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Lyza stirred. For a second, she was on a squeaky cot nudged against the side of a Baker tent surrounded by mosquito netting. Then she was teleported back to the present, where she sat up and rested her palm on the soft mattress of her gigantic bed. Sunlight filtered through the slats of the blinds covering her window, closed downward so that they bounced off the grains of the wooden floor. The familiar smell of old dust and the sounds of birds muffled by the walls was homely comforting. "Kval?" She asked softly. The doorknob turned, and his head appeared in the rift. "Sorry, I didn't realize you were asleep." He said. She looked at her clock. It was three in the afternoon. "I was coming by to tell you the cake is in the oven. You want to help me ice it when it's ready?" Abating the feelings of anxiety and uneasiness at sleeping in the middle of the day, she smiled. "Sure." "All right. I'll call you." He smiled back, and then his left ear bobbed just a little. "Oh. Mom and dad still aren't home, but they called. They're staying an extra day." "Mm." She responded, rubbing her forehead. He opened the door a little more, and leaned against the threshold. "You're not gonna sleep the rest of Spring Break, are ya?" He asked with a chuckle. "No," she said, rubbing her eye now. "I just fell asleep cuz I was tired. I haven't slept in at all." "I don't blame ya," he replied. "Are you going to hang out with Ket and Emmy at all, you think?" "I'll call them tomorrow," she said, throwing her covers off. She was still wearing jean-shorts and her tee from when she left the camp. "They might be tired, too, though. They went to the beach." "Well, whatever you do just loop me in. Anyway, your laundry should be done soon, too." "Okay, thanks." He slipped out of her room, shutting the door quietly behind him. She yawned. She hated sleeping in the middle of the day. All the sunlight wasted, all that time she could have spent doing something. Even if it was just loafing around. She tried to think of when she fell asleep. They had left Connalake in a hurry, and Kval sped the whole way home. She didn't even get a chance to say goodbye to Mrs. Kiminy. They got home around one, and she must have just carried her stuff in her room and plopped on the bed. She went to her bags, taking a second to balance herself after the drop off of her bed. Kval had taken the clothes out of her bag, but otherwise they had yet to be emptied of her stuff. Feeling revitalized and awake, she reached in the bag and found her flute. She carried it to the shelf on the wall across from her bed, stopping to pet Rupert, her giant stuffed bunny, along the way. Flute in its place, she went back to her bag. This time, she retrieved the many targets that she had maimed and impaled. They were all in a bundle, with Russel's on top. She stared at the middle of the target. There was one gigantic wound, with a sliver of shredded paper at the top like hang-nail. She would not have believed that two arrows occupied virtually the same spot had she not pulled them from the target herself. She had been careful to preserve it as best she could, for in fact there was a small separation between the two arrows. But that separation tore, leaving behind the hang-nail. She looked it over as she walked to her bed. She did not see where she went, and her foot kicked a pile of papers along the way. It wasn't disturbed too much, she had just kicked the top few sheets away. But she didn't want her room to have all these papers all over the place, so with a huff she set her targets upon her bed and went to pick up the mess. It was the stack of papers her brother had looked over. All of her assignments, all of her grades. On top was her report card, the paper she had kicked the farthest. She picked it up separate of the stack, laying the stack upon her bed next to the targets. The recent grades made her fur wiggle. It was like looking at someone else's report card. Wow, this person isn't doing good at all. But it was hers. She was the person of whom the grades reflected. And they were reflecting poorly as of late. She imagined the letters as points on a target. She was starting off pretty good, hitting in the yellow and some in the blue. But the last two six weeks, she had barely made it in the inner black. It was the opposite of what it should have been. She had gotten better at archery over time, not worse. Her grades should be the same. But they weren't. She had let them slip. And now she was in trouble of failing. She sighed, setting the paper down. It wasn't that simple, though. Archery was, in a sense. School had all different subjects, and if she failed at any one of them she would get pulled back. There were some she was good at, she just let them slip. Some were tougher. Like spelling and vocab. But, archery was something she had never done before. She had been doing school since kindergarten. She had only gotten to be good at archery because she spent so much time at the range--practically all of it after the first couple days. That was like doing her homework in school; practice. She looked about her room. Practice. It made perfect. When you work hard, you get better. She had learned that through Mrs. Kiminy. The ewe had instructed her all day that day, every little thing. By the time she was done, her arm hurt and her legs were a bit shaky and her fingers were sore and raw. She rubbed her thumb over the crook of her fore- and middle-finger. The bare skin at the first knuckle was proof of her work. She had fired arrows over and over and over. With each one she got better. So why couldn't she do the same with school? Her eyes fell onto her bookshelf. She padded over, her bare feet making barely a whisper on the wooden floor. Her hand reached out for the spelling and vocab book. She rested her fingers on it and pulled it at the top, prying it free from the books on either side. But one of the books next to it wanted to come along, too, and it fell on the ground. Mnemonics, the title read, For 9th -- 12th Grade She remembered the book. Ket had given it to her at recess, wrapped as a Christmas present. Until now it had rested on her shelf, unopened. Untouched. Its cover faced her, with the picture of an owl wearing a mortarboard. It certainly implied the book would make you smarter. She replaced the spelling and vocab book and picked up the Mnemonics book. She carried it to her bed, climbing atop. The targets and other papers were moved to the far corner, away from the head of the bed, and she adjusted the pillows so that she could sit more upright. The blinds were turned just a little to allow more light into the room. She opened the book, seeing the Antsy Aardvark on the example page. She turned to the book proper, to the first word. "A... aba... a-ba-tee," she read aloud, her tongue nervous to the word. She looked at the phonetics. "A...aba...abate," she read again, this time correctly. "Verb... To become less in amount or in...ten...city... in_ten_sity." Her jaw began to clench. She looked up and about, as if fearful someone were listening in on her. She looked to the door, and wondered if Kval was standing right outside. Nervously, she shut the book and clambered from her bed. She went to the door of her room and gently eased it open. She looked left, and looked right. No fart-face in sight. Quietly she eased the door closed, and went back toward her bed. Opting to face the door to keep an eye on it, she swiped the book and a pillow from the sheets and sat against the frame upon the floor. It was a little uncomfortable, but more comfortable than having someone listening to her babbling these words. She pried the book open once again. "Abate. Verb. To lessen in amount or intensity. Sounds like: ate. 'He ate to abate his hunger'..." She looked at the cartoon. A very fat man was eating a pile of indistinguishable food with a fork, and he had a stack of bowls and plates beside him. There were other sentences beneath the cartoon. "The storm abated. The mecid--med-i-cine abated her headache. The quilt abated the cold." She heard a snap. Her eyes darted to the door and watched it like a hawk. After a moment, she decided it must have just been the house settling. She flipped the page. "Abbreviate," she said. "I know that one... to shorten. Sounds like: Place. 'Abbreviate letters in place of words.'" She took a breath and closed her eyes. These words were hard. Harder than anything she had ever seen before. Her vocabulary book was nothing compared to this. But she couldn't stop now. If she had stopped at archery, she would have never won the tournament. "I would app...pre...see-iate if you didn't abbreviate my notes. The abbreviation of New York City is N.Y.C." The second sentence tied in with the cartoon. It was a little weird to make out at first, but she came to guess that it was the Empire State Building on the left of the cut, and on the right the building was replaced with the letters NYC stacked on top of each other. Done with that word, she moved on to the next: "Abi...di..cate... ab...dicate... abdicate..." She went on, struggling through each word. Her mouth was starting to get dry, but she kept going, determined to learn the next word. "Aber...riant... aber...rant; Aberrant. The aberrant bear aunt..." With each word came other words she struggled with. The sentences beneath the cartoons had even more words the meaning of which she did not know. But she began to get used to that. She picked up on the sentences she knew. Sometimes, she could almost figure another word out through context clues, a skill she hadn't thought about since third grade. She went through each page as carefully as she could. She did not progress anywhere until she could pronounce the word three times: "Abhor. Abhor. Abhor." After that, she went to the cartoon. This one had a group of snails standing on a beach. Some held signs with the prohibition symbol on them. Others were snarling at the ocean. "Snails abhor the seashore." Then she quietly thought aloud, "What do I abhor?" She looked at the little snails for a few minutes, and then found a very convenient conclusion: "Preppy girls." As she continued on, she tried to connect each word to something related to her; something she could use it for. After a few more pages, she came upon a different page. This page had no cartoon nor new word to teach her; instead, it looked just like one of her own vocab quizzes from school. There were several sentences, more than for the ten words she had gone over so far, and each one had a blank where she had to write the word in. Some of them had a mnemonic hint beside them, but others didn't. She started taking the quiz. "The artist ____ed mathematics. [Sea shore]." Deciding an answer right away, she gingerly set the book down with that page open and went to her backpack to fetch a pencil. Returning to the quiz with pencil in hand, she began writing her answers. She came to a few that she just couldn't figure out. She pondered them for minutes, unaided by a mnemonic clue, until at last in frustration she had to write down something. She could have flipped back in the book, but she considered that cheating. Finally, after what felt like forever, she was done with the quiz. The pencil clattered on the wooden floor at her side, discarded and intended never to be picked up for that purpose again. She stared at the page, as if it was the first time she had laid eyes upon it. At the bottom, in small print, it told her where the answers were in the back of the book. She flipped there, and saw the same sentences, with one word in bold. "The artist abhorred mathematics." One by one she compared her answers with the correct ones in the back of the book. Every once in a while she would come across one she had gotten wrong. Her eyes squinted and she paused, feeling a tightening in her gut. Then she would pick up her pencil, ticking the one she got wrong. When all was said and done, she counted the ones without tics. She got a twelve out of twenty. While she didn't know exactly what grade that was, she knew that it wasn't a good one. She knew it wasn't passing. She had failed. The book closed. She took in a deep breath, and let it out. Her back started to hurt, and she set the book aside to stretch it out. She got up and walked around a bit, pacing. She didn't think about anything at all, she just paced for a little bit. After a while, her eyes fell back onto the book. Then, her rump fell back onto the fellow. Then, the book fell back into her lap. She opened it to the first word. "Abate." She said clearly. "A-B-A-T-E." She spelled, for she had noticed she misspelled a few of the words in her quiz. "Verb. To become less in amount or intensity..." She went over each word again. It was easier this time, since she had already done it. Instead of struggling over every little thing she was able to comprehend again what she had before, and focused on what she had missed. She took the time to read the sentences, to understand what they meant, and she even tried to put different words in for the one she was supposed to learn. "The washcloth felt abrasive against her cheek. The washcloth felt rough against her cheek. The washcloth felt scratchy against her cheek..." It took her much longer to get back to the quiz page. She looked at all of her answers as she bit her lip. She snatched the pencil off the floor. For a while the soft scratch of the eraser complemented the chirp of the birds outside, until every blank space was blank once again. The quiz was taken for a second time. She got done much faster, and when she tallied her score it was perfect. She had gotten every word right. She even checked the spelling, and only found a few that were still giving her trouble. But it didn't feel satisfying. She had taken the quiz too quickly. she had still remembered most of the answers. She couldn't tell if she had gotten better, or if she had just cheated a better grade. She erased her answers again. The only way to find out was to turn the page. "Babble. Babble. Babble," she started the next unit. "B-A-B-B-L-E. Noun. Gibberish; nonsense. Sounds like: Baby rattle. He couldn't tell the difference between the baby's babble or the baby's rattle." She expected another struggle. She expected to find each word as difficult as the last. But it wasn't so bad. Sure, it was tough, but it hadn't been as tedious or numbing as the first time. When she felt those negative feelings coming on, she was able to... abate them. And finally, she came to the quiz. Her heart began to beat. As she reached for the pencil, the air felt cool against her fingers, which were just a little sweaty. This was a test, not a quiz. She had seen every word for the first time.

His bargaining attempt to get a date by offering a rose didn't work out. The bane of a werewolf is silver. Violence begets violence. That old woman just keeps babbling on and on. You're bantering on about nothing. The plane's takeoff was baffled by a storm. You may have been able to baffle the police, but not Batman. As soon as the bell rang, the boxers went out in a barrage of punches. He balked with surprise when he saw a spider on the wall. He was hoping to use his social status as a banal chip. This riddle is belating me. The politician was met with a barrage of questions. We don't have any time for idle banter! The haunted house wasn't scary at all, every gimmick was so stupid and banal. Every time our teacher talks about his war days all I hear is babble. A loaf of bread and peanut butter for half off is a real bargain. My little sister is the bane of my existence. The rotting smell from the fridge made her balk. Happy belated birthday! All greed begets is lies and misery.

She held her breath as she went to the back of the book and found the answer page. One by one she compared the answers, pencil ready to mark off the incorrect matches. But the pencil was hardly used at all. Four marks were made, and as she reviewed the incorrect sentences she couldn't think of how she would have even put those words in there. Three of them were obviously wrong: A plane can't be baffled, and what the heck was a 'banal chip' supposed to be? She felt almost embarrassed at those silly mistakes. With a sixteen out of twenty, though, she felt a little better. It was at least closer to a perfect score. But something nagged her. It was that bull's-eye again. She was always close to it. It was so dissatisfying to get so close and still not hit it. She could hit it. She would hit it. Her left thumb loosed the pages until she found the previous quiz. The answers were blank, she had erased them. There were still some phantom pencil markings, but they were feint enough. She read a sentence from the middle, and didn't exactly remember it. But she felt like she knew the word that was supposed to go in there. She wrote it in. And then, she read another random sentence. Out of order, she took the first quiz again. It was slow, and she had to think really hard. But the ones with the mnemonics she could do very fast; the answers came to her right away. Just as easily as the notes do when she plays an impromptu song on the Indian-style flute. When all was said and done, she got a sixteen out of twenty on that quiz, too. For part of her, this seemed hopeless. What did perfect mean if it only happened once? She couldn't be perfect; it was impossible. She just proved it. One perfect score didn't mean she had learnedanything. It just meant she had been perfect that one time. So go over it again. The voice that told her was her own. Even as the thought of reading the same pages she had already read twice now daunted over her, she took in a breath and closed her eyes. "Stop belating it." She ordered herself, and flipped back to the first page. "Abate." She began aloud, no longer concerned if anyone heard her.