Chapter 1: What About Carl?

"Is it just me, or are gel-pens a COMPLETE 90's thing?" Sanity asked skeptically as she twirled her metallic purple pen in her fingers before uncapping it and doodling on a sheet of notebook paper. Liberty and I looked at each other, stifling laughter. Leave it to Sanity to point out some obscure detail no one else would take the time to notice.

"Yeah, its right up there with wind pants and Tamagachi pets." I giggled. The three of us shared the belief that the 90's were misunderstood and under appreciated. I plucked a bottle of shiny copper nail polish off of my night stand and proceeded to give myself a manicure, using my bed as a table. The girls were gathered at my house for our weekly get together. This time it was a Thursday night after school. We had given up on sleepovers when after somebody's parents caught us sneaking out of their house for the fourth time. The weekly get together was a ritual Sanity and I had started a long, long time ago. Sanity and I had known each other since kindergarten. We always claimed to have been drawn to each other because of our odd names (my parents, for some reason or another, had decided to name me Charity), but really we had both been bossy and headstrong. The other kids in our class didn't like us much, so we found each other. Liberty (fondly known as Libby, much to her chagrin) was introduced to our duo in 5th grade when she moved to Vermont from Texas. We found her southern accent enchanting and immediately invited her to play with us after school. We had now been a 'we' for nearly 5 years. We were almost half-way through our Freshman year at Olive Grove High School. Our theory was that the school had been misnamed, since as far as we could figure, there were no olive groves of any kind in Vermont, or had there ever been any.

Liberty groaned. "I can not believe that they are making us take exams all next week!" She sighed and plopped down on the bed, nearly capsizing my nail polish. "I mean, its the week before Winter Break! How do they expect us to concentrate?!"

"We don’t have to take them..." Sanity had a gleam in her eye that we knew all too well. Her flaming red mane of hair and eyes colored purple thanks to the miracle of colored contact lenses made her look truely psychotic.

"Sanity, no. No more of your crazy plans! You're parents will try to psycho-analyze us again if we get caught!!!" Sanity's parents were psychologists. It was thanks to their sense of humor that she had her one-of-a-kind name.

"Oh, come on! At least let me explain." She begged. Liberty caved first.

"Ok, fine. But no dragging us into it against our will, ok?" She said, remembering the time Sanity had persuaded us to help her build a Zen garden in her living room. Her parents were not happy with the amount of sand we had 'accidentally' ground into their carpet.

"Sure, whatever. The plan: We go to school after hours tomorrow, and do something drastic to make them let us out of exams!"

"That is so corny! What would we do? Spray paint "NO EXAMS!" all over the walls? Psh, yeah right." I rolled my eyes and looked to Liberty for assistance. I could tell I wasn't going to get any help from her.

"Libby! Not you, too! Do you want to get dragged home by the cops again?" I sighed. I knew this argument wasn't going to get me anywhere. Police had never stopped us before.

"How about we just move to Canada?" She suggested. Liberty was convinced that America was turning into a Communist nation. She was very devoted to her opinions. Her favorite song was American Idiot. She was always trying to convince us to hitch-hike with her to Canada to escape the American tyrrany.

"Lib, we already told you. We are not moving to Canada." I scolded her.

"Fine about Carl?" She said, her dark brown eyes sparkling with mischief. I looked confused, Sanity looked disappointed.

"What about him? Are we going to go spraypaint him?! Do we get to decapitate him?!" Sanity suggested. You could see that she was still digging the whole "vandalism" deal.

"What if we kidnapped Carl and held him for ransom?" Liberty whispered conspiratorially, her black hair falling in her pale face as she leaned toward us. Sanity squealed.

"Oh, Libby! I KNEW you would pull through one of these days!"

Carl was our school mascot. He was a waist-high marble statue of a lion positioned in the entrance way of our school. Our student body was way into the whole 'school spirit' thing, so Carl was almost always decorated with streamers of our school colors (gray and green). If not, then he had pom-poms dangling from his mouth. People would notice his absence as soon as they walked through the door. He was practically a landmark. Seeing that I was the only one possessing any amount of sense at that moment, I tried to explain that it wouldn't work.

"You guys, Carl has to weigh at least 160 lbs. Probably more. How, exactly, do you plan on getting him out of the school?"

"Wheelbarrow!" from Liberty.

"Hi-jack an A/V cart!" from Sanity.

"But what about the cameras...?"

"Oh come on, Charity! You should know this by now!! We wear black. And go at night. We've gotten into the school after hours before." Sanity said, recalling the time the three of us...ahem...broke in to get the answer key for this super hard History test we were supposed to take the next day. We weren't going to cheat or anything. But if the teacher didn't have her key, she couldn't correct the test. After that, the staff started taking everything home with them and the security was jacked up. But what's a couple of locks to a couple determined 15-year-old girls?

"But..." I was out of ideas. I caved. "Ok, fine. But no police, ok?"

"Sweet! Tomorrow after school, you guys can come over to my place. And bring something you can sneak around it." Sanity winked. I rolled my eyes. Really, how could our parents think Sanity's a bad influence?