Jonah coughed. Suddenly Nathaniel’s focus was interrupted and he was wrenched from the isolated world of his writing, and sitting back behind a desk in a classroom with twenty-eight other people. The twenty-nine students sat in three rows of desks spaced evenly apart. Nathaniel sat at the left edge of the back row, right by the window. Nathaniel’s desk was extremely messy, covered in a thick layer of scribbled-on papers. However, compared to Jonah’s desk, which was just to his right, Nathaniel’s desk was the cleanest thing in the universe.

Jonah’s desk was covered in a huge, unstable mass of books, notebooks, loose papers and other miscellanea. Jonah was digging clutter out of his desk in a frenzy and piling it on his desk noisily. Nathaniel tried to resume his writing, but was immensely distracted by the noise.

“Excuse me, could you be a bit more quiet?” Nathaniel whispered.

Jonah simply groaned in reply. “I’m looking for my writing notebook. I can’t find it in my black hole of a desk.”

Nathaniel sighed, irritated. “Here, let me help you look. Are you sure it’s not in this pile?” He gestured to the quivering heap on Jonah’s desk.

At that moment the heavy pre-algebra textbook at the very top of the pile began to teeter dangerously, and before Nathaniel could steady it it had begun to slide down the side of the pile, disturbing the precious balance of the entire pile and causing every last thing to fall to the floor, each individual item making its own loud thud. By the time it was all over every last person in the room was staring at them in awe.

Nathaniel had his face in his hands at this point, so he could not see Miss Lloyd storming toward them from the front of the room. “What’s all this noise?” she asked sweetly. Both Nathaniel and Jonah knew that the sweetness was only a false pretense, and that made their predicament all the more terrifying.

Jonah tried to talk, but all that came out was a small, pathetic squeak.

Ms. Lloyd smiled. “Is something wrong?”

Jonah’s lips convulsed strangely, as if he wanted to open his mouth, but he couldn’t quite will it to open. Finally, his lips burst open and after a few deep breaths he managed to make himself speak.

“I-I-I c-can’t f-find m-my wr-writing n-notebook,” he said quietly.

“What’s that, sweetie? I can’t hear you.”

“I can’t find my writing notebook.”

Miss Lloyd smiled. “Here, let me help you look.” She reached inside his desk and within and instant had found the writing notebook. She held it out to Jonah.

Jonah accepted the notebook and put it on his desk. We began to start cleaning all of Jonah’s clutter off the ground and wrestling it back into the desk.

Now, at this moment something very strange and unexplainable happened: the inside of Jonah’s desk lit up with a bright light which erupted out, us in the light.

And then, quite suddenly, everything turned black as Nathaniel lost consciousness.

One passenger, two rows down, with his back facing Horace was playing Poker with someone else. Horace recognized the passenger immediately: his name was Tristan Tallow. His opponent was Harry Jackson.

Tristan was clearly winning. He was currently scooping a heap of money to his side of the table and attempting to fit it all into his coat pockets.

Horace smiled. He had found today’s target. He watched him the whole train ride, evaluating him. He was far too cocky to bother counting the money; he wouldn’t notice if any of it was gone.

—

The train stopped. Tristan stood up and slung his backpack over his shoulder. He walked calmly to the train exit and disembarked, with Horace shadowing him from a distance.

As Tristan took his first step out of the train, something fell from his pocket: a dollar bill. Horace’s eyes lit up: he wouldn’t even have to pick the boy’s pocket; half of his work had been done for him. He stooped down and picked up the bill, then put it in his pocket. Tristan didn’t seem to have noticed.

Horace followed him the entire walk to school, and each time anything fell out of Tristan’s pocket he was there to recover it.

—

Horace entered the classroom, smiling to himself. Ms. Lemming was standing at the front of the room, writing something on the chalkboard. She whipped around as Horace entered and looked at him with furious eyes.
“How dare you smile in my classroom?” she barked. “Get to your desk. Class starts in two minutes.”

Ms. Lemming must have been in a bad mood that morning; she never went so far as to be intolerant of smiling. Giggling, talking, even breathing through your mouth were all things that could get you chained to the wall and flayed, but smiling? Horace quickly straightened out his face lest he be burned alive in a bed of hot coals.

—

The bell rang. Lunch-time. Horace walked outside with the rest of the class.
They ate lunch in the courtyard outside of the school. Moldy, warped wooden picnic tables with benches that were always damp from left-over rain water were scattered all around. A hedge about four feet tall went all around the perimeter of the courtyard, ensuring that none of the children would escape. At the front there was an opening in the center and a wrought iron fence.

Horace always sat at the table in the far corner of the courtyard, observing his classmates. Nobody ever sat at the table with him. His general hostility to anyone who dared approach made sure of that.

So, of course, it was a surprise when Bartholomew, who had been sitting at a table close to the center of the courtyard, stood up and began to approach Horace’s table, confidently at first, but more and more tentatively the closer he came.

Horace said nothing to Bartholomew; he simply stared at him, waiting.

“I—I saw you following Tristan,” he managed to get out hesitantly.

Horace squinted at Bartholomew. “No you didn’t.”

Bartholomew looked taken aback. “Well, maybe I didn’t, then. But I’ve got a proposition for you.”

Horace cocked an eyebrow. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Go on.”

“I—I see you taking things all the time. So—so you must be pretty good at stealing.”

Horace tilted his head to the side. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Tell me your proposition.”

“Well, umm… I need to break into Ms. Lemming’s house.”

Horace’s eyes went wide and his eyebrows shot up. “You’re insane. I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve never stolen anything in my life.”

Bartholomew sighed. “She took something from me—a whole lot of money. I didn’t have time to count it, but it’s a very large sum. I’ll give you… a fourth of it if you help me.”

Horace smiled. “I’ve never stolen anything, I’m telling you,” he explained. But he drew very close to Bartholomew and whispered in his ear, “I’ll do it for a third.”

Bartholomew grinned widely and walked away.

—

For the third time that day, a bell rang. School was over, and with perfect timing, too: Horace had just finished formulating his plan.

He found Bartholomew as he was leaving the school, and he grabbed his shoulder. “Wait for everyone to leave.” He gestured to the hedge that surrounded the courtyard. “Then we’ll hide behind that and wait for Ms. Lemming to leave with Alice.”

After the courtyard cleared out, Horace and Bartholomew both concealed themselves behind the hedge by crawling through it. On the other side was an empty field of grass, overgrown with weeds. After brushing all of the leaves, thorns and twigs off of himself, Bartholomew put his face to the hedge, trying to see through it, to the great annoyance of Horace. He pulled Bartholomew back and whispered in his ear, “Don’t get so close to it; you’re making too much noise. When Ms. Lemming comes out we’ll hear her.”

And so they waited. Almost an hour went by before Ms. Lemming and her daughter, Alice, finally came out of the school. They made their way down the courtyard and out through the fence, whose rusty hinges creaked as it swung open.

Ms. Lemming came to the sidewalk, and to the boys’ horror, she turned left and started to walk. She would walk right by the field and see them, and what would happen then?

Horace shoved Bartholomew face-first into the hedge, and dived in right behind him. He crossed his fingers that he hadn’t made too much noise. If they got caught it would mean certain death.

Horace saw them vaguely through the hedge. Ms. Lemming stopped abruptly. Her head shot up, and she started to probe the air with her nose. She sniffed erratically for more than a minute. Her eyes swept around suspiciously for a few seconds before she was finally satisfied and continued on. Bartholomew let out a sigh of relief.

After waiting for a few seconds, Horace crawled out from the hedge and back into the courtyard, where he crouched behind the hedge. Bartholomew followed, eager to get out. Horace hazarded just a peek over the hedge, and only one long enough to see Ms. Lemming and Alice turn a corner to the left.

Horace stood up and hurriedly ushered Bartholomew to follow him through the wrought-iron fence. He swiftly walked to the end of the street and peered around a building. He saw Ms. Lemming and Alice about halfway down the street.

And so they followed Ms. Lemming in this manner, peeking around corners and waiting for her to get to the end of the street, then running to the next corner. As they went, Bartholomew recognized this path as the one he usually took to the train station after school. He wondered if that was where Ms. Lemming was headed… surely not, he concluded. She must ride the luxury train that Tristan and Horace and all of the wealthier children took. But that was far on the other end of town. She had to be going somewhere else.

—

Eventually, they came to the train station. Oddly enough, it was Bartholomew’s train. He wondered why Ms. Lemming couldn’t afford to take the luxury train.

As Ms. Lemming boarded the train, Horace gestured for Bartholomew to follow him. They got on at the opposite entrance and found a seat a few rows away from Ms. Lemming, so that she wouldn’t notice them but they would be able to see when Ms. Lemming got off.

As the train lurched to its start and the beginnings of nausea came over Horace (Bartholomew was used to the feeling, and could overcome it easily by now) Bartholomew whispered to Horace, “I wonder why she can’t afford to ride the luxury train.”

Horace pressed his hands to his face and groaned.

—

They rode the train for about a half-hour before Ms. Lemming finally disembarked. Bartholomew and Horace got off the train a few seconds after her and Alice, long enough that an entire crowd of people had collected for them to hide in. They exited the train station and Horace scanned the crowd for Ms. Lemming.

Meanwhile, Bartholomew was observing their surroundings. They were in one of the bad parts of town. The buildings were covered in graffiti, the curb was crumbling in places, and along with the water that trickled down the gutter, there also flowed dirty tissues, candy wrappers, chewed-up wads of gum, and all sorts of litter.

“Ms. Lemming lives in this neighborhood? This is horrible! It’s worse then where I live,” remarked Bartholomew.

Horace finally picked Ms. Lemming out of the crowd. She held Alice’s wrist tightly in her hand, so that she wouldn’t lose her in the crowd. She had a look of concern on her face. Concern? This was not an emotion Bartholomew thought Ms. Lemming capable of. Was she actually worried about her daughter?

Bartholomew was jerked from his thoughts by Horace’s voice. “Come on.”

Bartholomew followed, absentmindedly frowning.

—

As Alice and Ms. Lemming walked on, the crowd began to disperse as everyone went their separate ways. Once the crowd started to become too thin, Bartholomew and Horace reverted to their old system of looking around the corners. After about five minutes of this, Horace looked around the corner and found that Ms. Lemming and Alice had disappeared from the sidewalk. After scanning the street, he realized that they had gone up a driveway and were now standing at the door of what they presumed was Ms. Lemming’s house.

It could not possibly have been more different from what Bartholomew had imagined. He had always thought she lived in a five-story castle, with guard dogs patrolling the perimeter and turrets on the battlements. The house she had just entered could be described in two words: falling apart.
The whole building seemed to be sinking into the ground. It was slanted sharply to the left. The concrete steps up to the porch had several chunks missing, and there was a large hole in the shingled roof. On the left side there was a wooden fence with a gate, which presumably led to the back yard.

Bartholomew gasped. “This is where she lives? Ms. Lemming lives in that—that thing?”

Horace smiled. “Looks like we found it,” he said cheerfully. “Now all we have to do is break in, find the money, and take it.”

Bartholomew nodded weakly, but he was already having second thoughts. How could he take the money from Ms. Lemming now, knowing that she lived in poverty, that her house was steadily sinking into the ground?
Horace went around the corner and moved towards the house, but Bartholomew stopped him.

“The deal’s off,” he said with conviction. “I can’t take the money from her now. Just look at her house! She needs the money more than I do.”

Horace stared at him strangely, then turned around and simply resumed his walk to the gate.

“Wait!” Bartholomew called out to him. “You can’t do that!”

Horace looked back at him, smiled, and began to walk across Ms. Lemming’s lawn. Bartholomew bit his lip and ran after him. He caught Horace’s arm just before he opened the gate and pulled him back. “Horace, you can’t steal from Ms. Lemming!”

Horace broke free and swung open the gate. He tiptoed inside with Bartholomew close behind.

Behind the gate was a lawn of dead grass. The grass came right up against the wall of the house at the right side, and then went around a corner. In the wall to the right there was a window which looked into Ms. Lemming’s living room. One wall of it was devoted entirely to a very large bookshelf, which was filled from top to bottom. The rest of the walls were covered in flaking yellow paint. There were two very old-looking armchairs in opposite corners. Their cushions were torn in several places and one of the chairs was missing an entire arm. Sitting in one of the armchairs was Ms. Lemming, absorbed in a thick hardback tome.

Horace had noticed Ms. Lemming in the window and was stooped down to walk past it without being noticed as he crept around to the back door.
Just as Bartholomew was creeping past the window and Horace was disappearing around the corner, Bartholomew had an idea. He drew a pen out of his pocket and scribbled something on his hand: “Somebody is coming through your back door to rob you.” Then he knocked on the window twice and pressed his hand to the window, still crouched down so Ms. Lemming would not see him. He waited a few seconds before withdrawing his hand and running for his life.

Ms. Lemming shrieked and jumped out of her chair. She ran to the window and looked out of it in both directions. Bartholomew was nowhere to be seen. She heard the back door creep open.

—

The next day, Bartholomew arrived at school late. He noticed two strange things that day as he sat in his desk: first, Horace was absent today. He could imagine he was in the hospital recovering from a severe head injury. Second, Ms. Lemming did not reprimand him when he walked in. She simply turned her back on the chalkboard and smiled at him. He swore that she winked, but it could just have been a figment of his imagination.

Tristan’s demeanor, on the other hand, was quite calm. He slouched in his seat as if the card game was almost boring him, which, in fact, it was. Tristan was going to win. He always did, and both him and Harry knew it. This time would be no different. He could beat Harry in Poker with his eyes closed. Harry practically gave Tristan his daily allowance every morning, on the hope that some glorious day he might at last win.

“Hey, is somebody in there?” snapped Harry, pounding on the table. “Wake up and put down your hand.”

Tristan cocked his head mockingly. “Sure you don’t want to fold?”

“Just put down your hand,” Harry growled.

Tristan made a big show of stretching out his arms with a gigantic yawn.
“Do it already!” Harry roared.

Tristan slapped his hand of five cards down on the table. The glare of the sun through the window made it hard for Harry to see what they were, so he craned his neck across the table to read them.

Ten of Diamonds.

Seven of Clubs.

Ten of Hearts.

Seven of Spades.

Harry gulped before he looked at the last card.

Ten of Clubs.

“Full house,” declared Tristan triumphantly. “And you?” He didn’t need Harry to say it; his reaction said everything. Harry was now wallowing on the floor of the train, pulling at his greasy brown hair.

“High seven,” he moaned in a muffled voice eventually, laying face-down.
Tristan proceeded to scoop the giant mass of coins and bills in the center of the table to his side, using both of his arms. “Go again?” he asked, winking at Harry.

“I’m broke,” replied the heap on the ground, looking up at Tristan with a look that could make a man drop dead.

Just as Tristan finished cramming the heap of money into his pockets, the train slowed to a gentle stop. He walked jovially to the door and hopped off, leaving behind the sobbing form of Harry.

—

Tristan sat in his desk at the back of the classroom, waiting for school to begin. He turned around to look at the clock by the door. It was 7:59. One more minute. It was strange that the teacher wasn’t here yet; she was usually at school at least half-an-hour early with her daughter Alice.

The bell rang. Tristan turned back to the front of the room, and started with a yelp. Ms. Lemming was standing at the front of the classroom, writing at the chalkboard. He looked from her to the door and back again. “There’s no way she came through the door to the front of the class without me seeing her! Somehow she must have turned invisible, or phased through a wall or something. That woman is terrifying!” he thought.

Ms. Lemming must have been wearing seven-league boots (or have teleported in using Black Magic) when she walked in, for Alice was only just entering through the door. Tristan blushed when Alice smiled at him as she walked by.

Ms. Lemming whipped around at Tristan’s yelp, faster than the human eye could see. She looked around the room with maniacal eyes, attempting to sniff out the source of the noise with her nose. “Who yelled?” she said in her sharp, icy voice. “You should all know by now that no one is allowed to speak so much as a syllable in my class unless called upon.”

Suddenly, defying all known laws, she seemed to perceive that it was Tristan who had yelled, despite his perfect Poker face he had been practicing for years. “You! Come up here immediately.”

Tristan tore his gaze off of Alice and his mouth dropped open. “What? But I didn’t do—”

“You will speak when told to,” snapped Ms. Lemming.

Tristan clammed up instantly and shuffled to the front of the room for his punishment.

In that instant, the door opened, so quietly that no one in the room but Ms. Lemming heard it. Her head shot up and she looked to the door, sniffing the air. “Bartholomew!” she shouted, before the door even opened wide enough for her to see who it was. “I have told you time and time again to arrive ON TIME.”

Ms. Lemming seemed to instantly forget Tristan and she strode over to the back door. She swooped down on Bartholomew and looked down on him, holding him a foot above the ground by the neck. “Please—ack—I can’t—urk—breathe!” he managed to choke out.

Ms. Lemming released his neck and simply spun back around and walked back to the front of the room. Bartholomew fell to the ground and walked to his desk massaging his neck.

He stopped and put a hand in his pocket. He felt around, and suddenly his face went very, very white. He frantically patted every part of his body, apparently looking for something. A single tear slid down his face and he continued to his desk.

Tristan was already sitting back in his desk, his head lowered lest Ms. Lemming remember her fury at him. Bartholomew seated himself in the desk next to Tristan, massaging his neck and shooting glares at Ms. Lemming when she was turned around. Every time he did, she turned around and sniffed wildly.

—

After seven excruciating hours, the bell finally rang. Tristan packed all of his books into his bag and slung it over his shoulder and walked towards the door. Bartholomew stopped him outside.

“You play Poker?” he asked.

Tristan cocked an eyebrow. “Yes. Why?”

“I’ll play a—a hand with you.”

“Sure,” Tristan replied.

“Just one thing—you have to teach me first.”

Tristan wanted to laugh, but contained it. He smiled at Bartholomew. “Of course.”

“Oh, and,” said Bartholomew, “I don’t have any money.”

“Well, you’d better find yourself some,” Tristan said, almost with a burst of laughter which he disguised as a cough. He sat down cross-legged on the courtyard in front of the school. He began dealing out cards as Bartholomew wandered around picking coins off of the ground.

Eventually Bartholomew had gathered a small handful of various coins, and he seated himself across from Tristan.

He picked up the hand of five cards he had been dealt, and looked at them. He furrowed his brow and showed Tristan his entire hand.

“What are these?”

—

Thirty minutes had passed. A giant pile of coins and bills and all currencies imaginable was strewn about—all of it next to Bartholomew. Against all odds, he was actually winning. Tristan was sprawled out on the concrete ground pounding his fists on the ground and belting out a constant stream of curses as Bartholomew folded up his shirt to make a pouch and packed all of his winnings into it.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, Ms. Lemming was towering over Bartholomew. She had not made a single noise approaching them, but had just appeared out of thin air.

“Have you two children been gambling?”

She began to breathe very heavily, and suddenly all of her fury unleashed itself as she slapped Bartholomew across the face.

“You will give me that money,” she commanded him. A man much braver than Bartholomew would have quailed under the look of utter maniacal hatred she gave Bartholomew, and instantly offered up the money, begging her to take it from them.

Bartholomew’s face was as pale as a ghost’s as he emptied all of the money onto the courtyard and gave every last piece of it to Ms. Lemming.

All the while, Alice had been standing behind her mother, and as Ms. Lemming stormed back to the school, she lingered only long enough to say to Tristan, “Poker is for losers.”

Bartholomew shrugged his backpack into a more comfortable position, slouched down in his seat, and stared longingly out of the window. He gazed at the telephone poles as they flitted by, as if fleeing from the train in terror.

The train was small. There were seats—uncomfortable ones with torn up cushions that made Bartholomew itch irritatingly—in aisles of two along the walls. Both the size of the train and the size of the seats only allowed a tiny margin in the middle for people to negotiate their way through. Most of the seats were full—with sickened passengers who yelped at every vibration, however small—and Bartholomew was getting more and more claustrophobic with every unbearable moment. Sitting next to him was an overweight man wearing a stained orange shirt and red sweatpants (also food stained in several places). He was fast asleep, and snoring at an obnoxious volume, with a string of drool dripping from the corner of his mouth, which looked to be ringed with nacho cheese.

Bartholomew suffered noiselessly—but for a few protests from his upset stomach—as the train traveled along, occasionally stopping to let relieved passengers off at their stops. Bartholomew stared after the people leaving with envy—his stop was at the end of the line. He groaned. This felt like it was never going to end.

Finally—after another half-hour of repeatedly having to push his sleeping neighbor off of his shoulder and wiping the disgusting man’s spit off his shirt—Bartholomew shot up excitedly as the train jerked to a gut-wrenching stop. He hastily unbuckled his belt and pushed his way past the sleeping man, who groaned and mumbled something about a cheeseburger but did not awake. Bartholomew sprinted to the sliding door off the train and was the first one to exit through it.

He fell through the door and onto the dimly-lit train platform. The place was large, empty and grey, with a smooth concrete floor (cracked in some places), walls, and ceiling. It was lit by hanging light bulbs that descended from the ceiling from frayed chords and cast a dim glow on the dismal place. A moth flew repeatedly at one of the bulbs, making a quiet clinking sound.

There were four exits from the train station. Bartholomew sprinted for the closest one, threw himself at the door, and stumbled out into the blinding light.

The sun dazzled his eyes; he was momentarily blinded. He squatted down with his hands on his knees for support, waiting to regain his sight. Once he did, he took a moment to survey his surroundings and recover from his nausea. He was on the right side of the sidewalk next to a wide street with four lanes of cars crawling along in the morning traffic.

Finally having fought down the urge to empty his stomach into the gutter, he checked his watch. School should be starting about fifteen minutes from now. He should arrive on time, if not a little earlier. He set off at a brisk walk with his hands crammed inside his pockets for warmth.

He fingered the handful of coins in his left pocket, the change from his train ticket. His dad would want that back once Bartholomew got home.

Something rattled on the sidewalk behind Bartholomew. He felt around in his pocket, and reaching under some of the coins he found, to his extreme frustration, a hole in the pocket of his jacket. He glowered, and turned around just in time to see two coins roll on their sides through the sewer grate in the gutter. He screwed his eyes shut and bit his lip. He ran an agitated hand through his long hair. It would be all right, he told himself. His father wouldn’t notice two coins gone.

Bartholomew’s family was poor. They barely had enough money to feed themselves every day, yet his parents insisted that most of the money be used to put Bartholomew through school. It made him angry, to think that for once he could have a decent meal, but instead he had to learn long division, and write essays. There was no school in their town, so he had to ride the train-the wretched train-into the city to learn in the school there.

He roused himself from his thoughts. There were seven minutes left to get to school, and he still couldn’t even see the schoolhouse up ahead. He quickened his pace, which had slowed down with his bitter thoughts.

Something twinkled out of the corner of his eye. Curious, he stopped and turned around. Laying in a puddle in the gutter with a few spilled copper coins by the street was a wallet.

A wallet.

He walked over and stooped down to pick it up. It was made of leather, which felt smooth and comforting in his hands. He could tell how old it was by its worn surface from a life of use. He opened it greedily.

The smiling face of a beautiful young girl stared out at him from a photograph in the wallet. She had silky brown hair and smooth tan skin. Her eyes were beautiful, the color of ocean waves. Bartholomew’s gaze lingered on her for a second before he saw a velcro pocket in the wallet and tore it open hastily.

Out spilled a handful of coins, of varied size and quality. They were the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.

He counted them up.

He gasped.

There was enough money for… well, almost anything he could think of! He could give it to his parents; they would buy food for the family! But no… they would surely snatch it from him and use the money for school. He wouldn’t give it to them, he decided.

He could buy his own food! He could have the first decent meal in his life!

He could—

His fantasies were interrupted by the distant ring, almost like… a school bell! He was late! He must have been fantasizing for a full six minutes! He hastily stuffed the coins into his pocket—his left jacket pocket—without realizing his folly, and sprinted off to the school.