I stand up on tiptoes to get into the vent in the wall but end up falling on my butt. "OWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Mavis stares at me with a face of 'didn't I say you would fall?'

Amari looks in our direction and smiles at us. "What are you two doing?"

"Um, I heard a rat in the vent and wanted to check it out," I lie as best I can, but I can tell that he doesn't believe me.

"Yeah, sure you did," he says, in that one tone that always makes me feel like I have butterflies in my stomach. "You're lying."

"Yeah, I am lying, but that's because I'm afraid that you'll tell principle about me."

"Why would I do that?"

I think for a minute. "I don't know, I guess I'm just paranoid."

He smiles. "Well, I need to get to class, you two might want to come too."

I nod and we go to class.

Miss Melissa sits behind her desk with that bright smile. "Welcome Mr. Brown, Mr. Garcia, and Miss Willams."

Amari waves with a big grin. We sit in our assigned sits (that we picked on our first day of school.)

Mavis pulls her desk open and I catch a glimpse of a piece of paper, it reads: Dennis Brown is a bit-

She shuts her desk before I see the last word fully.

Which leaves me with one question, what did it say?

'Dennis is a bitch by Gerald'.

"What the actual fuck?!" I scream.

I throw it in the trash can. Who would write this?

Miss Melissa sets us a worksheet, an easy one, because its the first day, so I have plenty of time to gossip with Mavis and Amari.

"Psst, Mavis," I whisper.

"What, Lyra?" She sighs, looking up from her worksheet. It's a wordsearch, and she's dyslexic, so she takes longer than all of us.

"Who do you think Gerald is?"

"More importantly, who is Dennis?" Amari pipes up from behind us.

"My brother?" Mavis asks. "That's why I took the note."

"I didn't know you had a brother," Amari continues, looking puzzled.

"Three actually." Mavis sets her pen down, clearly not focussing on her worksheet anymore. "Dennis is the youngest. He's fifteen."

"I thought you were the youngest?" I asked.

"Youngest brother," Mavis sighed.

"Does he have a girlfriend?" Amari asked.

"Ew, Mari, why would you ask that? He broke up with her last week."

"Was her name...Gerald?" I asked.

"It was Gemma Whitley."

Miss Melissa stared at us, and we all turned back to our work.

And then I had an idea. "Hey Mavis," I whispered "isn't your dyslexia aide Paula Whitley?"

Mavis shrugged. "Yeah, they're sisters."

Amari smiled. "I think we found our Gerald."