The following Monday morning, the sun rose into a clear blue sky, to shine brightly on a thin new blanket of sparkling snow. Gerallt, Matt, and Tina smiled secretively to each other when the Hawthorne children joined the twins under the oak's bare branches. They didn't have to wait long for the school bus to pull up in front of their houses. Walking down the aisle, Matt and Gerallt surreptitiously glanced over to where Clayton was sitting, but the bigger boy showed no signs of having heard anything at all. After taking his seat, Matt looked back to where Sarah Duffy sat in the back of the bus. She smiled brightly at him, and he nodded back his thanks. Soon, the four conspirators walked into the school with high hopes for a great day.
It was only upon arriving at Hawthorne High that the ch
