Free Last Chance by Norah McClintock

mentioned it, I realized I was hungry too. So we decided to go back down and grab a bite to eat before we counted the money. We closed the office door, and I checked to make sure it was locked.
    As we headed down the stairs to the school yard, I had a moment of panic. My keys! I was always losing them back then. My mother freaked out every time. She’s the kind of person who can’t sleep at night unless she’s already laid out her clothes for the next morning and has her briefcase packed and ready to go. Every time she had a new set of keys made for me, she attached them to a larger and bulkier key chain so that they would be harder to lose. The last key chain had a metal police whistle attached to it, and I had got into the habit of patting my pockets regularly to make sure it was still there. Usually it was. But that day, it was gone.
    I sneezed. Then I got that frozen-up feeling that always came over me when I thought about admitting to my mother that my keys were missing—
again.
I’m usually the kind of person who tears the house apart looking for something when I lose it. When my father loses something, which he hardly ever does, he stands in one place, closes his eyes, and tries to visualize the last time he had held whatever it was in his hand. He won’t open his eyes until he has that picture fixed in his mind. Then he goes directly to where he left whatever is missing. It’s infuriating. But it works. That’s what I tried that day.
    I stopped on the stairs, gripped the railing, and closed my eyes. I heard Morgan, who was almost at the bottom, sigh and say, “Not again.” She couldn’t believe how often I misplaced my keys. Top of the class, she’d say. You skipped a grade, but you’re completely scattered.
    â€œI gave them back to you,” I heard her say.
    My eyes popped open. I looked at her and sneezed again.
    â€œJust before we came inside,” she said. “You gave them to me so I could use the whistle for the cat race. I gave them back to you when the race was over. Seriously, Robyn, anyone would think you
try
to lose your keys a couple of times a week. Maybe you’re working out some issues with your mother. It’s classic passive-aggressive behavior.” Morgan’s mother is a psychiatrist, so Morgan has always been hyperaware of people’s behavior. She’s always more than happy to provide her analysis too.
    I closed my eyes again. This time I saw Morgan pressing my keys into my already full hands out in the schoolyard. I heard her saying, “Here. There’s no way I’m going to take the blame if you lose them.”
    I had held the keys in my hand. They had dangled from my finger all the way up the stairs. I had put them down when I’d set down a couple of tin cans filled with coins and pulled a tissue from my back pocket to blow my nose again. I turned now and started up the stairs.
    â€œHey,” Morgan called. She tossed me the key to the office door. “Meet you outside.”
    I scooted back up the stairs and pushed open the door at the top. That’s when I heard voices—whispers—coming from the office. At first, I didn’t think much about it. Maybe some other kids were putting things away. I turned the corner and saw that the door—the one I had just locked—was open now. I heard more whispering, frantic, like mice scurrying. I wasn’t sure why, but it didn’t sound right.
    I sneezed.
    Then I heard an urgent whisper: “Someone’s coming.”
    Footsteps pounded toward me. Two boys exploded out of the office, almost bowling me over. One of them I sort of recognized—a short, dark-haired kid who went to the school where SPA was located. The other boy was a lot taller and a lot older. The younger kid paused when he saw me. The older kid barreled past me in a blur, grabbing the younger one on the way by. I heard a door crash against a cinder block wall and then