Characterization Activity 1

Dad handed Marcus the instructions for the new bookshelf. Marcus pushed them away. "I don't need those," he said. He started screwing boards together his own way. One shelf went on upside down. A leg pointed sideways. Dad held out the instructions again. "No thanks," Marcus said. He kept building. When the whole thing leaned like a slide, Marcus crossed his arms. "It's supposed to look like that," he said.

The dragon was burning down the village. The king told Sir Pomp to ride out and fight it. But first, Sir Pomp had to fix his hair. He combed it to the left. Then he combed it to the right. He polished his shield until he could see his face in it. He smiled at his reflection. "My, what a handsome knight," he said. The dragon roared again. Sir Pomp held up the shield and checked his teeth. He was not worried about the dragon. He was worried about looking good while fighting it.

Yuki had crashed the flight simulator nine times. Her hands hurt from gripping the controls. The screen flashed MISSION FAILED in red again. The other trainees had gone home. Yuki thought about how much she wanted to fly a real ship someday. She told herself that nine crashes only meant she was close. One more try, she thought. She wiped her hands on her pants. She did not get up to leave. She pressed START and lined up for the tenth time.

The cafeteria was out of chocolate milk. Priscilla put her hand on her forehead. "This is the worst day of my entire life," she said. She slumped against the wall like her legs had stopped working. "I may never recover from this." Her friend pointed out that there was still plain milk. Priscilla gasped. "Plain milk? In a time like this?" She stared into the distance. "Someday I will tell my grandchildren about the day the chocolate milk ran out."

Annie lived on a space station with her parents. Every door had a sign, but one door said DO NOT OPEN in big red letters. Annie walked past it every day and wondered what was inside. Today she stopped. She pressed her ear to the cold metal door. She just had to know. Then she pushed the button and peeked in.

Someone had eaten the last muffin. Everyone blamed the dog but Keisha looked closer. The dog was too short to reach the counter. Then she spotted a single crumb on her brother's sleeve and she saw chocolate at the corner of his mouth. "It was you," Keisha said, pointing. Her brother's face turned red.

It started raining the second the tent fell down. The marshmallows got soaked. A raccoon stole the granola. Nico just grinned. "Good news," he said. "Now we have less to carry." The fire would not light. "That's okay," Nico said. "We can still see the stars." His sister groaned, but Nico looked around at his soggy family and smiled. "At least we are all here together," he said. And he really meant it.

Mr. Okafor had been out sick for a week. When he walked into the library, the whole class cheered. Kids ran up to hug him. Someone had made him a card. Someone else saved him the comfy chair. "We missed you!" they shouted. Mr. Okafor had not even said a word yet. He just smiled as the students crowded around him, happy he was back.

Juniper wore one green sock and one striped sock on purpose. Her backpack had plastic dinosaurs glued all over it. She had a pencil tucked behind each ear and a third one in her hair. Her jacket was covered in patches of cats wearing hats. Nothing she wore matched, and that was exactly how she liked it. You could tell that Juniper did things her own way.

Renee's space buggy stopped working on the red planet. Her radio was dead too. She did not panic. She looked around at what she had. She used a mirror from her helmet to flash sunlight at the base far away. She wrote HELP in big rocks. She turned her broken radio into a loud beeping horn using two wires. Soon, a rescue ship saw her signals and came.

The cookies needed twelve minutes to bake. Tariq could not wait that long. After one minute, he asked, "Are they done yet?" He opened the oven to check. Then he closed it and tapped his foot. "How about now?" he asked. He kept peeking inside again and again. By minute four, he had asked five times. "This is taking forever," Tariq groaned, pacing the kitchen.

The three travelers set out for the castle at dawn. Bram shook his head the whole way. "We will never make it past the river," he said. But they crossed the river just fine. "The bridge ahead will be broken," Bram said. But the bridge was perfectly solid. "Even if we reach the castle, it will be locked," he muttered. "Or flooded. Or full of trolls. Probably all three." Bram was certain that something terrible was about to go wrong at every single step of the journey.

Thomas lost the big race by a single step. He had wanted to win all year. He bent over, hands on his knees, to catch his breath. Then he walked straight over to the winner, a girl named Candice. He held out his hand and shook hers firmly. "You were amazing out there," Thomas said, smiling like he meant it. "You earned this." He clapped loudly for Candice as she received her medal. Thomas was sad that he had lost but he still meant every word that he had said to Candice.

Hazel's locker was full of treasures. A friendship bracelet hung on the hook, worn soft from years of wearing. Taped to the door was a faded photo of her and her grandfather. She kept a smooth gray stone from the beach where she learned to swim. A ticket stub from her first movie was tucked in the corner. None of it was worth any money. But every single piece held a memory, and Hazel could not throw any of it away.

The list went up and Nadine got the lead in the play. Camila sighed and said with a big smile, "Congrats, Nadine! You'll be amazing." But inside Camila was not smiling. She had practiced for that part every night for a month. She knew every line by heart. It should have been me, she thought to herself. She pictured Nadine forgetting her lines on opening night and that made her feel happy. Her mouth said nice things. Her thoughts said something else.

Sam and Mae were working on a group project and they could not agree. Both wanted the group to build their idea for science fair. They started to argue. Then Kwame spoke up. "Sam's robot idea is awesome," he said. "And Mae's volcano idea is great too. What if we have the robot set off the volcano?" Sam stopped frowning. Mae started smiling. "That could actually work," they both said. Kwame had found a way to make everyone happy.

Layla was scared of the big dog next door. It was loud, it jumped thunderously, and it had very large teeth. One afternoon, the big dog got loose. Meanwhile, little Ben had toddled right into the yard. Layla's heart pounded. She wanted to run the other way, but Ben was too small to know that he was in danger. So Layla took a deep breath, and then she walked into the yard. Her hands were shaking the whole time. She scooped up Ben and carried him out to safety. She was terrified the whole time, but she did it anyway.

When the river rose, it looked like the harvest was doomed. But Beatriz brought together all the villagers and convinced them to stack sandbags all night. By morning, the fields were saved. The queen came to thank her. "I will make you a duchess," the queen said, "and give you a chest of gold." Beatriz shook her head. "I do not need any of that," she said. "Everyone helped as they could. I just did what needed to be done." Then she went home to bake bread, the same as any other day.

The crew dug up the treasure chest together. But Captain Reyes scooped every coin into his own bag. "Mine," he said. "All mine." A young sailor held up one small coin she had found. Reyes snatched it right out of her hand. "That's mine too. I am the captain!" The crew had done all the digging but they got nothing. Reyes already had more gold than he could ever spend. Still, he looked around the empty beach and frowned. "Is this all of it?" he asked. "There has to be more."

A new crew member named Soren joined the starship. Soren smiled a lot and offered to help with everything, but Kai did not trust him. Why is he being so nice? Kai wondered. Nobody is that friendly for free. When Soren asked Kai about the ship's controls, Kai gave short answers and watched him closely. He's after something, Kai thought. I just have to figure out what. Kai kept one eye on Soren as they voyaged through deep space.

Dad set the instructions for the new bookshelf on the table, but Marcus pushed them aside before they even landed. "I don't need those," he said, grabbing the screwdriver. He started joining boards together his own way. One shelf ended up upside down. A leg jutted out sideways like a broken wing. Twice, Dad slid the instructions back toward him, and twice Marcus said, "No thanks," without looking up. By the time the whole bookshelf leaned sideways like a playground slide, Marcus stepped back and crossed his arms. "It's supposed to look like that, I think," he said.

The dragon was already burning down the village when the king ordered Sir Pomp to ride out and slay it. But first, Sir Pomp insisted on fixing his hair. He combed it neatly to the left, frowned, then combed it just as neatly to the right. He buffed his shield until it gleamed like a mirror and admired the reflection that stared back. "My, what a handsome knight," he murmured. The dragon roared in the distance, close enough now to feel. Sir Pomp lifted the shield one more time, this time to check that his teeth were straight. He was not the least bit worried about the dragon. He was worried about looking good while he fought it.

Yuki had crashed the flight simulator nine times in a row. Her hands ached from gripping the controls and the screen flashed MISSION FAILED in angry red letters once again. The other trainees had packed up and gone home an hour ago. Yuki sat alone in the glow of the screen and thought about how badly she wanted to pilot a real ship one day. Nine crashes, she told herself, only meant that she was getting close. One more try, she thought to herself, wiping her sweaty palms on her pants. She pressed the green START button and lined the ship up for a tenth attempt.

The cafeteria had run out of chocolate milk, and Priscilla pressed the back of her hand to her forehead. "This is the worst day of my entire life," she announced, sliding down the wall as though her legs had simply given up. "I may never recover from this. Truly." When her friend gently pointed out that there was still plenty of white milk, Priscilla gasped as if she had been insulted. "White milk? PLAIN milk? At a time like this?" She gazed mournfully into the distance. "Someday," she said, "I will tell my grandchildren about the day the chocolate milk ran out."

Annie had lived on the space station for as long as she could remember, and she had read every sign on every door. Most of the doors were boring ones, like STORAGE, AIRLOCK, and LAUNDRY. But one door near the engine room said DO NOT OPEN in big red letters. Annie walked past it every single day, wondering what could possibly be behind it. This morning she stopped in front of it, pressed her ear against the cold metal door, and heard a faint, steady hum. She knew she should keep walking, but instead, she pushed the button and leaned in to take a look.

Someone had eaten the last muffin and everyone in the kitchen immediately blamed the dog. Keisha was not so sure. She crouched down and concluded that the dog was far too short to ever reach the countertop. Then she noticed a single crumb clinging to her little brother's sleeve and a faint smudge of chocolate at the corner of his mouth. While everyone else kept scolding the dog, Keisha quietly put the clues together. "It wasn't the dog," she said, pointing. "It was you." Her brother's face went bright red.

It started raining the very second the tent collapsed. The marshmallows were soaked and a bold raccoon made off with the entire bag of granola. Nico just grinned. "Good news," he said. "That's less for us to carry tomorrow." When the campfire refused to light, he shrugged it off. "That's alright. We can still see the stars from here." His sister groaned and wrung out her socks, but Nico looked around at his soggy, shivering family and smiled like he had won something. "At least we are all here together," he said, and he honestly meant every word.

Mr. Okafor, the school librarian, had been out sick for an entire week. The moment he stepped through the library doors, the whole class erupted into cheers. Two kids rushed over to hug him before he had even set down his bag. Another student had made a giant get-well card covered in glitter, and someone had carefully saved him the comfortable reading chair by the window. "We missed you so much!" they shouted over one another. Mr. Okafor had not managed to say a single word yet. He simply stood in the doorway and beamed as his students swarmed around him.

Juniper wore one green sock and one striped sock on purpose. Her backpack was covered in tiny plastic dinosaurs she had glued on herself. She kept a pencil tucked behind each ear plus a spare one twisted into her hair. Her denim jacket was crowded with patches of cats wearing hats. Not one thing she wore matched anything else and that was precisely the way she wanted it. You did not have to talk to Juniper for long to figure out that she did everything her own way.

Renee's space buggy died halfway across the red planet and her radio had gone silent right along with it. Instead of panicking, she took stock of everything she had on hand. She pried the small mirror out of her helmet and used it to flash sunlight toward the distant base. She dragged pale rocks and spelled the word HELP in giant letters across the dust. Then she twisted two loose wires from the dead radio together until it let out a loud, steady beep. Before long, a rescue ship spotted her makeshift signals and steered toward her.

The cookies needed twelve minutes in the oven but Tariq could not stand to wait that long. After only one minute, he was already asking, "Are they done yet?" He yanked the oven open to check, let out a sigh, and shut it again. "How about now?" he asked, tapping his foot against the tile. He peeked inside over and over even though nothing had changed, releasing heat from the oven each time he opened it. By the four-minute mark he had asked at least five times. "This is taking absolutely forever," Tariq groaned, pacing back and forth across the kitchen.

The three travelers set out for the castle at dawn and Bram shook his head the entire way. "We will never make it past the river," he announced. They crossed the river without any trouble at all. "Fine, but the bridge ahead is surely broken," Bram said. The bridge turned out to be perfectly solid. "Even if we somehow reach the castle, it will be locked," he muttered, "or flooded, or crawling with trolls. Probably all three at once." No matter how smoothly the journey went, Bram remained certain that disaster was waiting around the very next bend.

Thomas lost the big race by a single step after wanting to win it all year long. He bent over with his hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath. Then, instead of sulking off to the side, he walked straight over to the winner, a girl named Candice, and held out his hand. "You were amazing out there," Thomas told her, smiling in a way that left no doubt that he meant it. "You earned every bit of this." When Candice stepped up to receive her medal, Thomas clapped louder than anyone. He was genuinely disappointed to have lost and yet he meant every single word that he had said to her.

Hazel's locker looked like a tiny museum. A friendship bracelet, the threads worn pale and soft, hung from the top hook. A faded photo of her and her late grandfather was taped carefully to the inside of the door. On the shelf sat a smooth gray stone from the beach where she had first learned to swim, beside a crumpled ticket stub from the very first movie she ever saw in a theater. Not one of these things was worth a single dollar. Yet each one held a memory she refused to let go of, and so the collection only ever grew.

The cast list finally went up on the board and Nadine's name sat right beside the lead role. Camila sighed and said, "Congratulations, Nadine! You're going to be amazing." Camila flashed the widest smile she could manage, but nothing inside of her felt like smiling. She had rehearsed for that exact part every single night for a month. She knew every line in her sleep. It should have been me, she thought to herself, staring at the list. For just a moment, Camila imagined Nadine freezing up under the lights on opening night. The thought gave her a small, guilty flicker of satisfaction. Her words were generous. Her thoughts were anything but.

Sam and Mae were working on a group project and they could not agree, and now they were getting louder about it. Sam insisted that the group build a robot for the science fair exhibit. Mae was just as sure they should make an erupting volcano. Neither would budge and the argument was looking like it was about to turn into a real fight. That was when Kwame stepped in. "Okay, Sam's robot idea is genuinely cool," he said, "and Mae's volcano idea is awesome too. So, what if we combine them and build a robot that triggers the volcano?" Sam's scowl melted. Mae's eyes lit up. Within a minute, the two of them were sketching the design together, the argument completely forgotten.

Layla had always been scared of the big dog next door, the loud one that bared all its teeth and jumped against the fence thunderously. So one afternoon, when the dog slipped past its gate, Layla was terrified and wanted to run. Her heart was slamming against her ribs when she noticed little Ben toddling straight into the yard. Ben was far too young to understand the danger that he was in, so Layla pulled in one shaky breath and made herself unfreeze. Then she walked into the yard, her hands trembling the entire way. She reached Ben, lifted him up, and carried him back out to the sidewalk. She had been frightened out of her mind, but she had done it anyway.

When the river began to rise toward the fields, it appeared that the harvest would be ruined. It was Beatriz who rallied the villagers to stack sandbags through the night. By sunrise the harvest was safe. The next day the queen herself arrived to offer Beatriz thanks. "For this, I will make you a duchess," she announced, "and award you a chest of gold." But Beatriz only shook her head. "I do not need a title or gold," she said. "Every single person in this village worked just as hard as I did. They all did what they could and I only did what had to be done." Then she returned to her bakery and started the day's bread, exactly as she would have on any ordinary morning.

The whole crew had dug up the treasure chest together, sweating under the hot sun for hours. But the moment the lid creaked open, Captain Reyes swept every last coin into his own bag. "Mine," he announced. "Every piece of it." When the smallest sailor shyly held up a single coin she had spotted in the sand, Reyes plucked it straight out of her palm. "That one is mine as well. This all belongs to your captain." The crew had done all the work and walked away with nothing, while Reyes already owned more gold than he could spend in three lifetimes. Even so, he scanned the empty beach and scowled. "Is this really all of it?" he muttered. "There has to be more somewhere."

A new crew member named Soren came aboard the starship. Soren was all smiles and eager offers to help with anything and everything, but Kai was not buying it. Why is he being this friendly? Kai wondered, narrowing his eyes. Nobody is this nice without wanting something in return. When Soren started asking casual questions about the ship's controls, Kai answered in clipped half-sentences and studied Soren's face for clues. He wants something, Kai thought. I just need to work out exactly what. For the rest of the shift, Kai watched Soren from the corner of his eye, waiting for Soren to slip.

Dad set the instructions for the new bookshelf on the table, but Marcus brushed them aside before they had even landed. "I don't need those," he announced, snatching up the screwdriver. He began joining boards together in whatever order seemed right to him, and the results accumulated quickly: one shelf fixed upside down, a leg jutting out sideways like a broken wing, a back panel that refused to align. Twice his father nudged the instructions toward him, and twice Marcus replied, "No thanks," without so much as glancing up. By the time the finished bookshelf leaned at the precarious angle of a playground slide, Marcus stepped back, folded his arms across his chest, and declared, "It's supposed to look like that."

The dragon had already set half the village ablaze when the king commanded Sir Pomp to ride out and slay the beast. Sir Pomp, however, insisted on attending first to his hair. He combed it carefully to the left, studied the effect, frowned, and combed it with equal care to the right. He buffed his shield until it gleamed like a looking glass, then paused to admire the reflection gazing back at him. "My, what a handsome knight," he murmured to himself. The dragon's roar rolled across the fields, near enough now to rattle the windows, yet Sir Pomp raised the shield once more, not to guard against flame but to confirm that his teeth were perfectly straight. He was not, in truth, the least bit concerned about the dragon; his only concern was appearing magnificent while he fought it.

Yuki had crashed the flight simulator nine consecutive times. Her hands ached from gripping the controls and the screen once again flashed MISSION FAILED in angry red letters. The other trainees had gathered their things and left an hour earlier, but Yuki remained alone in the cold glow of the monitor, turning over how desperately she wanted to pilot a real ship someday. Nine crashes, she reasoned, did not mean she was hopeless; they meant she was drawing closer with each attempt. One more try. She wiped her damp palms against her trousers and, rather than reaching for her bag and heading home, she pressed START and aligned the ship for a tenth run.

The cafeteria had run out of chocolate milk, and Priscilla pressed the back of one hand to her forehead as though steadying herself against terrible news. "This is the worst day of my entire life," she announced, sliding slowly down the wall as if her legs had abandoned their duties altogether. "I may never recover. Truly." When her friend gently observed that there was still an entire crate of white milk available, Priscilla gasped, scandalized. "White milk? PLAIN white milk? At a time like this?" She turned to gaze mournfully into the middle distance. "Someday," she declared, "I will tell my grandchildren about the day the chocolate milk ran out."

Annie had lived aboard the station for as long as she could remember, and she had read every sign on every door at least a hundred times. Most of them were mundane with labels like STORAGE, AIRLOCK, and RECYCLING, but one narrow door near the engine room said DO NOT OPEN in big red letters. Annie could not pass it without slowing down to imagine what might be sealed on the other side. This morning, she stopped completely and pressed her ear to the cold metal panel. She heard a faint, steady hum vibrating somewhere deep inside and knew, with total certainty, that she was supposed to keep walking. She had been told so a dozen times, and yet she pushed the button anyway and slowly leaned in to see what was in the room.

Someone had eaten the last muffin and everyone in the kitchen concluded within seconds that the dog did it. Keisha remained unconvinced. She crouched to the dog's level and confirmed what the others had missed: the animal was far too short to ever reach the countertop. Then she noticed a lone crumb clinging to her younger brother's sleeve and a telltale smear of chocolate at the corner of his mouth. While the others went on scolding the bewildered dog, Keisha assembled the details into a single, quiet conclusion. "It wasn't the dog," she said, leveling a finger at her brother. "It was you." His face flushed a guilty shade of red.

The very instant the tent collapsed into a heap, it began pouring rain. The marshmallows were thoroughly soaked and a remarkably bold raccoon made off with the entire bag of granola while the family watched in disbelief. Nico just grinned. "Good news," he offered. "That is a lot less for us to carry home tomorrow." When the campfire stubbornly refused to catch, he only shrugged. "Even better. Now we can see every star from right here." His sister groaned and wrung the rainwater from her socks, but Nico surveyed his soggy, shivering family and smiled as though the whole miserable evening were a gift. "At least we are all here together," he said, and he meant every single word of it.

Mr. Okafor, the school librarian, had been out sick for an entire week, and his absence had been felt. The instant he stepped through the library doors, the whole class erupted into a cheer loud enough to break every rule of the room. Two students rushed to hug him before he had even set down his bag; a third produced an enormous get-well card buried under a layer of glitter, while someone else had quietly saved him the good reading chair by the window. "We missed you so much!" they called out, all at once. Mr. Okafor had not yet managed a single word. He simply stood in the doorway and beamed as his students swarmed happily around him.

Juniper wore one green sock and one striped sock on purpose. Her backpack bristled with tiny plastic dinosaurs she had glued on herself. She kept a pencil tucked behind each ear plus a spare one twisted somewhere into her hair. Her denim jacket was crowded edge to edge with embroidered patches of cats wearing miniature hats. Nothing she wore matched anything else and that mismatched riot was precisely the effect she was after. Juniper had no interest in blending in. You did not need to talk to her for long to understand that she was a person who did everything entirely her own way.

Renee's space buggy died halfway across the red planet and her radio fell silent in the very same moment. Rather than panic, she made a quick inventory of everything still available to her. She pried the small mirror from the inside of her helmet and angled it to flash sunlight toward the distant base. She hauled the palest rocks she could find and spelled the word HELP in enormous letters across the dust. Then she stripped two loose wires from the useless radio and twisted them together until the device emitted a loud, repeating beep. Soon a rescue ship caught sight of her improvised signals and changed course toward her. Renee had turned a pile of broken equipment into a rescue.

The cookies required a full twelve minutes in the oven but waiting that long was more than Tariq could bear. After a single minute had passed, he was already asking, "Are they done yet?" He yanked the oven door open to check, releasing heat and, in fact, slowing the baking process. Then he exhaled in disappointment and let the oven door bang shut. "How about now?" he asked again, drumming his foot against the tile floor. He peered through the oven window again and again, though little had changed since the last time moments before. By the four-minute mark he had posed the same question at least five times. "This is taking absolutely forever," Tariq groaned.

The three travelers set out for the castle at dawn and Bram shook his head for the entire journey. "We will never make it past the river," he announced grimly. They forded the river without the slightest trouble. "Very well, but the bridge ahead is surely broken," Bram said, and yet the bridge proved perfectly solid beneath their feet. "Even if we somehow reach the castle, it will be locked," he muttered, "or flooded, or overrun with trolls, and most likely all three at once." However smoothly each leg of the trip unfolded, Bram remained utterly convinced that catastrophe lay in wait just beyond the next bend in the road.

Thomas lost the championship race by a single step after having wanted to win it for the entire year. He doubled over with his hands braced on his knees and attempted to catch his breath. Then, rather than retreating to sulk along the fence, he crossed directly to the winner, a girl named Candice, and shook her hand firmly. "You were amazing out there," Thomas told her, with a smile on his face that left no doubt of his sincerity. "You earned every bit of this." When Candice stepped forward to accept her medal, Thomas applauded louder than anyone in the crowd. He was genuinely crushed to have lost and yet he meant every word that he had offered her.

Hazel's locker resembled a small private museum. A friendship bracelet, its threads worn pale and soft with the years, hung from the uppermost hook. A faded photograph of Hazel and her late grandfather had been taped, with evident care, to the inside of the door. On the narrow shelf rested a smooth gray stone gathered from the beach where she had first learned to swim, and beside it a crumpled ticket stub from the first film she had ever seen in a theater. None of it would have fetched a single dollar at any market. And yet, each object anchored a memory she could not bring herself to surrender, so the little collection did nothing but grow, year after year.

The cast list appeared on the board and there was Nadine's name, printed neatly beside the lead. Camila sighed and said, "Congratulations, Nadine. You are going to be wonderful." Camila summoned the most convincing smile in her repertoire. Inwardly, however, she felt nothing remotely like joy. She had rehearsed for that very role every night for a month, drilling the lines until they surfaced in her dreams. It should have been me, she thought to herself, her eyes fixed on the list. For one unguarded moment she pictured Nadine going blank beneath the stage lights on opening night. The image produced a small, shameful spark of satisfaction. Everything she said aloud was kind. Everything she actually felt ran in the opposite direction.

Sam and Mae were working on a group project and they could not agree. They soon reached a standstill and the volume was rising. Sam was adamant that the group should build a robot for the science fair, while Mae was equally passionate about constructing a volcano that errupted. Neither would give an inch and what had started as a disagreement was becoming a genuine fight. That was the moment Kwame chose to step in. "Look, Sam's robot idea is fantastic," he said evenly, "and Mae's volcano idea is also great. So, what if we build a robot whose whole job is to set off the volcano?" Sam's scowl vanished and Mae's expression brightened. Within the minute the two of them were bent over a shared sheet of paper, sketching the design together, their quarrel entirely forgotten.

Layla had been frightened of the big dog next door for as long as she could remember. This dog was loud, bared its teeth on every encounter, and hurled itself thunderously against the fence, making a terrifying crash. So one cloudy afternoon, when the animal slipped its gate, Layla could feel the terror building inside of her. Her heart hammered against her ribs and every instinct she had screamed at her to turn and run. Then she noticed little Ben toddling straight into the yard. Ben was far too young to grasp the danger that he had stumbled into, and that single fact outweighed everything else. Layla drew one unsteady breath, willed her legs to move, and then crossed the yard with her hands shaking the whole way. She reached the boy, gathered him up, and carried him back behind the safety of the sliding glass door. She had been terrified from start to finish but she had acted regardless.

When the swollen river first threatened the fields, it was Beatriz who roused the entire village and set them stacking sandbags straight through the night. By sunrise the harvest had been spared through their coordinated effort. The following day, the queen herself came to offer her gratitude. "For what you have done, I shall make you a duchess," she proclaimed, "and grant you a chest of gold besides." Beatriz merely shook her head. "I have no need of a title nor of gold," she replied. "Every soul in this village labored exactly as hard as I did, all to their own ability. I only did what plainly had to be done." And with that, she returned to her bakery and began the day's bread, precisely as she would have on any ordinary morning.

The entire crew had labored for hours under a punishing sun to unearth the treasure chest, yet, the instant its lid had creaked open, Captain Reyes raked every last coin into his personal bag. "Mine," he declared. "The whole of it." When the smallest sailor timidly raised a single coin she had spotted glinting in the sand, Reyes pried it directly from her palm. "That one belongs to me as well. This is my right as your captain." The crew, having done all the digging, were left with precisely nothing, while Reyes already possessed more gold than he could spend in three lifetimes, and still he swept his gaze across the empty beach and scowled. "Is this truly all of it?" he demanded. "There must be more buried somewhere."

A new crew member named Soren came aboard the starship. Soren was radiating smiles and volunteering to help with anything that needed doing, but Kai was not the least bit convinced. Why is he being this agreeable? Kai wondered, his eyes narrowing. No one is this pleasant without expecting something in return. When Soren began slipping in casual questions about the ship's controls, Kai offered nothing but clipped half-answers and scrutinized Soren's expression for some giveaway. He is after something, Kai thought. I simply have to determine what it is. For the remainder of the shift, Kai tracked Soren from the corner of his eye, waiting for the friendly mask to slip.