It was completely Joshua's fault that Cassie lost a half hour of sleep the next morning. Usually Cassie woke up as late as she could while still making it out the door on time. If she gave herself twenty minutes to make it to the bus stop, she would be golden. Today, though, she was awake the minute Joshua began jumping about excitedly in her doorway.

"Hey, Joshua. What's up?" Cassie yawned, glancing over to her bedside clock to see what time it was. More than a bit before she would usually get up.

"I couldn't sleep very well. I woke up fifteen minutes ago and couldn't fall back asleep. Cass, I'm so excited!" Joshua continued dancing about as Cassie stretched and rolled out of bed.

Cassie groaned, "Well, why'd you wake me up?"

"I didn't. I was just standing here and waiting for your alarm to ring whenever. You woke up on your own." Joshua raised his hands defensively as his sister glared at him accusingly. Cassie frowned. She was sure she had heard him talking to her. So he was going to lie to her as well.

"Are you seriously already dressed? It's like six in the morning." Cassie dug through the drawer beside her bed and tossed an outfit onto the floor.

Joshua laughed and shrugged. "I also made our lunches and our school bags are by the door."

With a sigh, Cassie herded her brother out of her room and closed the door before flipping on the light-switch. She squinted against the brightness as she struggled into her clothes. Then she fumbled out to join her twin, trying not to trip over her own feet. Joshua was sitting on the couch when she joined him, sitting upside down with his feet in the air.

"Why didn't you just wait for Mrs. Gilligan? She gets up quite a while before I would," Cassie huffed at her brother, though she was feeling less tired by the second. Her senses were heightening and she was more excited about the day to come than when she had rolled out of bed.

Joshua shrugged. "We can make her breakfast for a change. You know how to make french toast, right?"

"Yeah..."

"Okay, then I'll make eggs and you make french toast and we can have that with Mrs. Gilligan before we leave," Joshua suggested as Cassie nodded slowly.

"Sounds good. Don't kill anything that wasn't already dead!" Cassie called as loudly as she dared after her brother as he dashed into the flat's kitchen.

Cassie followed a moment later, and pulled out everything she would need to make her dish. She also made sure to steal several eggs from Joshua's stash before he was able to use all of them and leave her stranded halfway through a recipe. Joshua retaliated by eating a pinch of sugar from the bowl Cassie got out to use. Though their hands got a bit sticky in the process, both siblings managed to get everything onto the stove in one piece. They also avoided completely obliterating the kitchen. A minute after starting their food to cool, they heard Mrs. Gilligan's alarm beeping from the other room.

Mrs. Gilligan stopped suddenly at the entrance to the kitchen and looked between Cassie and Joshua in suprise. "Good morning, Cassandra. Good morning, Joshua. What are you doing up?"

"Joshua couldn't sleep 'cause he was all hyper about the counterpart results, so he woke me up. We figured that we could make breakfast for you, since you usually do for us."

"That's nice, sweetie. Thank you!" Mrs. Gilligan walked into the kitchen and peered at the french toast and eggs cooking on the stove. "You might need to flip these pretty soon, though."

Joshua grabbed for his spatula and turned over the now slightly burnt egg in his pan, almost launching it across the room. Cassie waited a minute before flipping her french toast, making sure not to do anything that Joshua would. That is to say, she tried not to do anything dumb.

After a couple minutes, Cassie had to race across the house and back into her room. She scrambled to turn off the alarm clock ringing on her bedside table before it could wake up someone in the apartments next to them.

"Sorry, forgot to turn it off," Cassie panted as she returned to finish cooking her french toast. Joshua was frantically trying not to drop anything, the inevitable aftermath of deciding not to take more than one trip to the table.

Mrs. Gilligan laughed, and held out an arm to stop Joshua's plates from toppling to the floor. "Do you need a hand, Joshua?"

She was greeted with a huff as Joshua set the pile of plates from his left hand onto the table, keeping the platter of eggs clutched tightly in his right. He then set the platter down as cautiously as he had the plates. Nothing broke, and both Mrs. Gilligan and Cassie sighed in relief.

"Why wouldn't they just tell us what day we get the CP results?" Joshua moaned. Mrs. Gilligan laughed as she finished helping Cassie move her things to the table. "All of this would be much simpler if we got a memo."

"If they told you, it wouldn't be a surprise! But look, as long as you don't tell the school that I gave away their secret, I'll tell you one thing. Your principal sent out messages to the parents a couple of weeks ago telling us to be ready for you kids to go on your counterpart trips." Mrs. Gilligan grinned as hope filled the children's faces. "They asked us not to say anything, so we could keep it a surprise. They just wanted to make sure we could plan for your absence."

Mrs. Gilligan led each of the children to the kitchen table to eat. She continued, "Looks like you figured it out, though."

"It's exciting enough without having to make it a surprise!" Joshua exclaimed as he shoveled food onto his plate.

"Yeah, I can't wait!" Cassie copied her brother before giving the rest to Mrs. Gilligan. The three ate quickly, Joshua entirely too jumpy and hyper and Cassie only a little less so. The siblings hugged Mrs. Gilligan before running out of the door.

Cassie clutched her satchel and lunch bag as she rushed after Joshua down the flight of stairs. When they reached the ground floor, Cassie clipped her lunch to the handle of her bag. There was no point in running, as reaching the bus stop sooner would not get them to school in any less time, but they did so anyway.

"Did you finish your homework?" Cassie asked Joshua when they finally slowed down.

Joshua paused before answering, "Nah, but they won't have us turn in anything today. I don't care about conjunctions, and math class is last so I can do the work page at lunch."

"You need to actually do things in order to get good grades, you know." Cassie rolled her eyes, and Joshua just gestured at his bag in dismissal.

"My methods have worked so far," Joshua joked. Cassie sighed and raced across the next street towards the bus stop. She was momentarily ahead before Joshua took the lead to rest of the way there.

Joshua hung onto the oak tree at the corner and stared down the row from which the bus would come, up from Z and on its way to row B of the city. Row A was reserved for political offices, so B was where the schools were placed. Preschool through college classes were all housed throughout the buildings of B-1 through B-20. That was the case for all adapted cities—those that had taken on the homogenous model of identical buildings and letter-number block systems.

Cassie sat on the bench next to the street and watched Joshua dance around madly, waiting for the bus. She knew that there wasn't a chance that the bus would be there yet, even without checking the time, because the other student from their row wasn't there yet. He was always on time.

That didn't stop Joshua from continuing to jump about. Cassie watched him, bored, and picked at the flower patches on her satchel and lunch-bag.

"Hey, Jordan!" Joshua greeted the other boy when he finally walked up to the stop. Neither of the twins knew Jordan very well, but Joshua looked ready to run up the side of a building with all the energy he had, so he said hello anyway.

"Umm... hi," Jordan murmured before sliding onto the far side of the bench, away from Cassie.

Joshua stopped scrambling about and pulled Cassie up off of her seat, dragging her to where the school bus would stop. Moments later, the bus pulled up. Some of the elementary kids from rows R through U were already riding. Rachel waved exaggeratedly from the back of the bus as Cassie and Joshua checked in.

"Oh my gosh oh my gosh oh my gosh I can't wait," Rachel squeaked. She tugged Cassie down next to her and Joshua slid into a seat where he could face the window.

Cassie grinned. "I know I know I know. Hey, did you at least finish your homework?"

She was met with a sheepish glance.

"Not exactly... but it doesn't matter. I was too busy gaming to worry about variables, and there are more important things today," Rachel reasoned.

Cassie snorted before hugging her satchel to her chest. "When you guys get zeros because you didn't do your work, don't tell me that I didn't warn you about it."

"Oh whatever, Cass! Don't even tell me that you weren't just doing your homework to pass time. I was being distracted by Call to Battle instead," Rachel scoffed, pushing Cassie's backpack to the floor.

"The files take less that ten seconds to upload. There's no reason that they won't have us turn them in." Cassie dug through her satchel in search of her school-issue tablet. The tech couldn't access the Internet unless it was connected to the school-building's wifi, so it was only very helpful for school stuff. It automatically downloaded each classes' homework at the end of the day. "Look, they take like ten minutes if you concentrate and don't answer all complex."

Rachel flitted her eyes across the screen before snatching the tablet and pulling out her own. Cassie groaned as her friend copied answers onto her own assignments before shoving the device back at her. Rachel's answers were far more compact than Cassie's, the majority of them no more than one word or an equation with no work shown. "You aren't going to get credit with that, Rach."

Rachel scoffed and opened a newsfeed on her tablet as soon as the bus reached their school building. "No info on any other places having their CP days," Rachel reported sadly.

Joshua snorted from where he was sliding on his backpack. Cassie glared at him before telling her friend, "Mrs. Gilligan said that she got a letter from the school saying it would be soon."

"What? Wait, what!" Rachel whirled around from where she was starting to inch toward the front of the bus. "Why didn't my mom tell me?"

"Your mom must be pretty good at keeping secrets," Joshua told her, standing up.

He motioned for the girls to follow him. Rachel appeared to be in a state of utter shock and disbelief as she walked in front of Cassie and checked out of the bus.

The three students were jostled by the waves of elementary-schoolers as they made their way to their homeroom. The ground floor held the sixth grade classes, so Cassie, Joshua, and Rachel only had to head through a few turns of the hallway to reach Ms. Velma's room. Most of the kindergarteners were already up on the ninth floor (closest to the nurse and the principal on floor ten), so they did not need to worry about running into the little kids.

Rachel clamped one hand over her mouth to keep herself from talking when they reached the classroom. Cassie laughed, but was glad Rachel had stopped herself from asking about CP day. Their teacher would be very disappointed if they ruined the surprise for the others. The room buzzed with small talk until school bells around the building rung and began their class.

"Everyone please grab your tablets and upload your assignments." Ms. Velma wrote a few codes to access the upload points on the touchscreen at the front of the room. Then she walked over to her desk and began gathering up papers.

Cassie shot glances at her brother and Rachel. Both were frantically tapping at their screens in desperate attempts to finish their assignments. Looking up at the board, Cassie typed in the passcodes and turned in her homework. After that she stared back at Joshua pointedly.

Her brother continued scribbling before sighing and setting down the tablet with a frown, peering up to the front of the room. Cassie caught Joshua's eye and raised her eyebrows with a slight grin. Joshua glared back fiercely.

"Class, please come to the front of the room when I call your name. I'll be passing out half-sheets of paper with your names and ID numbers. Don't write on these, just go back to your desk and wait for further instruction," Ms. Velma announced.

This immediately wiped the worry and irritation from both Joshua and Rachel's faces. The latter bounced in her seat with excitement. Cassie smiled and spun her tablet pen between two fingers as she waited for her name.

Rachel was almost the first student summoned, it all going alphabetically by last name. "Costa, Rachel." Rachel dashed to the front of the room and took her paper, and Cassie could see the effort she was making not to dance the whole way there.

Two more kids were called before Cassie edged forward, knowing her name was next.

"Gilligan, Cassandra."

Cassie also had to actively think through each step so as not to run. Instead, she just walked as evenly as she could and said a polite "thank you" to her teacher when she received her paper.

"Gregor, Joshua."

Joshua looked down at Cassie's paper as he walked by, but she just rolled her eyes. The sheet only had exactly what the teacher said it would. Unless he was particularly interested in looking at her name and school ID on an otherwise blank page, the sheet was relatively uninteresting.

Rachel shot the corner of a notebook page, rolled up into a ball, at the back of Cassie's head. Cassie grabbed it from the desk of the boy behind her and unrolled it.

It read, "When is she going to be done?"

Cassie didn't give her friend the satisfaction of an answer. She chose to wait as patiently as possible as Ms. Velma made her way through V, W, and as there were no X names, Z.

"Now could you all form a single file line from the door facing to the hallway? It doesn't need to be any particular order, just please don't..." Ms. Velma trailed off as the scuffling of chair feet sounded through the room, and the class of thirty kids shoved one another to line up with papers in hand. "Hurt each other. Yep, okay."

Wordlessly, the young teacher led her class from the room. Maybe everyone else knew what was going on too, because the energy about the group was much higher than usual. Rachel let herself be cut in front of and moved from the front of the line to fall into step next to Cassie.

"Single file line," Cassie told Rachel with a smirk, moving so that she was in front of her friend.

"Oh shush," Rachel said, poking Cassie in the back. "We finally get our CPs!"

"Or they could be calling all of us in to say that we fail sixth grade." Cassie shrugged, rushing to as close to the line's front as she could be, pulling Rachel with her.

The largest room on the ground floor—usually used for guest speakers and the sort—was decked out with the Counterparts Program logo, arching blue arrows. On the stage, a projection screen was assembled to show whatever information the hundreds of twelve-year-olds needed to know, more children still filing in each minute still filing in. Tables with lists and files were sitting against each of the walls, alphabetically labeled.

Ms. Velma quieted the children at the front of the line and called out, "The tables are divided by first letter of your last name. Please be orderly, and do not shove one another. Happy Counterpart Day!"

Within a second, Rachel had Cassie's hand in her own and was dragging Cassie across the room to a plastic folding table labeled "C". There was already a line at the table, and Joshua had run off to the table with a "G", but Cassie stayed with her friend as Rachel tapped her foot with impatience. The line moved relatively quickly, especially given that there were about twenty kids ahead of Rachel and only two employees at the front passing out their files.

The tan paper of the folder that Rachel swapped her ID paper for was gone in a blur. The hyper girl barely got out a "thanks" before zipping away with Cassie behind her.

"So... What does it say?" Cassie looked over Rachel's shoulder as she read attentively. The shorter girl just brushed Cassie away and flipped to the next page of the packet before folding it shut.

"Her name is Tatiana Elyssa and she is an animal trainer who lives in a city just a couple blocks over. I don't remember how to read greek letters for the city names, but the map shows that it's just like five squares over from here," Rachel breathed, clutching the file to her chest. Cassie could have sworn there were actual stars in her friend's eyes.

"Let's go stand in line for mine and you can tell me more while I wait."

Rachel nodded wordlessly and hurried after Cassie as she jogged over to the line Joshua had already made his way through.

"They have a picture of her. Here," Rachel passed over a photograph of a cheerful-looking woman. She was not unlike what Cassie could picture how Rachel would look in a good number of years—the same dark skin, bright eyes, and a smile that held an incredible amount of energy inside. Cassie blinked as she looked at the photo, growing more and more excited to see her own CP. This was pretty cool.

Joshua made a beeline to his sister. He, too, was holding onto his counterpart folder as though it contained the answers to life itself. "You have got to see this, Cass!"

Cassie had a second color photograph thrust at her, this one of a man who appeared to be in the middle of laughing about something. He was looking at the camera as though it was a dear friend, and had the same brown hair and green eyes as Joshua. His light skin had a spattering of freckles, which Joshua lacked, but apart from that they looked very alike.

"Wow, that's awesome! Who is he?" Cassie asked, passing the CP pictures back to Joshua and Rachel. The line inched forward, leaving about ten students between her and the booth.

"His name is Philip Arnolds. He has a house in one of the cities near the east coast. And, get this, he works as a comedian." Cassie knew that Joshua had wanted to be a performer when he was a little kid, before settling for more 'rational' job choices.

Cassie smiled as she reached the edge of the table. Her counterpart's file was somewhere in the sea of boxes. Rachel pulled Joshua to the side to make room for the other students in line behind them. The man working as distributor held out his hand as Cassie fumbled for the paper from the back pocket of her jeans, finally giving up and allowing the edge to rip as she pulled it out.

"Sorry." She held the torn edge straight as she passed it over to the man.

The employee took the sheet with an irritated look and matched it to one of the boxes set out behind him. He flipped through the folders twice before turning to the woman beside him and whispering with her for a moment. After that she took the paper from him and they switched places.

After another moment of searching, the woman turned to Cassie. "Did you already pick up your file? We don't have time for this nonsense."

Cassie looked up at the woman in surprise. "No, of course not," Cassie responded.

She looked over at where Joshua and Rachel were comparing files. Had this happened to Joshua when he came to claim his folder? Rachel hadn't had any sort of problems. Cassie looked up at the program employee pleadingly. The woman only shrugged before giving the name slip back to Cassie with a shake of her head. Cassie couldn't believe that the woman said next.

"I'm sorry," the employee told Cassie. "But we don't have any files for you."