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Outside, it was raining a little. A storm had picked up from a cool front coming through. It was a nice change from the hot days. The soft drumming of the raindrops against the gutters, a random and hypnotizing pattern, couldn't quell Emeral's mind as it whirred like a hive filled with restless bees.

She shut the CD-player off and took the earbuds out. Beneath the solace of her comforter she hugged Timber, her stuffed bear, and moved the covers so they were just over her shoulders. She wished they invented covers that didn't suffocate. That way she could hide in them longer, and sleep with them over her mouth on cold nights, so she didn't wake up with the back of her throat stinging.

She sighed and hugged her knees. Again, the feelings of that moment passed through her mind, and a few bubbles began the same journey they had earlier. But before they could get very far embarrassment pushed them back down.

She needed to think better. But how could she when she was so nervous? Nothing helped so far.

Maybe some meditation would. Eyes already closed she slipped off her bed and rested on her knees, palms on the ground at her sides. She'd done it a zillion times for the past two years, but hardly ever outside of Ju-Jitsu classes, which felt like a chore more than anything.

She didn't quite understand meditation: how did you think of nothing? She just tried to imagine a pitch-black room. It wasn't easy though, she really had to concentrate. The rain made it feel like a waterfall was nearby, rushing to drown out all other intrusion. In through the nose, out through the mouth, slower and slower...

Very suddenly her eyes snapped open. Had she dozed off? She looked at the guitar clock on her wall. No, it had only been a few minutes. She moved her legs out from under her, and stretched a little, catching her hands around her feet and pulling so that her nose bumped against her shin. She felt knotted, kinked and wound up. As she stretched, her ankles, hip and back started popping.

At last she rested her head against the dust-ruffle of her bed.

It did help, at least a little. But there were still butterflies. They fluttered about, asking the one little question she had been trying to wrap her head around. Do you like him?

She wasn't sure; didn't know how to answer. She wanted to say yes, but it wasn't as simple as that.

Maybe it was just the suddenness. Like one, two, skip-a-few, ninety-nine, a hundred. She didn't want to skip a few, she wanted to count all the numbers in between. The kiss had been such a leap, a crossing-over of the thickest line. For goodness sakes she barely knew him!

If only she could talk! Explain everything, make sure she didn't screw up as badly as she thought. But how could she now? Boys practically self-destructed if they thought they got cooties, and being one of the quiet ones meant Ket would no doubt avoid her at school like she carried the plague. If only she could call him or something. The longer she waited, the more embarrassing it would be for her and more agitating it would be for him.

She knocked her head against the bed in frustration. After the ninth tap or so, it donned on her: The Student Directory!

She was already throwing open her door and running into the hallway toward the kitchen. She slowed to a walk as she approached the round, wooden breakfast table, where just yesterday she had patched the wounds of her crush. The plastic bag was there, left for her mother, who was now lying down after having just gotten done with a hectic day at the hospital.

She opened the bag and carefully removed the booklet. It cracked open with a stiff-paper groan, protesting its use. She ignored its suffering and traversed its pages. Students were organized not by class but by grade-level: last name, first name, address and phone number. She sounded his name out aloud, "Rah... 'R'" she said, locating the 5th-grade R-section. "R-A..." She looked at the -sh's: Rasha, Rasha, Rashel, Rashell... Too far.

Maybe it was R-U. She flipped a page and found the names: Ruscan, Rusdoff, Rusdorf, Rusell...Rushmond. There wasn't even an R-U-SH-A combination. But then, maybe it wasn't -sh at all; if it was 'shawn', the name was also spelled S-e-a-n. She skimmed both sections, but the closest name she could find was Rasemba.

Start from the beginning... She flipped to the previous page, where the R-A's started, and began reading the first names: Kim, Rundy, Bardont, Arektushi, Stelli, Vince--she stopped for a second, and went back two names. Racuhan, Aturkishe. No, that wasn't right; her dyslexia was playing with her, and badly. She blinked and read the name again: Rancahu, Kurithesa?

She growled in frustration and closed her eyes, "Apples grow on trees but grapes grow on leaves," she said, giving herself a little break from looking at letters. She stared at the page once again, this time revealing the letters one-by-one with her finger: Arkethius Rachaun. She sounded the syllables of the last name out: Rah-cha-oon... That didn't sound right. She tried again; Rah...sh...awn.

Could...could that be... it? She looked up and away to think, a word on the tip of her tongue. She glanced at the table, inside the plastic bag, and the word hit her: Bro_ch_ure; Ra_ch_aun.

Excitement welled up inside of her. But then, what about the first name: Arkethius? She looked at the name a little more closely, and after a couple heartbeats used her thumb and pointer-finger to cover up Ar and hius. She grinned, smiled, and then beamed.

Ket.

It was a nickname--it had to be--and she found him! She repeated the process again, just to make sure, and ended up with same result, then checked the rest of the list of first names for a better match, encountering none; there wasn't even another "Ket" listed. Staring at the name, she realized it was a bit surprising he was even in the Directory, given how quiet he was. She didn't think he would have filled out the form.

But her excitement quickly turned to dismay as she looked over to the phone-number column. It was blank. She sighed and massaged her forehead. All of that for nothing. So much work... Except his address was in there. 419 Raspberry Line Street.

"Hey," a voice came from the hallway, followed by a yawn. "Did you have a nice nap too?"

"Sort of," she shut the book quickly, "Mom, may I use the computer?"

The mother white tigress made her way to the ceramics cabinet and pulled out an ancient red-colored tea-lantern. "What for?"

"I uh...I have a writing assignment," her daughter replied. "It's a really quick one, shouldn't take too long."

"All right, if you need me I'll be making dinner. Can I read it when you're done to make sure your spelling's good?"

Emeral rolled her eyes. Great, I just assigned myself homework. "Sure." She replied, heading back into the hallway.

"Oh but don't close anything that's up," her mom's voice echoed from in the kitchen, "Dad was working on something he didn't finish last night."

"Okay, got it." She closed the door so that it was just barely ajar, and plopped into the itchy computer chair. She pulled the handle so that the chair raised, and began hitching it as it neared the max height. She had to be careful she didn't rise too high, because she didn't weigh enough to make it go back down.

At almost-perfect height she wiggled the mouse to excite the computer. It whirred and clicked, its green light flickering some alien computer-language, or maybe it was Morse code. No time to ponder now! She typed in the password and it brought up the desktop as it was when dad had quit the night before. It was a homework assignment he was working on. He always had homework from his job. She wondered if he really liked homework and that's why he wanted to be a lawyer.

She saved his homework and opened up a new document for herself and started typing a few sentences, thinking up something to write down. She wound up just re-typing what she could remember from the popcorn-read social studies class. After a few paragraphs, she minimized the windows and darted the little arrow right over GoogleEarth. She had to wait a few minutes for it to load, and then huffed.

It needed an upgrade.

A minute later, she saw the globe. She didn't really care for its animation like she had the first few times she used the program. It was fun to look at stuff like the Eiffel Tower, but now she was on a mission. In the search box she typed in Arkethuis's address, and the globe started to expand like a giant bubble as the camera zoomed in at a slow pace. It zoomed in on their state, and then their city; she drew closer and closer to the computer screen. She could see the yellow highways. Why they were yellow on the map and gray in person she didn't know. Finally the orange tee marked where his house was.

He was actually close by, a few blocs down the street near the library and Bloomful Park. Did he take the same route home every day? She wondered, moving the map to include where her house was; How many times has he passed my neighborhood?

She looked at the clock on the computer. It was almost four, but it was raining. She could go to his house today but it would be bothersome; at the very least, a little weird, showing up at his door out of the blue. She had to think this through, give herself time to plan.

Tomorrow, then. She would tell her mom she was going to walk home with a friend, maybe she could pull a favor from Lyza and pay her back somehow.

She clicked the street-level view to see the house. It was two stories, but very thin and closely surrounded by its neighbors. There was hardly any yard, and no driveway or car. No trees either. It was cream-colored, and had a black mailbox near the sidewalk. Its only distinguishing feature was a bright-purple bush snuggled up against the windows near the entrance-way.

She could call Lyza a little later, and then wait till tomorrow. The butterflies were in full flutter, but this time with an added boost of adrenaline. A plan had begun to form in her head.

* * *

Morning was progressing much more quickly than expected. They had already done English and read the next few chapters of their classroom reading book. They read about Bach in music class. Now, when they should be having their activity break, they were taking their second spelling quiz, and Emeral was already finished. It was a bit ironic that with dyslexia the jumbled-words portion looked more correct than when the words were unjumbled. She found she was really good at that and anagrams.

So she spent the last minutes of the quiz thinking about what Ket brought to glorified show-and-tell. Well, Get-To-Know wasn't exactly as cheesy as show-and-tell; it was a little more interesting than that. The person to present was to bring an item that they treasured, and talk about it: when they got it, how it came to their possession, why they treasured it, and what they think would happen to it ten years from now.

Of course most of the presenters so far just farted their way through the assignment.

Her presentation was on Ju-Jitsu of course, which is probably why no one says anything bad about her to her face, and thinks she's a tomboy. She was one of the first to present and since then no one has quite topped her--except maybe Lyza, who brought her flute and played a little tune for them.

For Emeral's presentation, she had come to school dressed in her gi, which was black-and-white. She had just gotten her green belt, which all the kids thought was really cool, but in truth she was way behind because of her mom's nurse training. After her presentation, she realized she forgot to bring a change of clothes, and had to spend recess inside with a few other kids.

She was excited and curious, to say the least. Nervous, too. Though it was he who was going up, she started to feel like she was getting stage-fright. Was he nervous? Was he scared? The back of his head gave no indication, or if it did she couldn't read it in the stripes.

The little clock at the chalkboard beeped. "All right class, time's up," Ms. Hupp announced. "Pass your papers to the person in front of you."

The kids started conversing.

"How do you think you did?"

"I hate spelling! I'm so bad at it."

Ms. Hupp shushed them. "No talking until all quizzes are in."

Well, this was it. With each stack of papers Ms. Hupp took it was one more moment closer to Getting To Know: Arkethius Rachaun. She wondered if anyone even knew his full name. Did he write that on his papers? Probably not, but she could try and peek sometime. How ironic it would be if this presentation didn't give her any more information than she already knew.

"Good luck," she whispered, but not loud enough for anyone to hear--or so she thought. Her butterflies stirred as his ear twitched, and he turned his head just a little.

"Going once...going twice...Spelling test is now over. It's almost time for lunch; but before we line up at the door, Ket is going to do his presentation." The class looked at the young tiger, some with sneers and others with blank expressions or fingers up their noses. "Are you prepared Ket?"

"Yes ma'am." he replied, and got up out of his desk. He went to his backpack in the back and unzipped the outermost pouch, pulling out a silk bag about the size of his fist. He handled it with the greatest of care as he walked to the center of the circle of desks. His thumb and forefinger hooked into the drawstring and the other hand held it from underneath. He stepped up to the blackboard, where all the class could see, and began to speak.

"My name is Ket, and today I brought..." he fiddled with the bag for a second, squeezing something out that he touched very carefully. Then, with one hand, fingers covered by the bag, he stretched it out in front of him. "The Udjat, or The Eye of Horus."

The class began to murmur, sitting up in their desks to peer closer.

"Quiet now, let's hear what he has to say," but there was a moment of silence, and so Ms. Hupp had to nudge him forward, "What is the Eye of Horus?"

"It's the eye of the falcon-god, the son of Osiris and Isis, in Egyptian mythology. It's a symbol of protection, warding off evil for the pharaoh. This one is made of pure gold, set into grooves cut into the wood."

It was a rather small glyph for such a big piece of wood. Emeral could barely see it.

"Can you pass it around?" One of the boys on the opposite side of the room asked.

"I don't think this is something we can pass around, Arthur. Maybe when he's done he'll walk it around." She gestured with her hand, "Go on, Ket. How did you get the Eye of Horus?"

"I got it from my grandfather, after he came back from Egypt."

"Does your grandfather go to Egypt often?"

"He used to, a lot. He was an Egyptologist."

"Class, what is an Egyptologist?" Not even the crickets chirped. "Ket, would you please tell the class what an Egyptologist is?"

He shrugged, and spoke like it was a dumb question; "An Egyptologist is someone who studies Egypt, like a biologist is someone who studies biology." He turned the artifact to face him. "I treasure it because it was the last thing he gave me before he passed away."

"You seem to handle it very responsibly; so, where do you think it will be ten years from now?"

"Well," he said, rubbing the cloth meditatively, "we have a little display of all of the things he's given us, but I keep this one in a special place and hardly take it out. It'll probably stay there. Forever."

"I see. There's still a minute before the bell, would you mind walking it between the desks so the other students can see?"

He seemed a little reluctant, but finally he nodded, "Okay." He fiddled with it some more so that it rested on his palm, atop the silk bag, and began walking past the desks. He started on the far end of the room and made his way around.

Emeral waited patiently as he started from the opposite end, pausing between quadruples of desks for the surrounding kids to see. The teacher watched carefully and discouraged students from touching it or getting too close with their noses.

Again with the butterflies! The closer he neared, the more agitated they became. Her cheeks felt hot as he entered into her three-foot bubble, stopped at the desk to her left, and then to hers. Time became like syrup inside of jelly. She could see the glitter and shimmer of the golden leaf set in the grooves of the dark piece of wood.

Her gaze flicked up to his similar-colored eyes, expecting to see nervousness or tension. But there wasn't anything. Either he could hide it very well, or it was encrypted and she couldn't read it. But he was probably reading her loud and clear.

And then time sped up, and came crashing down as he abruptly smacked into the floor.

"Ritzer!" The teacher exclaimed.

"Sorry 'bout dat," the bully said quickly, "I tried t'move my foot bud'e stepped--hey, ya all right?--Where'd ye Eye-thing go?--'Ere i'dis..."

Emeral felt the tips of her ears turn to ice as Ritzer's filthy paw clutched the block of wood like it was the remote control to his TV. Something about it didn't seem right. He appeared to heft it; to gauge it.

"I'ss kin'a heavy--'Ey! S'rude to sna'sh things from people ya know?"

Ket took the Udjat, wrenching it from Ritzer's paw, and quickly shoved it back into the silk bag.

"Hey, bu'd'I didn' get a chance'a see it."

The bell rang. The rumble of footsteps echoed out in the hall, and the class began to join it, hunger superseding the incident that just happened. Ket walked to his backpack and put the Eye away. Ritzer followed him.

"Fine, don' show i'd'a me, ya dick." he jabbed the tiger with his elbow as he stormed away, "I'm 'ungry anyways."

"Now wait just a minute young--" The teacher tried to catch him but he slipped out into the hallway too quickly. She moved aside as Emeral rushed out the door.

"S'cuze me!"

Ms. Hupp recovered and made her way toward Ket. "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine," the young tiger said, and made his way to the door.

"That was a wonderful presentation, I can only give one A but I think you deserve two! Now go and eat--and don't worry about the behavior note Mr. Erst left on my desk, okay?"

Ket looked back, shrugged, and exited the classroom.