A/N: I actually thought this up while on the bus. Someone almost grabbed my notebook and read my poems aloud, but I snatched it back in time. Sure, call me insane, but I am obsessed enough to have a black notebook that I write couplets in. XD

Disclaimer: I do not own anything related to ASoUE. All belong to Mr. Handler. Only the poems belong to me.

How to be a Mocking Bird

I tried to ignore the hubbub of the students on the bus and focus in on my poetry. Duncan and I had just been placed on a bus that was supposed to be taking us to out new school (Prufrock Preparatory, I believe it was called.) As if the noisy kids and anxiousness was not enough to distract me, Duncan, my triplet brother, was continually poking me in the shoulder.

"Do you think we'll get breaks on the weekends? Do you think we'll have pretty, comfy dormitories? Do you think we'll have a really nice vice-principal? Do you think he'll play the violin really well? Do you thinkthat there will be fungus on the ceiling? Do you think that we'll have to eat lasagna (because I know you deeply loath lasagna)?DO you think-?" I sighed and interrupted.

"I don't know Duncan, I'm just as anxious as you are!" I recited:

"I can't help but bounce in my seat

Who knows what new people we'll meet?"

Duncan laughed. "You can come up with a couplet for anything, Isadora. Even a new school you know nothing about!" I smiled at him. Duncan was so supportive of my poetry, even of some of my worst couplets, as I supported him and his reporting. It made me feel so...cared for when he read one of my couplets and a smile appeared on his face.

Suddenly, the bus jerked to a sudden stop. My black notebook went sliding off my lap and into the aisle. I quickly reached down to grab it, but before I could, another hand snatched it. My eyes traveled up their arm until I was face to face with them. The boy who was holding my notebook in the air (almost as if he were taunting me) had a twisted sneer on his face. He held the notebook out to me.

"If this yours?" he asked. I could sense the false sweetness in his voice. I smiled at him nonetheless.

"Yes, thank you," I replied and reached out to take it. Just as my fingertips touched the cover however, he whipped it out of my reach. The boy who was sitting next to him leaned over his shoulder, and with equal menace in his voice said, "Maybe we should read something aloud to the whole bus first."

I gasped and felt Duncan tense up beside me. What if he read something about VFD? Several people around him began chanting, so he flipped open my notebook and read:

"Remembering the wrath-like flame

Look what my noble home became."

I let out a sigh of relief and saw Duncan's fists unclench themselves. It was only my poetry. Maybe people would like it! I was proven wrong only seconds later however. People began laughing cruelly. The wretched sound grew and grew until my ears were ringing with it. The boy who had picked up my notebook in the first place managed between cackles, "How stupid is that!"

"It's positively cakesniffy!" a girl howled before collapsing into her seat. "Another, another!". The boy who held my commonplace book securely away from me flipped a few pages more and read:

"I watch my life before me unfurl

I am no longer a little girl."

Again I heard furious shrieks of laughter. There was even a seat full of kids pounding their fists on the back of the bench in front of them, hooting with laughter. "Please! No more!" they cried. The boy in possession of my notebook chuckled, flipped a few pages more and read:

"Visages haunt my every dream

But when awake I cannot scream."

Once again I heard painfully brutal yelps of laughter surrounding me, mocking me, tearing me apart, knocking me down. I had been especially proud of that poem. Here they were, a literal busload of people ridiculing me. I felt a waterfall of tears building themselves up behind my eyes, threatening to break free at any moment. I could not take their cruelty any longer. I stood up, wrenched my black notebook out the boys grasp as forcefully and vigorously as I could, and sat back down next to Duncan. I forced my mouth into a thin grimace and set my eyes as wide and as laser-like as I could make them, hoping that if that cruel boy who started this trouble in the first place looked my way I could burn a hole through him with my eyes. That might drain out some of the white-hot, burning hurt I felt right then.

"I'm sorry, Izzy," Duncan said, putting his arm over my shoulder in a comforting, brotherly way as the kids who had been mocking me earlier continued to whisper and giggle. "These kids just know how to be mockingbirds." I rested my head on his shoulder and wiped my face with hi sleeve. If these "mockingbirds" were the kind of kids who went to this Prufrock place, I was not going to like it there.

And I was right.

Thanks for reading! I hope my couplets don't suck too badly. And tell me if I used enough metaphoric-ness, I'm trying to work on that. REVIEW PLEASE! XD

P.S. If you want to know more about the lasagna thing, e-mail me.