2. Off the Edge of Despair

I stared. Poona was a baby sentret, and she had never talked before. She would purr if I pet her in one of her favorite areas, but she had never talked. I wasn't supposed to understand her...right?

I flew out of the room and ran urgently down the hall. Poona pursued me hastily, her paws clicking behind me, while her tail—which was still not big enough to support her entirely—parachuted behind her.

"Mom! Dad! Mom! Dad!" I went rhythmically back and forth between their names as I whirled around a corner.

"MomDadMomDadMomDadMo—"

"Yes, Chelle?" Mom nearly had to scream over how loud I was shouting. Luckily, she was very patient and seemed to be in one of her more loving moods. She almost reached forward to clap a hand over my mouth, though.

"Poona talked," I said incredulously.

"Oh, really?" Mom beamed and pet Poona behind her ears. She started talking with a voice used for babies, saying, much to Poona's delight, "Well, isn't that wonderful? Guess who's growing up so fast? You are, you cute cookie you!"

"Mom," I interrupted moodily, "she's talking. As in, I can understand everything she's saying."

Mom either didn't make the connection or had grown immune to anything she suspected was related to my antics. She brushed me off as if I was a hair that had fallen off her head.

"Chelle, that's silly. Poona's a baby sentret, and she certainly can't speak English. You probably just thought you heard her—"

Poona elevated herself with her tail, matching my height exactly. Almost desperately, she asked, "Food?"

"SHE JUST DID IT!" I screamed. Mom winced and sighed bitterly.

"Chelle, she was speaking in pokémon."

"No, she wasn't. THAT WAS ENGLISH!" I launched myself at Poona, making her give a noise of surprise as we both crashed to the floor. "There's a human in this fur, I know it! Stop dressing as a pokémon, you sicko! Get another hobby!"

I wrestled with her, causing Poona to give what I assumed were giggles as she extended her mouth and nibbled on me joyfully this time. At least I could say she had actually bitten me...though was it her or the pervert pretending to be a pokémon? This was just wrong.

"Chelle, get off of her!"

Mom pried me off of her. I protested by flailing my arms and screaming like a banshee. It didn't help that most of what I said was unwise and slightly colorful. In my mom's eyes, I had become a problem, so she decided to ground me.

I walked angrily back to my room with the plummeting feeling of exile. Poona followed loyally, trotting to the bed as I approached it.

"Food?" She wagged her tail eagerly and once again used it to make her tower over me as I hunched over my bed.

I narrowed my eyes. This was her fault for not showing off her humanity or her speech. If she could speak English, why couldn't she do other things? Like using the toilet instead of leaving trails all over the house? That would have been helpful, at least.

"You can starve," I spat. I was in no mood, but Poona's exuberance prevented her from sensing that.

Alarmingly unfazed, she bounced out of the room to fetch my parents. They immediately assisted her. Traitors.

I tried talking to my dad, who was more reasonable when it came to listening, but he was just as persuaded as my mother that I had simply misheard things. Whatever. I at least knew Henrietta would believe me.

Henrietta was my best friend. She had been my best friend since we were five. When I first saw her, she was trying to figure out how to swing.

Without her seeing me, I had lunged at her from behind with enough force to push her out of the swing entirely. After landing on the ground with a sharp gasp, she stood up and swung around, giving me the meanest glare I had ever seen—one that was only minimally seen behind her enormously boxy glasses. I returned it with a smile, which puzzled her greatly, but not enough to impede her questions.

"…What do you want?" she asked after an unsatisfied pause.

"You needed a push, and I have hands." I held them up to give her proof, grinning in a way she probably thought was idiotic.

"No, I didn't. I could do it by myself," she mumbled. I became aware of how light-skinned she was, impossibly pale in contrast to her wildly curly dark brown hair. I also saw how colored her cheeks were with red and what exactly was on them.

"You have dots on your face," I said suddenly. She looked alarmed and almost embarrassed, hurriedly slapping her hands on her cheeks as if to rearrange her features.

"Th…they're not dots! They're freckles," she replied weakly.

"That's okay. I have holes in mine." I grinned for further evidence. She frowned.

"Those aren't holes. Those are dimples," she said pointedly.

"What? I don't have those; Jacoby has those!" I was confused with what she was talking about. Jacoby had complained about acne and pimples. Since the words rhymed, I supposed I was excused.

"Who's Jacoby?"

"My brother. He has my color hair, too." I grabbed one of my dirty blond locks and pointed to it proudly. She seemed unimpressed.

"So?"

Abruptly, I threw my arms around her and pulled her into a huge hug. Any time I had been moody or grumpy, my mom would wrap her arms around me and hold me in place until I asked to be released. It would usually help in calming me down or cheering me up, so I thought this was the cure for this instance as well.

She squirmed unpleasantly but then stilled when she realized I wasn't going to let go.

After a long silence, she asked hesitantly, "Can you let go please?"

I did so with a large, triumphant smile. "There. All better."

She looked at me, somewhat baffled. "What's all better?"

"You. You needed a hug, so I gave you one."

She flushed and dropped her head. "No, I didn't."

I wasn't even scratching the surface with this conversation. Something was wrong, and I could see that as she rubbed her eyes, clawing at them from underneath her glasses.

"Why are you sad?" I didn't miss the glance she gave her parents, who were sitting on one of the far benches, chattering enthusiastically with other adults.

"It's nothing." She tried to smile, but when she did, tears just poured out. Soon enough, she was sobbing against my shoulder. "Th-they don't l-like me!"

"Your parents?" I looked at them curiously. They didn't seem to notice that their daughter was crying with enough force to leave a trail of snot and tears along my left sleeve.

"Y-yeah! Th-they say I don't listen! And they w-won't teach me h-how to s-swing!"

"Well, it's not that hard. I can push you," I offered.

Later on, when it would be too late to matter, I would notice that she had already known how to swing. She was just purposely handicapping her swinging skills to make herself require assistance from someone else.

"Th-that's so n-nice of you," she sobbed. She withdrew herself apologetically, noticing the stains along my sleeve. "I-I'm s-sorry. I'm m-messing up y-your sh-shirt."

I tried not to twitch when I replied with, "I don't care."

I actually really, truly, really cared. I hated not being absolutely clean. My room, on the other hand, could grow hands and clean itself up. That place was and always would be a mess, regardless of how tidy and squeaky clean I had kept myself. And I do mean squeaky clean. In the bath I'd scrub until my hands hurt and my nails were either shortened or slightly bent. My skin was smooth and spotless. I absolutely would not tolerate being plagued with blemishes as Jacoby was in his early stages of puberty.

Before I had the nerve and disgusted finality to shove her off and prevent the snot from spreading or possibly sticking to my skin, she smiled genuinely and said, "Thank you."

"You can thank me by getting me a new shirt! I'm Rochelle," I said brightly. I was also serious about that 'new shirt' thing.

"Henrietta," she said, once the tears had inevitably stopped.

In a way, Henrietta had always been ignored by her parents. They were always displeased with something either she was doing or they were doing. Their house wasn't clean enough, their job wasn't good enough. They were not satisfied, a trait Henrietta complained constantly about every time I saw her. She really didn't like her parents, while I had an obligatory (and sometimes violated) treaty with mine. In order to get her parent's attention, she tried doing drastic things, including tagging along with me for very fun, unforgettable pranks. We mixed soy sauce in dark beverages or pretended that we had stabbed each other when really we were soaked in ketchup. Once we had even replaced Jacoby's toothpaste with a concoction of mustard and mayonnaise. We almost always got caught and yelled at, but it was so worth it.

Henrietta took this rebellion to heart. She would listen to music her parents firmly disapproved of, dress in clothes her parents had insisted be censored or locked away, and do stupid ideas that I had actually been the one to suggest and enforce. Eventually she grew to love her things and especially liked wearing striped or checkered things. If nothing matched, she wore it, along with several other deadly-looking accessories. Once, Henrietta tried dyeing her hair black but had accidentally dyed it plum purple. She tried to hide this mishap from her parents since she honestly liked it a lot, but her parents screeched when they discovered it and forced her to dye it black when she didn't comply with dyeing it back to its original dark brown.

It became Henrietta's goal to be different, and she would do whatever it was to show it. She liked being my tag-along partner and voice of reason while wearing her outlandish colored tutus, gloves, spiky collars, and striped and checkered clothing. She hated her freckles so much that she would try covering them with band-aids, which I promptly snatched off her face when she wasn't looking. After that, she was always on guard and always cautious of her surroundings. She hardly ever relaxed, but was levelheaded when necessary.

Despite how rebellious she had become, there was something valuable she still learned from always going against her parents: she always identified the consequences beforehand. She was entirely aware of what would happen if she did this or that and acted as my conscience when I had ideas that were just too stupid to do. She was the voice of reason in our friendship and could reasonably account the aftermath before going forward. Because of this, she was very intuitive and almost seemed like she could predict the future sometimes with her extensive reasoning and logic. With how honed her intuition was, I generally tried to be as unpredictable as possible around her, throwing gibes and things she wouldn't expect me to say regularly.

Henrietta was friendly, cool, and prepared, but she was downright torturous to her little sister, Lillian. She didn't miss a chance to hit her when walking by. I wasn't even that bad to my little brother Trevor, even though I constantly teased him for his shyness. Unlike with her sibling, Henrietta would support me and my claims, which is why I had to see her right now.

I jumped out through my window, inwardly thanked my parents for owning a one-story house, and landed in the bordering bushes. I knew Poona would follow me eventually, but I didn't know how soon, so I had to be fast. I dashed across the front lawn and hurried to Henrietta's house, where she was being detained after getting in her own argument with her parents over who-knows-what. They probably wouldn't even notice if she snuck out.

I knocked on the door and rocked back and forth on my heels in the meantime. When Lillian answered with her identical freckles and dark curly hair, she blinked and looked as if she were about to close the door again.

"Hey, Lil! Where's Henrietta? I need to talk to her."

Lillian glanced behind me with slightly wide eyes. "No pokémon in the house."

I looked down. Sure enough, Poona pawed at my heels, grinning stupidly before she lifted herself to my height with the force of her tail. I huffed and glanced back at Lillian.

"Can you go get her?"

Lillian shrugged, still eyeing me. She wasn't even five years old and she already wasn't bowing to her elders…Not that I counted as one, but I was older.

Sighing, I stepped back and screamed with all my might, "HENRIETTA, IT'S CHELLE! I JUST WANTED TO SAY THAT YOU SHOULD BE HITTING YOUR SISTER WITH A WOODEN SPOON RIGHT NOW!" I do not normally support abuse, but uncooperative children deserved a beating.

Lillian flinched as soon as I started screaming and scowled at me furiously. She was about to slam the door, but Henrietta's foot saved the structure from taking a hit. She looked at Lillian icily and shooed her from the doorway so that she could slip out. Henrietta gave me a polite smile, her neon tutu bouncing right along. Poona reached for it and played with the frill, highly animated at the fabric with the ability to stick up almost as much as she did with her tail.

"Sorry, Lillian has been kinda bratty lately," she remarked offhandedly.

She blinked in an effort to focus her light hazel eyes, adjusting her glasses. She would be incredibly blind without them. I knew this from the time I had snatched them and hidden them in my pockets. Sometimes I wondered why she was still friends with me...

"What's up?"

"Poona talked. She speaks English." I yammered about the incident as if the words were about to expire. Henrietta could do nothing more than stare in a hopeless endeavor to comprehend what I was talking about.

When I finished, Henrietta said slowly, "What do you mean?" She peered at Poona as she continued to prod Henrietta's tutu playfully.

I threw my arms up in the air in frustration, tired of having to explain myself. "I heard Poona talk. In our language. Not pokémon talk. I could understand everything she was saying."

Henrietta crossed her arms and stared at me dubiously. "Now let's think about this, Chelle…She's a pokémon."

Great. She was using common sense. We were eight, not five. "And I'm a human. Next?"

"She's a baby pokémon, so she hasn't really said much. She hasn't said anything¸ right?"

"She said her first words today, and they were human because I heard them."

Henrietta could see I wasn't dislodging my beliefs, so she sighed and suggested, "Let's go talk to Sophie about this."

I didn't protest or huff, but I was a little mad she didn't believe me immediately. Normally she would jump on board with whatever I was saying because she knew I wouldn't lie to her. To anyone else, I definitely would, but we were best friends, and friendship was supposed to be bonded with honesty and trust…most of the time.

However, out of all of us, Sophie was the most honest one. She was honest to the point of it being cruel. The girl would tell us anything, even if it meant hurting our feelings. Sophie was definitely the most straightforward person I knew, and I was…well, me. I always said what was on my mind, even the weirdest things. I received strange looks for such things, but Sophie was excusable.

While I was weird and generally immature, Sophie was mature and brutal. She was dainty and pretty-looking, but she didn't seem so lady-like with how disinterested and uncaring she was toward everything. Her expression was always marked with bitterness, too, because her left eyebrow would lift upward questionably while her right was hinged unsettlingly downward. Her eyes were piercing, yet somehow calming with the dark green they paraded. Although she was easily annoyed, she was quiet and didn't yell about it. How did we become friends, anyway?

Oh, right. It was Henrietta's fault. When Henrietta and I were seven, we saw a single mother with a young six-year-old arriving into Violet City. Henrietta, upon seeing the girl from a distance, was immediately struck with fascination and tugged me into accompanying her. I didn't care as much as she did, but I did want to meet this new girl.

When we approached Sophie, she was carrying a small box of items into her house. She was so small and pretty she could have been a doll. Henrietta started treating her as such, speaking in an almost babyish way.

"Hello there. I'm Henrietta," she greeted warmly.

Sophie met her with a dull glance and the tiniest quirk of her left eyebrow. Sophie's light brown hair was cleanly cut and short with an odd bone-resembling clip pulling the top part of her hair back. She had pouty pink lips with a beauty mark below her left eye and another above her right eyebrow. She was petite, and the fact she was wearing practically all pink did nothing but promote how fragile she appeared. She was frightfully skinny, which made her features look well-defined. While Henrietta was somewhat chubby and I was fit enough to not jiggle, Sophie was the skinniest and smallest of us all, looking as if she wasn't going to grow too much too soon or else risk certain death.

When Sophie didn't reply and strode boldly into her house, Henrietta frowned, while I remarked with amusement, "Hey, she ignored you. I like her."

"Well, I don't," Henrietta replied harshly, somewhat stung.

When Sophie returned to retrieve another box, Henrietta marched up to her defiantly, nearly stomping her feet. She was met with an almost prissy stare, questioning her motives without really having to.

"My name is Henrietta Johnson," she tried again, without a smile this time.

"I heard you the first time," Sophie said simply. "If it matters to you so much, I'm Sophie Faraday. Now go away."

The only thing that made it sound harsh was how straightforward it was, but it was obvious she didn't intend to be mean or prissy. It was actually nice that she said what she wanted and just didn't care. She wasn't like the other girls who would leave an insult before fleeing or try to beat around the bush as to why they didn't want to hang out with you. The weird part about this whole exchange was that she was only six years old, and we—the wise and noble seven-year-olds—were receiving a verbal thrashing. It wasn't as if she was dissing us too badly. It was the tone of her words that made her able to wield the edge of a knife; it was her words themselves that allowed her to have such accurate aim.

"I'm Rochelle Worley, but you can call me Chelle," I shouted cheerfully as she went back inside her new home. The door closed—not with a slam, but a delicate touch.

"Yep, I like her!" I announced yet again.

Henrietta was struck by Sophie's innocent appearance and the abnormal accompaniment of her brutal honesty and stoniness. We decided we'd wait around for her in order to get the chance to associate with her again.

Just ten minutes later, her mother must have seen us through one of the windows because she came out and faltered in the doorway, cocking her head.

"Hello. Can I help you girls?" she asked kindly.

"We're here for Sophie," Henrietta answered.

Ms. Faraday's eyes widened and she stepped back inside to bring her daughter out. Sophie emerged obediently, not really putting up much of a fight. She didn't look as if she cared either way, but when she saw us she did raise her left eyebrow once again, surveying us sharply. Her mother went back inside, ecstatic. I had a feeling this didn't happen too much.

"What do you want?"

"You have a bone in your hair," I observed.

"Yes. I do."

"Are you bad to the bone?" I was hoping to tickle her ribs, but Sophie was having none of it. She probably thought I was too bone-headed to respond to.

"No."

Henrietta decided to take the reins this time. "Is it real?"

"Yes."

That didn't disturb us as much as it should have…until we looked at her neck and saw a necklace of teeth. Literally. Teeth. From a distance they would have looked like jagged pearls, but we could now identify what they were.

Blinking rapidly, Henrietta asked, "Are those…teeth?"

"Yes." Catching on to our observations, Sophie lifted her hands to exhibit the odd purple gloves that seemed to wrap around and shield her hands. "These are gligar claws."

"…And they're all real?"

"Yes. Very."

I was actually fairly disconcerted by that. Looking back at it, I couldn't imagine doing something like ripping off Poona's tail and wearing it as a scarf…even though I do wear scarves to cover the gross birthmark on the back of my neck. Even if my hair was unevenly long enough to cover it, my hair was still short in the back, and I didn't want to take any risks. Poona wouldn't be anything without her tail. She bounced on the thing incessantly and used it more than her legs. I wore a lot of feathery and scaly things, yeah, but they weren't real.

I couldn't even tell if Sophie noticed we were uneasy about this information. Her face was still set in that rigidly uncaring way, staring not even reproachfully and certainly not wearing down from the focus. She could easily be a staring contest champion if she wanted to be. There was a challenging silence then, in which Sophie's feet threatened to move.

Henrietta piped up haltingly, "How did you get them?"

"My sister made them for me."

"She made them?"

"Yes. Out of my father's pokémon."

Did she not know what she was saying? Henrietta thought she was crazy and was getting to be a little fidgety. Her feet jittered fearfully, and I noticed that she was faintly trembling. What happened to her love for dark things? She had always bragged that when she became a trainer she would have a team of all dark or ghost pokémon.

I gripped Henrietta's arm when it seemed as if she was about to rise, chaining her to the spot.

"Where'd the bone come from?" I continued.

"A marowak."

"And the teeth?" Henrietta tried to wrench herself free, but years of being thrown in martial arts from when I was four were catching up to me and making my grip lethal. I'd made a handcuff out of my hand at this point.

"A nidoqueen."

"Why are you wearing them?"

"I like them, and my sister gave them to me."

"Your older sister? Can we meet her?" So that we can burn her at the stake?

"No. She left."

"Is she a trainer? My older brother's a trainer," I said proudly. "He's a late trainer though."

"Probably. I don't know." Sophie stared at us some more, making Henrietta squirm. "Is that all?"

"Do you want to play with us?"

The words hadn't been mine, now that I thought about it. I normally didn't think of what I said before I said it, but this was a critical situation. I just invited a potentially psychopathic kid to come and play with us.

Luckily, I thought she was going to say no. Henrietta did, too, because she stopped struggling and sat comfortably back, even though we were still dancing helplessly over the hot coals that my words had placed beneath our feet.

"Fine."

And now we just got burned. Permanently.

Sophie waited. Waited for us to react. Waited for us to move. Waited for us to do something. Henrietta was waiting for me to detach myself from her so that she could run away from the murderer-to-be, but I was still calculating my next move. Or rather, my next prank. Would Sophie want to do something like that?

In any case, Sophie did cooperate. She was our moral support buddy—the person who eventually started giving out her opinions upon greetings ("Your head is still too big, Chelle." "And you are still too cute, Sophie!" "I think you're both nuts.") because she cared enough to do so. Even if her opinions came off as insults, I didn't take them like that, and neither did Henrietta, surprisingly. She was the one person I didn't care who commented about the stupidity of my actions or how my hair was maybe too shabby or uneven. It was the way she was: brutally honest. Not strongly opinionated, but brutally honest.

She was also scarily smart and mature for her age, stunning me and Henrietta time and time again with her limitless knowledge and answers, even if most of the time she was just being very levelheaded and hardly responsive. Kids her age—heck, kids our age, even—were supposed to be hyper and bouncy and just stupid. Sophie wasn't like that at all. She was intimidating and still managed to stay by us, hanging out with us practically every day since we'd met her. Probably because she had nothing better to do. We were happy because we thought we were cool enough to hang out with Sophie Faraday, a young girl who should have been admiring us rather than the other way around, but we didn't care.

Sophie would definitely take the right side. She would tell me if I was crazy and get the full story before she cast her judgment. She would probably even know something that would aid my story. If anyone could disprove my insanity, it was Sophie.

With Poona following us unwaveringly, Henrietta and I made it to her house in about ten minutes. I kept ushering Poona to speak, but she just rolled over in the grass. Henrietta shook her head at me and didn't say anything, despite my practical yelling at this point.

I reached forward to knock on Sophie's door, but she opened it as if she had been expecting us.

"Sophie!"

I pounced on her, but she was already ready. Her arm had been held out in preparation for the leap, shoving me off before I even came close to touching her. I had made it a goal to hug her before she got the chance to shield herself. She hated physical contact. Since I was a hugger, this had proven to be an issue. I hadn't gotten the opportunity to hug her yet, and neither had Henrietta, but we placed bets over who would hug her first.

"I like your glove," she commented.

Wow. A compliment. I felt honored. The glove she was referring to was feathery with a royal blue streaking through each feather. It extended up my right arm, ending with a cuff that could be tightened or loosened. I made it a point to wear only one out of each pair of gloves that I owned. I didn't like the feeling of both of my hands being constricted, but one was cool enough.

"Yours are okay," she continued to Henrietta, who frowned considerably. "The tutu is unnecessary though. And, Chelle, I still don't like your hair."

"You probably never will," I chirped, "but that's not why we're here, Sophie. Poona speaks!"

"So do I. This is nothing special," she responded blankly.

"But she speaks English! That means we can understand everything she's saying!" I cried indignantly.

"Chelle thinks she heard her," Henrietta included.

"Because I did," I said disdainfully. I was getting tired of no one believing me. Really, out of everything I had said and done, was this the hardest thing to believe?

"So what do you think, Sophie?" Henrietta asked, ignoring me.

Sophie didn't even pause. She was very decisive about her response, just like she always was. "You could be a pokémon."

Henrietta laughed, but I didn't. I stared at her in wonderment. Sophie never joked. Ever. Anything that came close was pure sarcasm. Usually even that was undetectable, but I could tell this wasn't one of those rare times.

Sophie raised her left eyebrow at Henrietta disapprovingly. "That was not a joke." Henrietta stopped laughing immediately, as if the words had threatened her unborn children. She returned her eyes to mine. "It's probably a phase. I was once a pokémon."

It was the most awkward silence between the three of us. We knew Sophie had some problems, but we didn't think she had been delusional, too…Then again I thought my sentret had been speaking to me in English. Who was I to judge?

"Or I used to think I was." Our shoulders relaxed, and Henrietta chuckled nervously. "You could be crazy," she decided finally.

I was hoping she'd keep the boat afloat, but I could see it was beginning to sink.

"Did that make you crazy?"

"A little bit. Right now, I am crazy enough to believe you," she added helpfully.

I wanted to throw my arms around my newest ally, but the look she was giving me shot me down.

"Humans are capable of understanding what pokémon are saying," she continued smartly.

"Through guessing, maybe," Henrietta offered sensibly. Now she was bitter that she was getting cut down from taking the most logical side of things. I wanted to rub it in since getting Sophie to agree was greater than battling the champion of Johto, but I decided there would be plenty of time to do that after Sophie offered her full opinion.

At this point, she just looked annoyed. "No, there is a way to communicate with them. Are you two familiar with the language of Pokéspeech?"

Henrietta and I stared.

"Pokéspeech has been spoken by pokémon for generations. The previous champion of Johto implemented the language into modern school systems. Although you aren't required to master the language in order to be a trainer, the class is optional and considerably advanced. Since there are only a handful of professors that are fluent in this universal pokémon language, the class is expensive and time-consuming. Supposedly, pokémon merely have accents according to which region they're located, but the language is in the same tongue regardless. There are a few people who are able to master the language, but most trainers can understand their pokémon after spending enough time with them; however, only those who have mastered the language are able to understand pokémon completely. You could be fluent in Pokéspeech. This would be the only explanation besides insanity."

I was aware that pokémon had their own language, but I wasn't aware humans could understand it. "So the former champion discovered a way to talk to pokémon? How come I never heard about that?"

"You were probably being too stupid to pay attention. You, too," she said, nodding to Henrietta, who flushed.

I would have protested, but it was too true to deny and I had no helpful arguments to defend myself. Henrietta didn't think so.

"I-I knew that! I just didn't think it was possible for someone to be fluent in Pokéspeech, especially if they didn't even know it existed," she said scornfully, stabbing me with a look.

"Right. It was only made to be a class about ten years ago anyway," Sophie said. "Since Poona's never spoken up to this point and you aren't fluent, you are likely insane because it's improbable for someone to be fluent in Pokéspeech without having taken lessons for it."

"…Thanks, Sophie."

When I got home that day, Poona was still following me and hadn't said anything since this morning. She did make a few noises every time she scuttled after me, but I couldn't make sense of it. Annoyed by this betrayal, I arrived home to encounter the worst traitors of all: my parents. My dad was reading the newspaper, while my mom was preparing dinner. They glimpsed at the door when they heard me come in.

"…Hey, weren't you supposed to be grounded?" Dad asked suspiciously, peering at me over the newest headline.

Since I needed a distraction to cover my ground, I read the headline aloud. "'Trainers being attacked during travel'? Sounds criminal. Should we call Jacoby to make sure he's okay?"

Mom stepped out of the kitchen and waved me off before I could continue. She did not look happy. It sounded like one of the pots in the kitchen was boiling, but it wouldn't surprise me if it was actually her. "Yes, you were supposed to be grounded. Why did you sneak out?"

"Put the guns down. Your prisoner has returned, but you gotta admit you guys suck as guards." I wanted to see if what Sophie had said was true, but how could I do it? Could I just come out and say it?

Without over-thinking it, I decided to add, casually, "Oh, and I'm fluent in Pokéspeech by the way."

Mom ogled at me before she appeared as if she realized something important. Her forehead met her right palm with a smack. "Oh, that's right!"

Dad stared at her in confusion, obviously not sharing the same realization. "What, Leandra?"

There was a thoughtful pause of Mom gnawing absently on her lower lip before she announced sheepishly, "We had a tutor teach you Pokéspeech when you were younger."

My thoughts were clouded with unforgiving tones and insults I easily uncased from the darkest corners of my mind. I could have yelled at them had I known they were withholding this information, but I didn't. It did give me hope for something else though.

"Does that mean I'm not grounded anymore?"

"No, you're still grounded. Now go clean your room," Mom ordered, and returned to the kitchen after exchanging a significant glance with Dad.

I glared at them and stomped back to my cell, closing the door as I saw Trevor across the hall, staring timidly out from his own room. He had a really dorky haircut in which his blond hair barely touched the top of his forehead. The length made his ears stick out and gave the impression his face was bulging beneath his hair. I stuck my tongue out at him without giving it much thought, giving Poona just enough time to crawl through the crack before the door closed.

How could they forget something like that? That's major, right? Like, macho big? Why didn't I know this?

I landed on my bed in a merciless belly-flop and rolled onto my back. So, it's definitely a big deal that I knew another language, but hey, here were the positives: I could communicate with pokémon, apparently. How much could I understand? Did Jacoby have a tutor when he was younger, too? I hadn't seen that happen with Trevor, so I was a little confused. Plus, I couldn't even remember when I had been learning from this so-called tutor, so how could I have remembered what I had been learning about? How was I able to understand a language I didn't know I knew?

Maybe Sophie would know something about this. I would have to talk to her and see if she had an answer.

I looked around my headquarters without a word. My room was still the most damaged part of the house. Since today was laundry day, I had done my part by placing all of my dirty clothes on the floor, amid even more unidentifiable clutter. Poona rolled over on the floor from beside me, colliding with my dresser and knocking more clothes onto the carpet.

"I want more food," she whined.

This was definitely better than the crazy explanation. I acted insane, but that didn't mean I actually had to be.