Part One: The Animal Ark

Friday, December 23rd, 1988
Ridgeview Middle School
Boulder City, Nevada.



... Look to the future now... It’s only just begun...

---

You sit in the stuffy, heavy auditorium of Ridgeview Middle School, listening to Lizzie Anderson drone on and on and on. Hundred of eyes, yours and your peers, watch the large auditorium clock hanging on the back wall, behind and above Anderson’s head. The room is dead quiet, but there’s that heaving, nervous, excited energy of a countdown. The minute hand strikes 29.

Tick, tock, tick, tock.

You sit in rapt attention.

"... and your test results will be sent out in a few days! I’m sure you can’t wait..."

Tick, tock, tick, tock.

"Finally I want to say..."

Poor Lizzie notices a ripple run through the room, and desperately tries to swim against it; to suppress it in that teacherly ‘the bell doesn’t dismiss you’ fashion. She tries to raise her voice among that new wave of fidgeting.

"... Have a wonderful Christmas. Be careful and don’t do anything..."

The shrill ringing of the school bell. Pandemonium. A cheer breaks out all around you. Manners forgotten, students begin to burst from the auditorium. Equally excited teachers do little to stem the tide. Just enough to keep old Lizzie off their backs! The woman throws her hands up in the air in surrender.

"... to embarrass the school." she lets out, defeated.

---

You all get swept along in the tide. You feel that bloom of hope and possibility inside you. Christmas break. And then you’re outside. Ridgeview champions the education of several hundred students, all of whom are now making a desperate bid to get away from the place. You look around at this great exodus. Everywhere, children run for buses, or, more sheepishly, their mother’s car. Some mount bikes and speed away in packs.

You see some of the bigger, meaner students making cruel faces behind the back of your math teacher, "Cuckoo" Hernandez. And there’s that funny little bicycle helmet he always wears. You cringe. That thing is a lightning rod for cruel treatment. He walks to his car, seemingly oblivious to the bullies.

Mikey feels awesome. Finally, it's the holidays. No more stupid classes to attend, no more homework - not that he ever does it himself anyway - and, well, there might actually still be some soccer training during the break, he's not quite sure. But even that will be alright if it's his only responsibility.
Following the example of some of the other students, he sticks out his tongue at Mr. Hernandez' back and then chuckles to himself. As he makes his way to the bike stands, he spots Spud in the crowd and debates for a moment whether to go over to him or not. Spud's been a huge help this year, so he decides to do it. Pushing his way through an excited crowd where nobody has eyes for anyone but themselves, he reaches the shorter boy quickly and, as a greeting, slaps him on the back between the shoulders hard enough to make him stumble. "Hey there, pal," he grins. "Any plans for the break? Bet you're gonna miss me."

Georgie laughs with his whole face, delighted Mikey said hi. "Oh yeah, hi Mikey. Boy, I got a whole stack of Mack Bolan's I'm going to read and my mom got this new box of chips called All Dressed I'm going to hole up in my room and mom says if we get the chores done we can rent a VCR and a movie for Christmas Eve and that means will have it until the 26th. Can you believe it? Right on, right?"

He laughs his body shaking. Deep down he knows Mikey didn't care about Mack Bolan, he didn't even like them that much, but they were cool so he made sure that he read them too. His real plan was to read a book a day the whole Christmas break and if he went outside at all, it was to look for that cat, Zorro.

"Hey, did you hear that Rebecca, you know Poole not Casuega, Rebecca Poole's aunt lost her cat Zorro and posted like a huge reward. I might go look for him by the Hoover Dam Lodge. You know, we could split the reward. If you, haha, if you wanted to go too." He looks around. "Throw stuff off the dam. Not the cat, though, wouldn't get that radical reward."

Mikey fakes a yawn at Georgie's holiday plans, even though they don't even sound that bad.
When he gets to the missing cat, however, he perks up. "Do you think someone stole it?", he asks. "Nah, probably just ran away. But maybe..." He's been reading some detective stories recently, though he won't say that, of course. "Uh, I mean, you mentioned a reward? How much? I could really use the money!"

"I think it was twenty, no fifty bucks. I don't know but it's a lot. One time I was biking down by their place with... this friend, and uh and we saw a badger and a rattler. We ran to their house and they had a shiny new gas grill built into bricks and a patio with colored brick tiles. It was so radical. I bet they're loaded and loaded people always give fifty bucks to get their cats back."

Georgie had lots of stories like that, things he did with a now nameless friend. He didn't like to mention Andy any more.

Andy, thrilled to finally get away from that droning obnoxious principal wanders over to Mikey. He really isn't enthused about seeing Spud with him though. Ever since Spud opened his big mouth about the magic viewfinder they found in the woods, he wasn't talking to him. I mean, could you believe it? Here they had found a window to the world and he went and told everyone and then the authorities came and moved it!

Hey Mikey, he says, ignoring Spud. Do you think your dad is gonna have soccer practice over the holiday? I've been working on some tricks that I wanted to show him.

Mikey whistles in appreciation. "Fifty bucks," he says. "That's thirty for me and twenty for you! Pretty good."

He turns around when Andy approaches. At his question, Mikey shrugs."Probably. He's just as obsessed with it as you are." Mikey never really shows it but Andy often gets the impression he's not as enthusiastic about the team as most of the others, even if he is a fairly good player most of the time.

Georgie laughs at the bad math, Mikey was funny that way.

He mutters, "Thirty twenty that's funny," and chuckles. His laughter trails off as Andy shows up. He was going to say something to him about what happened. One day. But everyday got farther and his story grew lamer.

Walking at a slow pace, hands in his green jacket's pocket and not a part of the general excitement, Jaden walks out the main doors. His scruffy dirty blonde hair falling in front of his eyes but he doesn't bother moving them aside; his old jeans sporting a couple pins. He has his Walkman already on - the latest tape he traded blasting from his headphones.
He spots Andy and walks towards his direction; he might have that new Mötley Crüe tape Jaden wanted to listen to.
As he approaches, he pulls one of his headphones behind his ear and turns the volume somewhat down to a level that he could listen to the people around him. He nodded at him as just said "Hey". He isn't the talkative type - especially when he's at school.

Hey Jaden! Andy's eyes light up at the older boy's arrival. Heard any good music lately?

Morgan Moore sits through the assembly like she usually does -- lurking quietly at the edges of things. The skinny, chicken-legged, dark-haired girl is wearing a black sweater that is at least one or two sizes too large, a pleated skirt, and a pair of black knock-off high-top Converse All-Stars. Her big canvas backpack is covered in writing, pins, buttons and all manner of the weird pop culture that she's into, and she shoulders it and heads for the exit when the bell goes and the hounds are released. The girl squawks as she is suddenly swept along with the tide, jostled and bumped, made fun of by the popular girls, and finally knocked down at the bottom of the school's steps to a chorus of laughter.

Several jerks jeer as the fifth grader tries to collect the Garbage Pail Kids cards that went flying when she fell, but when the insults and taunting become too much she beats a red-faced retreat towards the bike racks, where her fourth-hand, banana-seat-equipped old green Schwinn is parked. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Georgie and thinks about going over to say hi, but the presence of sharp-tongued Mike Rogan means she decides to keep her distance. Instead, she sighs as she bends to inspect her bike tires, both of which are flat, the air let out of them. She'll be walking it home, and certainly not for the first time.

As everyone starts focusing on Jaden at his arrival - Darn, I can't wait to be the cool older kid people look up to - Mikey's eyes start to wander and he spots Morgan at the bike stands. Mikey likes her pleated skirt. It's really cool, like a lot of stuff she wears. He watches as she fiddles with her bike. It looks like something is wrong with it. As she unlockes it, he shouts over to her: "Hey there, Em..." He takes a calculated pause and then adds: "...barrassment!"

Jaden gave Andy a disapproving look, although he smirked at him as he said "Like I would listen to anything lame!.. he watched Andy's face beginning to droop and then laughed out loud "Ha ha ha, I'm messing with you man, relax! But really, nothing too mind-blowing... Still trying to get my hands on Crüe's latest one. Do you happen to have got your hands on it?

Naw, I haven't even heard that one yet, he says to Jaden and really wished he had because now he wasn't all that cool in Jaden's eyes.

Then he looks over at Em when Mikey shouts to her. He thought she was cute so any excuse to be the knight in shining armor was welcome.

Should we see what's going on with her? he says to Mikey. I bet those bullies did something to her bike. Maybe we can help.

Georgie hangs back and looks at the bus, and just leaves the kids, moving to the bus and hoping to intercept Rebecca.

Mikey was funny but he didn't like the way he treated Em, and Andy and Jaden are ignoring him so they wouldn't care.

Mikey shrugs. He doesn't want to show that he wants to check in on her so he acts like he doesn't care. He follows Andy over to the bike stand and to her.

When he notices Georgie sneaking off, Mikey calls out: "Hey, Spud, where are you headed? I thought we were going to find that cat together."

He spins around, nearly tripping. "I'm checking with Rebecca, I'll be back just after that okay?" he calls back. And continues, bumping into a passel of third graders, lunchkits flying.