Angela leapt down the emergency stairs one flight at a time. A tiny voice inside of her screamed that she would break a leg, but the sheer exhilaration of her tiny moments of freefall eclipsed that tiny voice utterly. By the time she reached the bottom floor, she forgot why she’d run down the steps. Her head spun gently from her race down the stairs, and she giggled with the sheer joy of being alive.

A big gray plate made up part of the wall, bigger than her. It had a bar across it and a little red and white poster with red markings above it. Reaching up on tiptoe, she traced each symbol. As her finger ran across the stark white lines of the first one, she remembered something. With childlike delight she called out her discovery to the empty stairwell.

“E!”

She knew what the poster was, now. It was a sign! The thrill of discovery filled her as she traced the letters, calling out the names of each as she did so.

“Ex. Eye. Tee!” Letters made something. Letters made words! Quickly she sounded out the word, tickled that she could figure out the mystery of the symbols.

“Ex. It. EXIT! Go Team Angie!” Signs told you things. This one told her to exit, but she didn’t see a doorway, just a metal plate with a bar. Signs wouldn’t lie, though, so she looked closer. She figured out the mystery of the symbols, she would figure out the mystery of the plate! She remembered something from a story, about a plate in the wall that you pushed. She always thought plates to push on would be hand sized, but maybe this opened a giant door?

She pushed on the center of the big metal plate. It moved! It didn’t move far, though, just enough to make a funny sound and for a little daylight to leak in around the edges. Something tickled at the back of her mind, a frustrated adult voice shouting at her. She didn’t like shouting. Maybe if she hit the plate harder? She took a step back and then slammed both hands into the middle of the plate, shoving as hard as she could. A nasty squealing sound came from the bar, and she saw light all around the edges of the door.

The answer came to her in a flash of intuition. Bars held doors shut! This one wasn’t looking so good anyhow, hanging all loose from the big metal plate. She grabbed it with both hands and pulled upwards as hard as she could. It made another huge squeal and came off in her hands. The metal plate swung open. It was a door! A bell started ringing to celebrate her success!

“Hooray! Go Team Angie! Go, go, go!” She solved the mystery of the metal plate; she could do anything! With a start, she remembered the mystery of the sign, and the solution. Her voice full of excitement, she called out the instruction from the sign.

“Exit!”

She followed the instructions on the sign, and she was outside! There was a parking lot here, though. She stayed under the awning outside the door. She knew she wasn’t supposed to play in a parking lot. Bad things happened in parking lots when you played in them. Something bad had happened recently, she knew. Something had filled her with dust, and she had stopped being such a sad poopy head, and Jesse told her to run down and help Steve.

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“Steve!”

She’d forgotten her quest! She had to save Steve! Looking around, she didn’t see Steve. Just in case he was hiding, she called out.

“Steve! Steve! I’m here to help you!”

A few moments later, something big fell to the ground beside her, just beyond the awning.

“There you are, Steve! How were you hiding in the sky?”

Steve had a cut, and he’d bled all over his shirt. She knew something was wrong; the adult voice in her head told her so. She looked around. Steve lay right there, half on the sidewalk and half off. That was it! He wasn’t supposed to play in the parking lot either! She pulled him back onto the sidewalk and laid him out flat.

He looked really uncomfy with his head right on the cement, so she pulled her shirt off, balled it into a pillow, and slid it under his head. When she did, his shirt went squish with all the blood on it. She knew blood was supposed to be icky, but she’d never been ickified by it. She’d learned all she could about it. She couldn’t remember it all right now, but the one thing she did remember was that it was supposed to be on the inside.

She looked at his face. Cuts on the face bled a lot. He didn’t have any, even though his hair was soaked with blood. She looked at the spot on his chest where he’d ripped his shirt, but he had no cuts there either. She pulled his shirt off. She ripped it a little, but it was already pretty ripped up, so she didn’t think he’d mind. She tried really carefully not to squish too much blood out; it was supposed to be inside, so he might want it later. She looked all over his arms and chest and back, but he had no cuts anywhere there, either.

All this blood had to come from somewhere! There had to be a hole in him. She tried to get his pants off, but his belt buckled them too tight to slip off. Frustrated, she pulled at the buckle, and it snapped. She looked around. She’d gotten lucky, no one around to see her. No one had seen her break Steve’s belt! Without looking, she rolled the belt up and chucked it behind a bush. She’d seen a show once where someone ditched evidence, and that’s how they did it.

Evidence! How to dispose of it! She’d learned so much today! A warm fuzzy feeling filled her as she thought of how proud Jesse would be. Jesse was a teacher, and teachers were proud when you learned things.

She still hadn’t found the cut, and there was way too much blood for a nosebleed. She yanked at his pants again, but they didn’t come off. He was starting to groan a little bit. He was waking up! She had to find the cut and… She had to find the cut before he woke up! She grabbed his jeans in both hands and pulled them with all her might. A huge ripping sound filled the air, and she held two hunks of denim, each dripping more blood.

Careful not to squish any more blood out of the denim, she balled it up and put it on top of his shirt. The voice in her head kept getting louder. Somehow, she knew she had only a few moments more to solve this mystery. Quickly she looked down to where Steve lay on the ground. The cut had to be on his legs!

When she looked at his legs, she realized Steve had been a very naughty boy. Boys weren’t supposed to walk around without skivvies, and good girls weren’t supposed to see boys without their skivvies. She put one hand over that part so she wouldn’t look at it, and then scanned the rest of his legs. It was no use! There were no cuts on his legs!

Steve groaned, shifted, and shoved himself up on his elbows. His eyes didn’t focus all the way when he looked down at her, but he was awake. He’d woken up! She’d failed to solve the mystery of the cut. Sad now, she sank down to her knees and started to sniffle. She tried so hard, and still she’d failed at the quest Jesse gave her. She tried to hold it in, but the voice in her head got louder every second, and it was angry with her. Quietly, she started to cry.

Steve’s voice was groggy and crude, but fabulously deep. “When Charlie spikes the punch, he spikes the punch, don’t he?”