Chapter 23

The next day, all of our classes were cancelled due to the events that occurred last night. That only meant one thing for me... Detention time!

We were only back in our dormitories for about an hour and I snuck in a shower before we had to report back to detention. I wore my other My Chemical Romance shirt - yes, I have more than one; you never know when your other one will get dirty - and my distressed jeans. Quickly, I grabbed my pen and my diary before heading straight back down to room one. By the time Chase and I got there, Tikaye was at the teacher’s desk, drawing up blueprints. We looked at each other and then glanced at her quizzically,

"Uh, Tee," Chase began, "what are you doing?" Tikaye looked up from her blueprints and smiled at us,

"Well, I figured that if we’re gonna be stuck here for two years, we should make it our own. I can get some supplies and stuff from the maintenance shed because I’m a shape shifter and I have no trouble when it comes to getting things that I want," she winked at us both. "I’m gonna need your help, though. So, today is the day we kind of make the room look a hell of a lot better than this old place." She gestured around the room. "I’ll be right back," she smiled, transforming into a mouse. I could never get used to that. I looked around the room and noticed that Tikaye had drawn measurements in the corners to show where she was going to put the new carpet in. When she got back and transformed back into herself, she had heaps of supplies. She wasn’t kidding when she said she could get things she wanted. Just before she morphed into a cheetah, she smiled, "you might want to get off the floor," huh? I quickly found my way to the windowsill and stood while Tikaye ran around the room. She was such a ninja. It had only been ten minutes and she had finished laying new carpet! Talk about cheetahs being as fast as lightning, but who knew cheetahs could lay carpet?

When she turned back into herself, I stared at her in bewilderment,

"How did you just lay that much carpet in ten minutes as a cheetah?" She didn’t really answer my question; she just shrugged. I looked around the room and realised that the old carpet was gone and there wasn’t even a trace of it. What she did with the old carpet I will never know. The new carpet was actually black, rather than being stained black by dirt or God knows what else. I never even got to see what was under the carpet; that’s how fast she was. I noticed I couldn’t see Chase anywhere and then about two minutes later, he appeared in the room, behind Tikaye.

"The same way I lay the new floorboards in, Mavra," he smiled and then Tikaye shrugged again, embarrassed,

"I don’t waste time," Yeah, no s**t, Sherlock. She’d got rid of the old desks and now the room was just a big, empty space. I felt useless. They’d both contributed to make the room more bearable and I hadn’t really done anything. I protested my uselessness by asking them,

"What can I do to help, guys?" Tikaye smiled and replied,

"You, my friend, can go and get the couch,"

"Wait, what? Did you just say you wanted me to get a couch?" She nodded and then provided some more explanation.

"The couch is a bright retro red one from the shop down the road. Chase’s parents paid for it because they’re rich," Tikaye looked embarrassed at having said that.

"And they don’t really give a s**t about me anyway," Chase murmured darkly.

"So, what you’ll need to do is be a mouse the whole time and when you touch the couch, it’ll turn into something like cheese because it’s an inanimate object. Carry it back here without being caught and when I turn you back into a person; the couch should change back too." I nodded but then realised, where the heck was I actually meant to go? "Oh, it’s in the furniture shop a few miles from here. Lucky mice are fast." I rolled my eyes;

"Alright, let’s do it then." Tikaye made me into a mouse and then I was off to the furniture shop. I climbed through a little hole in the wall in a different room and somehow got to the breakfast hall. It was hard being a mouse. I was undetected for a little while but then Stacey - one of CB’s goons - screamed,

"Ew! A mouse!" And that was my cue to leave, folks! I ran as fast as my little mouse legs would take me and I finally approached the gates and slunk under them. I knew my way around the city because we’d been staying in a huge mansion for about a week and being orphans, we never got to stay in places for very long, so we had to be quick about remembering our surroundings. The furniture shop was only three doors down from the mansion that we’d lived in, so that was handy. Now the only thing I had to do was dodge cars and people. Luckily, at six a.m. there were hardly any people on the streets, but there was this one car that kept trying to throw water at me. I wanted to find them and give them a piece of my mind - more like a piece of my fist, but being a mouse and all, I’d better not because they’d have to taste my blind fury! Wait a minute, was that a pun? Blind, mouse; like the nursery rhyme... Never mind; I’d better just keep quiet. Running and running on my four paws, I found the furniture shop and snuck in the back entrance. Running around the room like a headless chicken, I tried to find a retro red couch but despite being so bright, it was kind of hard to find because there was not a single window or anything that provided the slightest inkling of light. Bingo! I saw our couch and ran to it, hoping Tikaye was right about it turning into cheese because I didn’t think that - even with my werewolf-enhanced strength - I would be able to carry a couch about ten miles - or sneak it past the gates. I put my paw on the couch and then it shrunk into cheese and I let out a squeak of relief. Suddenly, I heard the doors open. RUN!

"A mouse!" A redheaded, short woman shrieked in horror and it hurt my highly sensitive mouse ears. Now, I could truly empathise with mice. They are a lot more tolerant than we give them credit for. Oh, no! She grabbed the broom.

Swoosh!

"Bad mouse! Go on; get out of here!" With pleasure, ma’am! It wouldn’t surprise me if that was Stacey’s mom or something because they had surprisingly similar high pitched voices and hysterical mannerisms. While she was distracted with her hysterics, I ran out of the shop and the road was starting to get busy.

There were all sorts of cars on the road, but one stopped me dead in my tracks. It was the pest control van. They scooped me up and put me in a dark cage and I hated being in a cage. Boy, did I hate it.

"We’re just going to take you to a better place," they told me. I tried to gnaw at the bars but then I realised that I wasn’t a werewolf at this present moment; I was a mouse... a small little mouse. He put me in the back and then I yelled,

"LET ME OUT!" But it came out as a loud squeak. If I didn’t get out of the stupid cage soon, I would seriously hurt someone with my mouseness! I then hatched an idea. The car had begun moving by this time, so I was free to make any kind of noise, but I didn’t. Instead, I used my tale to unlock the cage. After many tries at unlocking the cage, I finally got it, scooped up my cheese and then came across another obstacle. How on earth do I get out of the moving van? The doors were jammed shut pretty tightly and I had no way of getting out. I wasn’t the only animal in the car. I saw a dog. A bloodhound. I must have smelt funny or something because he started to growl when I walked closer. If I got him to bark loud enough, the men would have to pull over and open the doors to see what was wrong. It was a foolproof plan. With the couch/cheese in my mouth I shuffled over to him and he started to bark and he got louder and louder and I was hoping they would stop the car, but they didn’t. I was kind of in a state of panic. Where were they taking all of us animals? Probably to their secret lair. Anxiety built up inside me but then the motor turned off and I certainly had no time to dwell. I quickly rushed out of the van and made my great escape back to the school. By the time I got back there, I was ready to collapse onto the floor.

"What took you so long, Avril?" Tikaye asked, turning me back into a person and the cheese into a couch like it was just another everyday task. She pushed the couch into the corner, where it would go in a living room and then she and Chase sat on it. "That’s enough for one day, I think." I couldn’t agree more! I sat beside them on the couch and it was quite a roomy couch. Chase pulled out his journal and I pulled out mine. Tikaye felt a little left out. I could tell by the look she had on her face. It was just as well she didn’t keep a diary like us because they remind you of everything you’ve done - every sin you’ve ever committed, but in a way, I thought it was good to keep one because you have everything to look back. They help keep you sane too - trust me, how do you think I’ve lasted this long? Chase said that he’d been through hell and had to write his in third person so that he never had to relive it but what was the point of writing it down if you so desperately wanted to forget it? I didn’t know, but I certainly wasn’t judging him for it. It’s God’s job to judge, not mine. He didn’t want to let go of it at first and then Tikaye had left the room and he finally handed it to me and told me,

"Please try your hardest not to think of me differently when you read it. I did some... horrible things in my past that I am not proud of." Haven’t we all? I nodded and gave him my word that I would not judge him no matter what it was he did. When he handed me the book, he buried his head in his hands, "you know I’ve never told anyone about this or shown this to anyone, right? I’ve never trusted anyone with this; you’d be the first one. Tikaye wouldn’t even be able to comprehend some of the things I’ve done. She’d never want to know me. Can I trust you with this, Avril?" I had to think about that for a moment. If the things were really as bad as he said they were, could I really promise him that I wouldn’t judge him? There was really only one way to find out. He trusted me with this and I just couldn’t let him down. I wouldn't let him down.

"Yes, Chase."