Birds chirped sweet welcomes to an approaching group of teenage students. Their uniformed shoes met the cracks of sidewalks and the demise of helpless ants. A building gathered early-morning popularity from the assembly of students, and the group of friends swallowed the short distance to reach the school. 

A playful breeze caressed Calliope’s face with tenderness. Its chill that hugged her cheeks reminded her of another autumn day and another walk to school, surrounded by the familiar chattering friends that were always stuck by her side like glue. 

Though their conversations drifted in the cold air, their meaning scattered before reaching her. Her focus was directed elsewhere: a rampaging grocery bag caught within the limbs of trees that stretched out to the heavens, two rowdy squirrels charging the streets in a chase like mischievous children. Her eyes kept catching onto mundane sights scattered throughout the street. 

That suffocatingly sweet breeze swept through again with its tenderness– rustling her hair lovingly, chilling her skin cruelly. Her eyes fluttered, long eyelashes tickling the bags under them as a faint call of her nickname summoned her attention: “Calli, what do you think it’s gonna be like?” 

Calliope kept her mouth closed before her response could escape, knowing Luna would continue her spiel with impatience. Her frantic thoughts clambered into the air. “What if I’m bullied? You know, like taking my lunch money, dunking my head in the toilet, like in those movies?” Small laughter brewed in the group of friends at Luna’s heightened imagination, and once the faucet of words dripped, it began to pour: “What if the teachers are mean, what if my phone gets stolen, what if I just have the worst day ever–” 

Her words were shoved back down her throat by an incoming wind. In the silence, all eyes shifted to Calliope. The spotlit girl felt herself shrink under her friends’ anticipation of her answer. With a surrendering sigh, she said, “Wanna ask my magic eight ball?” 

Luna’s dampened mood dried up as she nodded with newfound enthusiasm, watching as Calliope guided the toy out of her backpack where it was tucked in a careful carrier. She spread her fingers around the ball in a protective hold, then lifted the ball to her lips and let out an unentertained mumble. The friends around her chuckled.

Considering for a moment how to question the ball, Calliope tensed her knuckles. “Will Luna have the worst day ever?” She gave the sacred ball mercy with the gentlest shake. Everyone stopped walking to surround the ball in eagerness. The triangle twirled teasingly inside the murky liquid before showing its face in the window. 

Luna gasped with electrified shock at the ball’s blunt answer. Her face scrunched up in unfiltered disappointment. “Yes?! That thing really said yes?!” Her greedy hands attempted to yank the ball out of Calliope’s sheltering hands that refused to let go. “Calli, let me shake it!” Luna snatched the ball to her chest, vigorously shaking it with the strength of a bear that had caught a live meal. The triangle twirled, landing on similar answers in an endless loop, like a persistent parent lecturing a doubtful child. Luna sighed stubbornly before relieving the ball of its torture, handing it back to Calliope who sighed in relief at its return to her grasp. Small fits of chuckles dispersed through the girls like laughing gas, Calliope the only one immune. She gazed at the glossy ball warily, the only one heeding its warning.

“You don’t take that ball seriously, do you?” A different voice spoke up directly to Calliope upon noticing her rumination, startling her out of it. She was unfamiliar with the other girls, only close with Luna and therefore spending time with her friends as a distant wheel that struggled to catch up with their connection. Calliope sucked her dry lips in before dragging out a steel voice. 

“I do. You should, too.” The sudden cruelty in Calliope’s tone was so uncharacteristic that it stunted the breath in the acquaintance's chest. Calliope suddenly turned her head away from the conversation and perhaps reality as a whole, her concentration clumsily clasping onto the two squirrels that frolicked the concrete street like their personal playground. Connecting her gaze with a red car increasing its speed, Calliope glared down at her ball for a distraction, whispering for only the ball to hear. 

“Can I save that squirrel?” The meditative triangle danced as it considered its answer, only to choose its response too late. Calliope’s ears could only listen to the screeching of burning tires and the gasps of human emotion.

The tires left an imprinted mark of red, painting the road in abstract graffiti, spraying past the crime scene as miniscule guts followed after the departing car in vain. Macaroni intestines scattered across the concrete from pursuing vehicles demanding an overkill, leaving the departed chunks of flesh restless to find their final resting place. Tufts of coarse fur clumped around exposed viscera, tire marks left tattoos across the torn skin and dented small organs that once gave life. The surviving squirrel had long fled away to safety. Several eyes stayed still to observe the killing ground with morbid curiosity, though Calliope hurried her steps, glancing down at the ball’s response.

Without a doubt. She felt her gaze harden before stuffing away the ball, all gentleness lost, and continued toward the school building. Time dragged forward to the beginning of classes, the halls quiet and disembodied voices droning within the multiple rooms beyond shut doors. Her hand followed its path to the zipper of her bag, fetching the familiar ball that found home in her two palms. 

“Should I head to class?” She brimmed with irritation as she waited for the ball, which coldly looked at her in silence. My reply is no. She hummed with drifting thoughts, heeding its words as she lingered in the school hallways with an anxiety that dove in her chest, guiding her eyes in every direction as if searching for a lost item. Wandering through the maze of twisting halls and dead ends, she eventually found what she was searching for.

A broken water fountain, spouting water for no one as if possessed, a disgruntled teacher who sent Calliope a silent glare, and long silk hair disappearing around the corner. Following the clamber of rowdy students, she met Luna’s desperate eyes as the girl was dragged by her armpits into the entrance of a bathroom. Calliope knowingly winced. Luna’s eyes widened to take in the picture of Calliope watching, hoping Calliope would save her. 

Dropping her bag harshly to the ground, Calliope dug out her ball with sweaty hands that clasped around it in prayer. Her lips touching the ball's surface, she whispered her sacred question: “Can I help her this time?”

The triangular die mockingly curtsied forward, settling the decision for her. Very doubtful. Her expression was caught in the glossiness of the ball's skin, showing her morose face. A mature face that had gathered wrinkles through overwhelming stress and self-loathing. As she stared at her useless self, her hands trembled around the ball like it had suddenly become a cursed object. 

She charged inside the bathroom, her legs moving before her thoughts settled. She watched as Luna was drenched, dirtied, and shoved against the bathroom's tiles. Calliope felt disgusted to see it. Her hands clenched into fists as if she would actually swing a punch at the assaulters, only for to be loosened upon seeing Luna’s betrayed expression. 

After asking one more question to her magic eight ball before leaving Luna to her fate, Calliope sighed. Dragging a switchblade from her pocket, she dropped and kicked it, sliding it across the dirty floor until it discreetly reached Luna’s side. Luna’s hand trembled around it as she stared at Calliope with a dim face. 

Calliope disappeared from the room. She took a deep breath and resumed her walk among the halls, drifting her searching hand in her backpack. It was empty of all school supplies, but full of miscellany, including a warm beer can that felt smooth against her fingers. Departing from the building, following down the path she believed would take her back home, she walked against the wind that tried to push her back. She led her pointer finger to lift the pull tab upward, and the can hissed at her. With the aluminium occupying the cusp of her lips, she grumbled to the magic eight ball she carelessly shook in her other hand. 

“Will I die tonight no matter what I do?” Calliope watched the ball calmly, not caring whatever the answer was. It was the only truth she could act upon. She dropped the ball to the concrete sidewalk, and it clacked with great pain as it continued its contemplative pirouette. She slowly took in the cheap beer in her mouth and gave it a burning swallow at the magic eight ball’s last words:

Better not tell you now.

Giving the ball a light tap with the tip of her shoe, Calliope watched it sweep across the street in a clatter. She dedicated herself to the beer, finding her resting place early on the empty street. Fate’s impatient desires guided Calliope’s ears to catch onto the drag of footsteps, the drops of water mixed with blood cascading from stringy hair. She turned to Luna with a knowing smile and opened her arms as if for an embrace.

Luna approached with shallow breaths as she mumbled to her. “Every time.” 

Blinking at her words, Calliope froze, confused. 

“Every time. You listen to that damn eight ball. You never save me. You never save anyone.” Luna mumbled with grumbling volume, her bloodied hands tightening around the gifted switchblade that still dripped with fresh gore. 

“Luna?” Calliope almost dropped her arms for the hug she was waiting to receive. Luna laughed and lurched at her. Calliope muffled her nose, the stench of blood seeping into her senses as she soaked up her friend’s wetness like a sponge.

“Will you ever forgive me?” Calliope mumbled, squeezing the fabric of Luna’s uniform, her pleading face unseen by the girl staring forward into the setting sun. 

“Don’t count on it.” 

The blade finally dug its home in Calliope’s chest. She jolted in the hug and lost the strength in her legs as she felt the knife twist. Her fingers lost their grip around the can of beer and it clacked against the street, spilling the contents she would lie in.

The familiar sensation of dying overwhelmed her once again. She stared up at Luna’s disappointed gaze. It grew farther as Calliope’s body met the concrete. She landed on her side and rolled over. Before her vision turned dark, she met the dead squirrel on the street, its dead eyes staring into her dying soul. As the glossy, black eyeball monitored her last breaths, it showed her reflection. Blood dove out of her lips. She saw herself in the helpless creature.