joseph spark | d3 | fin

The world we knew

On the first morning of his mother's new job as mayor, he hides the computer mouse.

His mother finds it later that day, of course - nestled among a bag of food from the local market, its tail wound tightly around a chunk of neatly plastic-wrapped hard cheese.

"Can we keep it as a pet?" he asks innocently as she unpacks the groceries, pulling out the mouse and dangling it by its tail. "I should probably name it. What d'you think of the name Cartesian?"

She shakes her head, chuckling in bemusement. This was the kid she always needed to be on the lookout for. He'd pulled his first prank on his older brother less than a month after they'd adopted him, and hadn't seemed to stop since.

(Even after the 74th Games, when one particular teacher had sent a strongly-worded letter to Catherine Spark about her son's 'attention-seeking behavior'. Meanwhile, his grief went silently, trapped in the moments the teacher would note as obedience.)

He's afraid to, now. It was easier and quite a bit more fun to get people to find things like mice or little plastic cockroaches than to find the sadness and worry he tries to shove down inside. He's afraid if he lets go and crosses the line into adulthood, that sorrow will be all that's left of him.

The new mayor set the mouse down and plugged it back in, but the name stuck. From that day on, the computer mouse in the mayor's office became known to the Spark children as Cartesian.

Won't come back