After Tellie's nighttime disappearance, Kenny promised herself she wasn't going to venture on any more dangerous rendezvous, no matter what happened. If she heard someone screaming for help inside the restricted building or watched someone break their leg while they were skipping class, she would get someone else's help or inform an administrator about the problem. She swore to herself that she would never disobey the rules at the Academy for Gifted Children again.

Then Kenny broke this promise the very next day.

If the young girl could've, she would have blamed the entire thing on Tellie for not being in her room and causing Keny to go looking for her in the middle of the night. After all, that was the reason why she had been more sleepy than an armadillo and was too tired to do anything properly. However, Kenny knew the only person she could blame for what happened was herself.

Her first mistake was doing her Wednesday night ritual in her dorm room. Weekly, Kenny looked over her index cards and picked out ones that were no longer useful. This was a private act that Kenny usually did by herself in a quiet place. However, because she was too tired to walk back to the library after dinner, Kenny decided she would do it in her room.

It was especially troublesome this Wednesday as, earlier that day, Mrs. Page made the young girl create cards that she would never show to anyone. She irritably tossed ones that said, My favorite color is green, and, I prefer cats over dogs, into the box where she kept the rejected index cards. She wanted to do nothing but sleep, and because she knew she couldn't, Kenny was fitful.

Then came Kenny's next mistake: rather than lock the box in her closet like she usually did, the young girl placed it by her bed before going to sleep. She didn't expect much to happen to her box as the only one of her roommates who had been in the dorm while she sorted her cards was Metal, and the teen seemed to be busy with homework. The young girl thought her box would be fine, so she placed it on the ground next to her when she was done with it.

Briefly after Kenny had finished with her cards, Tellie and Jump entered the room. Metal turned off the light, and the bell pinged, signalling that the primary school children's curfew was in place. The young girl closed her eyes. It was barely five minutes before she was dreaming once again about the Darkness.

The painting sat in front of Kenny. It was similar to the one from her last dream, but this time, the yellow and white area was smaller. In fact, the black side of the canvas seemed to be growing, swallowing the light side inch by inch. Kenny watched as the yellow grew skinnier, and after a thoughtful moment, she quickly touched the pastel area. The whispers, which had been missing from the dream before, suddenly commenced. However, rather than the contradicting murmurs that the young girl expected, the whispers seemed to agree on this matter.

Kenny should not have touched the light side of the canvas.

The whispers morphed into yells and the yells into screams as Kenny was blinded by white. She fell backward, stunned at her sudden loss of sight and the loud din of the voices surrounding her. Rather than falling on the hard ground like she had expected, Kenny landed on a soft surface. Her vision cleared the second she touched the plane, and the screams slowly petered out to squeals of joy. Kenny looked around, trying to find the source of the child-like shrieks and figure out where her dream had taken her.

She was sitting on a brown and red rug in the center of a comfortable room. The lights were off, and all of the windows were open to allow sunlight to illuminate the room. Pictures were hung on the walls, but they weren't visible from Kenny's place on the floor. The young girl couldn't tell whether the room was incredibly tall or she had shrunk to the size of a small child.

Kenny tugged at the rug as she surveyed her area. The fabric felt as though it was real, and she could almost believe she wasn't dreaming if it weren't for the fact that she was much smaller than everything else around her. She willed herself to move forward, but her body stayed rooted to the ground. She tried once more. Nothing happened. It was as if she didn't control herself or where she could go.

More squeals sounded, and Kenny realized they were coming from outside. She spotted an open door from the corner of her eye, but her head wouldn't turn so she could view it clearly. She was becoming frustrated with her lack of mobility in her dream and considered waking herself up when she heard a shout come from outside.

"The ball went into the house!" someone called.

"Look, it's going to hit—!"

Something hard slammed into the back of Kenny's head, and the top of her body fell forward, slamming into the carpet. Her eyes screwed shut, and Kenny (the six-year-old, not the baby) woke up from her dream. She paused for a moment, trying to understand what had just happened. Because she was so tired, it took her a full minute to make the connection between the ball and the hard object that had hit her. She rubbed the back of her head, which hurt as though she had truly been injured, and checked the clock to see what time it was.

The dial read 6:21 a.m. Kenny's shoulders slumped as she realized she would have to get up and begin to prepare for the day if she was to make it to breakfast on time. Feeling more tired than when she had gone to sleep, Kenny pulled her blanket from her body and slipped from the warmth of her bed.

The morning was one similar to any other, excusing the fact that Kenny was asleep on her feet. Her first week of school was quickly coming to an end, and the young girl was beginning to get used to the routine of AGC. She only had to wait in the bathroom for a minute or two before she was able to get an open sink to brush her teeth and hair, and she was able to put her uniform and pull her backpack on with plenty of time to spare until breakfast.

It was at that moment, when Kenny had just finished getting ready for school, that she realized she had forgotten to get her index cards. She looked around for her box, spotting it under the bed. She kneeled on the floor and pulled the box from its place after several tries. As soon as Kenny picked up the box, she knew something was terribly wrong. It was lighter than it had ever been, even when Kenny had just begun making index cards when she was two. The air felt as though it was squeezed from her lungs, her body suddenly fully awake as she opened it.

They were gone. All of them, even the rejected cards that weren't supposed to see the rays of the sun.

Kenny closed the box, and tears flooded her eyes. She shoved the cardboard crate back under her bed, cursing herself for not locking her index cards away. The young girl began to pace as she usually did when she was nervous and confused and began to ask the obvious questions: What had happened to her cards? Could someone have taken them? She tried to recall who else had been in the room with her while she was sorting them, and when she finally did, she pressed her wrists against her eyes to prevent her tears from streaking down her face.

Could Metal have truly taken Kenny's cards? Sure, the teen was cold and abrasive at times, but she didn't hate the young girl enough to take her form of communication away from her. Did she?

"Are you alright over there, Hawking?" Jump asked from her closet. However, she sounded more amused than concerned as she asked, "Are the second graders stealing your crayons in Mr. Kingsworth's class?"

Kenny frowned, but because she was so upset, it turned into a scowl. She entered her own closet and pulled her suitcase out. It took several minutes of rifling through piles of unworn clothes for her to find her blank index cards, and by this time, breakfast had already started. She zipped her bag closed and shoved it back into the closet.

Kenny picked up her violin and hurried to the Dining Hall. The wind whipped against the young girl, blowing her hair wildly around her face, but she continued at her pace until she had made it to the building. She swiped her ID card on the scanner by the door and quickly walked over to her table. Clay turned to Kenny as she sat down and, without hesitating, told her, "I think the A groupers have something of yours, Hawkwing. Well, at least, Einstein does. He keeps talking about index cards, and he says they belong to you."

Kenny took her backpack off and produced a pencil from it. She wrote on one of her blank cards, Someone stole my index cards. When she was finished, she showed it to the boy before her, and he attempted to read it.

Clay was still trying to figure out what the card said when Fins sat next to Kenny. He leaned over and read her card. The young girl watched as Fins gasped and read the index card again, this time in shock rather than casual interest.

"Seriously?" the boy asked in disbelief. "Who?"

Clay says Einstein, Kenny replied.

"Why would he do something like that?"

Kenny shrugged in response. Because he hates me, she thought bitterly to herself, even though I did nothing to him.

Fins didn't ask any more questions, instead muttering phrases like "holy trash cans" and "oh my carbon dioxide" at ten second intervals. Kenny ignored him, thinking for a moment, and wrote out several cards that she thought would allow her to speak with Einstein on the topic of the whereabouts of her index cards. After taking a few minutes to write out all of her responses, the girl stood from her chair and made her way over to the A groupers' table.

The group quieted as Kenny walked over. Several students she didn't know well enough to name glared at her icily. Rather than look at them, she focused her gaze on Metal. The blonde was the only A grouper whose eyes were not locked onto Kenny, and it barely took the young girl a second to figure out why. Metal really had taken her index cards.

Kenny tried to feel angry with Metal, but she was just disappointed. This confused her. Shouldn't she feel mad? Metal had stolen her cards, her speech, away from her. Why wasn't she angry? Where had her emotion from before gone?

Then her gaze flicked to Einstein.

Ah, yes. There was the rage.

Kenny slapped her index card down on the table in front of the boy. Give me my cards.

Einstein smirked at Kenny's anger and replied, "Did you walk to the wrong table by mistake? I'm afraid your friends, the mixers, sit over there."

Kenny didn't know what a mixer was, and she didn't care, either. She picked another card from her small stack. I'm an A grouper, which means I can be here if I'd like.

"Yes, but we'd prefer if you weren't here. So quickly, what do you want from me again?"

You know what I'm here for.

Einstein tilted his head. "I haven't the slightest idea what you're talking about."

Kenny stared the boy down, but he continued to pretend to be innocent. Rolling her eyes, She showed him the very first card she had put down once more: Give me my cards.

"I can't. I don't have them anymore."

Kenny's heart seemed to flip in her chest. What if Einstein had given her stack of cards to Blaze and burned it just like he said he would? What if all of her cards, everything she had worked on for the last four years, were gone? How would she talk to other people? What would she tell Mrs. Page?

"I've put them in Dr. Anderson's room."

Relief spread like a blast wave throughout Kenny's body. However, she quickly frowned. Where was Miss Kaylee's room?

Einstein noticed the girl's confusion. "Room 117. It's where Dr. Anderson gives her monthly Gifted seminars. I've placed them in there, but I can't quite remember where.... I guess you'll just have to find them. And hurry, because breakfast ends in almost fifteen minutes."

The boy then turned away from Kenny and began to speak with Gene. WIthout hesitation, Kenny walked back to her table, knowing Einstein wasn't going to give her any more information about her cards. She slumped into her chair as Fins asked, "So where are your cards?"

Kenny wrote out a new card. They're in room 117.

"The seminar room? Why would Einstein put them in there?"

The young girl shrugged. What should I do? she asked.

Both Fins and Clay paused, pondering the problem. In the end, it was Clay who spoke.

"Hawking," he piped, "you should go get your cards. Right now, and come back quickly before anyone notices you've left."