright spots and fuzzy glow faded, we were already outside of the band room. All the familiar shapes of our school seemed sharper, and every sound seemed ten times louder than usual. When we had gone into the music closet, we were safe. But now we had stepped over to the other side of the rules; now we were daring and bold and, if we got caught, in detention. We were on the side of the school that was at lunch, so the concrete plains of Rawlings were deserted. We were almost entirely silent — the hush around us demanded it. We walked along pocked-marked bulletin boards and white-trimmed windows. Posters for student government candidates fluttered against the walls like wanted posters in a ghost town. Four times we passed a teacher, and four times I was sure we were dead meat. But they just kept right on going. The fourth one even waved to us, making me trip and nearly fall over in a fit of nerves. “Don’t die,” Sabrina whispered to me once the teacher was gone. Finally we reached the courtyard and saw the English building just beyond the deformed cougar. When we got to the double doors, a nearby air conditioning unit turned on, making us all jump about ten feet. Sabrina snorted in silent laughter, but all I could think about was whether or not Mrs. Pollard’s door would be locked. I was straining toward her room, the goal, as if once we got inside it we would be safe, at home base. In the building, we padded along the lonely hallway, flanked by rows of purple lockers. The squares of fluorescent lights were reflected on the shining, beige linoleum below. We watched the doors on our right—301, 303, 305, 307—finally 309 slid into view before us. Kat was first, and she peered through the door’s skinny window as she reached for the handle.

“Frick!” she hissed, snatching her hand back and recoiling into us. “She’s still in there!” We beat a retreat, flying back down the hallway; Kat stuffed herself behind the edge of the lockers at 305; Sabrina and I pulled up, backtracked, and threw ourselves into the hiding place, thunking dully against the door. We paused, tight, struggling to control our breathing, and my heart throbbed unstoppably against my throat. “Did she see you?” Sabrina breathed. Kat made a quick motion with her hand to tell Sabrina to shut up; there was a clicking sound, and door 309 was moving. I pressed myself against the cold wall, keeping 309 barely in sight. Mrs. Pollard emerged, balancing a coffee mug on top of an armful of books. She opened the door to its full radius, held it against the wall with her foot, and jiggled a key around in the inside handle. After a moment she stuck her keys in a pocket, grabbed the precarious coffee mug with her free hand, and started off toward the other end of the hallway. The door, almost in slow motion, began its route back to the jamb. I was frozen, my eyes riveted on the door, with the sound of Mrs. Pollard’s too slow progress. Suddenly, Kat darted forward. I grabbed at her jacket to stop her; there was a sound uncomfortably like ripping fabric, and she was down the hall, hunched, a fierce rustle behind Mrs. Pollard’s flapping footsteps. The door lingered for a moment, dallying at the spot where it was perpendicular to the wall, and then gained speed with a vengeance. Kat was going brilliantly fast on her tiptoes, but it wasn’t enough, the door had met the frame. Then, at the very last moment, there was a miracle: the latch caught on the doorframe. Kat grabbed the door before it finished its journey; she slid along it; she was through. The door clicked closed with Kat behind it. She had done it. Sabrina and I exchanged a look of ecstatic disbelief, and my fingers tingled as we watched Mrs. Pollard’s retreating form finally exit through the double doors at the end of the hallway. We rushed out of hiding willy-nilly and bumped into each other trying to be the first one to knock on door 309. Kat opened the door, her round face full of a huge smile. “I can’t believe you did it!” I cried, jumping inside and attacking her with a hug. “You’re amazing!” Sabrina followed suit, our exclamations and descriptions of what had happened layering over one another. “In the name of the mooooon!” Kat crooned, and we fell over laughing.

Q Mamoru was at first a little scared of us —“Probably because he’s been abused,” Kat commented — but soon enough he was as overjoyed as we were. I pulled the bag of carrots out of my pocket, and we fed him in abundance. Sabrina got him to do a dance by holding a carrot above his head, and when I got to hold him I put one hand in front of the other over and over so he could run on a little treadmill. We talked to him and watched him stuff entire carrots in his cheeks to save them for later. It was incredible: we had been daring, we had been adventurous, and we had succeeded. I felt a fusion of power and joy soar through my insides. Mamoru wasn’t just a fuzzy ball of orange; he was triumph. I watched Kat trying to teach him a trick, Sabrina explaining that he would never learn if she gave him a carrot no matter what he did, and I knew that there was no way I was going to leave Rawlings. We had about ten minutes of bliss before it happened. Sabrina had put Mamoru on Kat’s back, and she was lying on the floor, giggling compulsively as he skittered around. Then the intercom on the far wall crackled to life. “Sabrina Rigby and Katherine Morely, please report to the office,” a woman’s voice announced. “Sabrina Rigby and Katherine Morely, please report to the office. Thank you.” There was a clunking sound, and it was over. My stomach plunged to the floor. Kat had fallen silent, and, once Sabrina had caught Mamoru, she sat up slowly. We all looked at each other. “Frick,” Sabrina cursed. “How could they have found out?” “And why didn’t they call you?” Kat asked me disbelievingly. I just shook my head numbly. “What if we don’t go? We could sneak back to lunch and say we hadn’t heard it.” “They’ll just call us again,” Sabrina said, fingers pushing into her forehead. “Who would’ve known? Mrs. Pollard? Mr. David? Frick.” We stood up stiffly; my legs felt like lead. Sabrina put Mamoru back into his cage, and he snuffled along in happy indifference. Kat laid the last few carrots in his food bowl, and we stuck the cage top back on. “Should I go too?” I asked, my mouth dry. My feeling of empowerment had gone kerplunk. “No,” Sabrina said shortly. Kat made a face, but then assented. “Yeah, just go to lunch.” We came to the door, and in a few moments, it was locked behind us, and our secret world was no more. We plodded out of the hallway, and the shapes of buildings and lockers and windows that had once been tokens

of electrifying excitement were once again the old, peeling fixtures of a middle school. “It was worth it,” Kat was fuming to herself. “We shouldn’t get in trouble for helping an abused hamster.” Sabrina was silent. “Good luck,” I said stupidly when we parted ways. “We’re not getting in trouble,” Kat said fiercely. Sabrina just nodded in my direction. I watched them go, then sat down alone in the cafeteria, foodless and friendless, for the worst lunch ever. Q There were only about ten minutes remaining for lunch, and I spent every one mentally rehashing the events of our abbreviated adventure, trying to figure out who had told on us and why I hadn’t been called to the office. I kept expecting to hear the intercom say something like, “Casey LeBlanc, please report to the office. I repeat, Casey LeBlanc, please report to the office. You are so screwed. Thank you.” Crazy scenarios played out in my head. I wondered if maybe they didn’t call my name because they knew I had gotten into OTMS, and they were trying to keep my record clean. I imagined transferring to OTMS and having an English class where we actually read books. Then I imagined the principal interrupting a class discussion on the merit of Laertes, announcing that he had heard about the hamster incident, and I would be kicked out of school forever. I wished Sabrina were there to tell me I was being stupid. And then I realized that if I could imagine what Sabrina would say, then maybe I could tell it to myself in her stead. So I mentally did my best impression of Sabrina. Don’t be stupid, man, I thought in a Sabrina way. No one’s going to kick you out of school because of a hamster. It actually helped a little. So by the time I had gotten to PE, I was a lot calmer. I congregated with the rest of the class out by the run-down baseball field, and squinted in the sun as Coach Cole went through the rules of baseball. Baseball had a lot of extra rules in middle school, such as, “No gum, no cursing, outfielders can’t sit down,” and, “No throwing the ball at the runner.” I leaned against the fence, kind of upset that outfielders couldn’t sit down. Could they maybe lay down? He hadn’t mentioned that in the rules. Coach adjusted the elastic on his pants and took the roll sheet out from under his arm. Everything went smoothly until, “Katherine?” He looked up. “Katherine Morely?” I felt a hundred tiny spiders suddenly jump up and do a dance in my stomach. “Where’s Katherine?”

“She’s here,” I said, “but she got called to the office.” There was a small chorus of “Oooh” from the class. “Alright,” Coach said. When he got to Sabrina, I had to explain the same thing again, which really didn’t help my nerves. Once he had finished the roll call, he picked three volunteers to go with him and get the bats and balls. This was how PE usually went. We spent a whole lot of time hanging out in the sun, and near the end finally got to play something. Once Coach was out of sight, Julia Long took the opportunity to call over to Chris Hartnett. “Oooh, Chris, are you sad Kat’s gone?” My insides electrified. “Why?” he asked scornfully. “Oh, I don’t know,” Jessica answered, swinging her glossy hair. “I heard you two are in love.” Chris actually snorted. “Yeah, right.” His guy friends were laughing. “Seriously?” one asked him. I stood up straighter. I was having a lot of trouble tapping into my inner Sabrina. “Yeah right,” Chris said again, derisively as possible. Then he stood up on his tiptoes and started talking in a fake girly voice. “I have buckteeth and I’m Sailor Moon!” he said, and his friends erupted into laughter. And then it happened. I, Casey, did something. I said, and loudly, “Chris Hartnett!” Everyone looked right at me. “You’re a jerk.” Everyone looked right at him. There was a stunned pause, and a few quiet Oooh’s. “Whatever,” he said, and walked over to the water fountain. I leaned back onto the fence, wondering if maybe I had found my inner Kat too. Q By the time Kat and Sabrina got back, the game had actually started, and I was standing in the outfield. I may now have been The Casey Who Did Something, but I hadn’t been able to bring myself to actually try laying down. I figured I should pick my battles. But when I saw Kat and Sabrina walking out to the baseball field, the dancing spiders returned with a vengeance. Well, Sabrina was walking. Kat was striding forward, head down, outstripping Sabrina by far. Something was wrong. They must have really gotten in trouble. A fear seized me that Kat was mad at me for not having been there. Kat ignored Coach Cole’s instructions to get in line to bat and marched down the diamond, straight through the middle of the game. She was clenching her jacket with her fist, and it snapped back and forth behind her. She was coming straight toward me. She kept walking faster and faster, and for a moment I had a desperate, bunny-like urge to flee.

She was on me. “Did you get in tr—” “What happened to my jacket?” she demanded, her voice taut. Her round face was pushed into hard angles and narrowed eyes. “I—I don’t know. Is it ripped or something?” I asked weakly. “Yeah. It’s ripped.” She thrust it toward my face. There was a long, oblong hole under the sleeve. “Did you do this?” I fought the bunny instinct again. “I—” The memory of hearing that ripping fabric sound was invading my thoughts and making me hesitate, leaving me wide open. “I think when we were in the English hall, I might have accidentally pulled too hard on it,” I mumbled. “This was my favorite jacket,” she said sharply. She pursued eye contact like a hunter. “I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to,” I said defensively. There was a pause. The wind gusted, and she flung her hair out of her face. “I want you to pay for it,” she said, testing me. “Ok,” I submitted. She drove her words into me like icicles. “I want you to pay twenty dollars.” “What?” “This jacket cost twenty dollars at the Gap! Do you think I’m lying?” she yelled. “No—I—can’t you just sew it?” “No! You ruined it!” “What are you guys doing?” Coach Cole bellowed from midfield. “Katherine, you’re supposed to be in line to bat!” Kat continued to stare straight into my eyes, breathing in and out, faster and louder each time. “Katherine! Now!” She turned around and started toward home base. Then she whipped around toward me and flung the jacket at my legs. “Casey, you’re a freak!” she shouted. And then she was gone, a small figure down the field and then behind the fence, while my heart beat like a caged animal. I kicked the jacket off my legs, took a shaky breath, and realized I was crying. The outfielders were all looking at me, and I tried to stop myself. I squeezed my arm, tighter and tighter, while blood roared through my head. Suddenly I started walking. I walked across the outfield and through a gap in the fence. I heard my name, but I kept going, my feet pounding into the ground. I rounded the corner of the school and sat down. Hard. When I let go of my wrist, all the tears came out too.

Q I was starting to vaguely wonder if PE or even school was over and everyone had left me, when Sabrina appeared with a crunching of leaves. “Hey.” She sat down against the wall next to me. I looked down at my feet and tried to wipe the dried tears off my face. She paused for a bit. Then, “I told Coach Cole you had to go to the bathroom for ‘girl problems.’ He always believes girls when they say that.” I smiled a little. “I’m watching out for homeruns,” I explained. I saw her smile too. But then her look changed. “She shouldn’t have yelled at you. You didn’t deserve that, man.” I looked fiercely back down at my shoes, feeling tears pushing behind my eyes again. She didn’t talk for a little while. I kept thinking about how I had just defended Kat, had just told off Christ Hartnett for her. I didn’t like thinking about it, because it mixed me up and make me mad. It would’ve been much easier if I were just wrong; then I could apologize and everything would be ok. But I wasn’t sure that I was. “Did you guys get in trouble?” I asked finally. Sabrina shifted a little. “It actually wasn’t about that at all. They told us that if Kat’s dad comes to pick us up today, we’re not supposed to go with him.” I looked up. “Why?” “I don’t know. Something bad must’ve happened.” “Like what?” “I don’t know.” I felt something heavy clunk down in my chest. “They actually wanted her to talk to the guidance counselor. But she didn’t.” A breeze blew through some nearby trees and scattered leaves and acorns to the ground. Sabrina shook her head slowly. She glanced at her watch. “PE’s over in two minutes. Are you going to talk to the guidance counselor about OTMS? You could have an excuse to be late to Geometry.” I stared at my shoes. “I’m staying at Rawlings,” I said weakly. Sabrina spoke with a sudden firmness. “Man, OTMS is a good school. If you got in, you should go.” She stood up and brushed off her pants. “I gotta go now, though. I’ll see you after school.” “Yeah,” I said in confusion. I heard her crunch back out to the field. A breath of wind stirred the leaves a little at my feet, and I heard the bell jangle from far away. I blinked blearily. I had to decide. I could

go to Geometry; I could go see the guidance counselor. Or, I could walk all the way home and hide under my bed until everyone forgot about me and I had to live off of whatever was left in my lunchbox. That option would’ve been the best, except that I had given away all of my carrots. I stood up. At least with the second one I would have an excuse to be late to Geometry.

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