Memory Lane part 1

Chapter 1

Echoes In a Jar

"I'll save you/An echo from the hall"

-A Little Opera Goes A Long Way by Sky Sailing

Bran and I had slipped into the Echo storeroom again and we giggled in the darkness as I reached into the nearest box and pulled out a mid-size jar. I tucked it under my sweatshirt and Bran and I put on our stern faces, nodding at each other before slipping out of the storeroom, back into the main store, where we pretended to browse through the Echo titles as we scooted to the front door. Then we quickly dashed outside, the door chiming behind us, and we took off towards the Sleeping Hall in a mad dash, like we were the robbers we had watched Wednesday night. They had taken off from the Vanity shop, dashing down the street before disappearing in the fog, the items they were trying to steal dropping around them as the store manager ran to collect their Cells for the Crime hall. Bran and I pushed through the main doorways and hurried to the NightLight corridor, slipping into our room. Cole, Eve, and Nancy were huddled on my top bunk, staring at a picture book, but they looked up when we came in, holding up the Echo jar triumphantly with wide grins on our faces. Bert frowned from his own bed, where he was reading the assigned pages from school, but everyone else cried out in glee and hurried down the ladders. We all collected on Bran's bottom bunk, the one that was farthest from the door and covered in the blankets Kyle always remembered having hang from the top bunk, and Bert reluctantly flipped off the light switch, but, though he paused to consider it, decided against joining us, instead laying back on his own bed and turning to face the wall. We drew the blankets tight around us and giggled, counting backwards from five, "Four...three...two...one!" And then I twisted the lid and pulled it off, releasing the howls of a group of teenage boys at a beach cove, as they echoed off of the walls of the sea cave they had found. We all broke into fits of giggles, folding over in our laughter as the howls turned into warrior calls and one particular voice called out the usual, "Echo!" to which the cave walls replied, "ECHO, Echo, echo, echo..." We listened to the Echoes a few more times before I screwed the lid back on the jar tight and slipped it under Bran's bed, where it was not likely to be found any time soon among Kyle's many toys, books, and dirty laundry. Most likely, they would believe the kids in the opposite corridor had taken it, if they thought kids had at all, since they were always the ones who would miss a Circus memory to view another Crime.

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