Amusement parks are fun. If they're not infinite. Lupita seems to have an endless supply of the haunted plastic pirate coins, and they've gotten us an endless supply of corn dogs, cotton candy, popcorn, deep fried turkey legs, and deep fried cheese, not to mention any number of rides on an endless number of stomach churning contraptions. But when it came time to bed down somewhere, that's when it got creepy.

The whole concept of "human trafficking" seems like a kind of old fashioned fairy tale, till you realize you're helpless and the only people who can do anything for you are obviously criminal freaks. And once they know you're helpless they converge on you and try and pin you down.

Again, whatever experience Carmen and Lupita have proved invaluable, and there were well-placed kicks in the groin and organized escapes. I credit those girls with our well-being.

Tonight we're hunkered down in the woods safe from the carny slavers. Hopefully tomorrow will show us a way out.

Should I blame the Ms. Amadria? Or the chicken lady?

You can't blame Carmen and Lupita. Ms. Amadria could have warned me, but I'm pretty sure the chicken lady could have warned me too. That better be why she wants to talk to me tomorrow. The Chicken Lady.

We woke up in the forest cold, and dirty, and feeling a bit crap after all the junk food the day before. Now it was pure forest, with access roads and jeep trails. But no houses, or gardens, or amusement rides. We still had some food squirreled away, and melted ice in our Big Gulps to drink. But that was the last of it. Something had to break.

That's when the big white cake ran across the road.

Followed by a chicken. A chicken wearing a mask.

The chicken ran after the cake and I ran after the chicken and the girls ran after me. For such a chubby cake, @Lady Baltimore was quick as a snake and left the chicken dumbfounded in the middle of the dirt road. I held the girls back with one hand and sshhhhed with the other. I wanted the chicken to get its bearings. Pretty soon it started trotting the road. We followed.

When we got to the Chicken Lady's camp she was waiting for us. And she'd somehow arranged to have a car waiting for us just past the wood where the trail meets the street. She shooed us into the car and told me she expected for me to come see her soon. Tomorrow.

We drove back to Ms. Amadria's house. Lupita fell asleep on my lap.

Now I'm finally back home. Ms. Amadria was very apologetic and paid me $100. Which was generous, I guess, but it was going to be $50 just for one evening, and it turned into 7 days. I mean...?

My parents didn't seem too concerned. They tend to think anybody connected with the school can do no wrong, and Ms. Amadria had let them know I was doing some "extended care" for her children. They told me I should feel lucky, and to get $100 for it.

Sheesh. At least I can take a shower and sleep in my own bed tonight.

Good night!

After the whole ordeal, I slept late. But I still felt I needed to visit the Chicken Lady.

I rode my bike to where the street meets the trail and walked it up the path to the Chicken Lady's camp. She had everything in order, and the chickens were loose. Without their masks.

The Chicken Lady said "They can't wear their masks all the time. It's too intense for them. Also, bad for their complexions."

She was making tea. She asked about my trip, and seemed genuinely interested in how all it all went. But I couldn't help but feel like she knew it all already. Didn't she see it all coming?

The Chicken Lady said "I didn't see it all coming, you know. I knew from the picture that the chickens drew that a small adventure was ahead for you, but I knew it would turn out all right. Terrible life-changing calamities are rare. We're so tiny... big things don't really happen that often to us."

She didn't have to tell me there was some kind of connection between us. Or maybe that was all in my head too. But she was really nice, and said I should come visit her any time.

I told her "Sure. I'd like that."

Not all students feel pressure from their parents to perform well at Psyhigh. I wish I was one of them.

Not that my parents are mean jerks or anything. Quite the opposite. But there's just this "understanding" that I guess I feel I have to live up to. My dad is an invisibilty banker at at Fortuneteller 500 company, and my mom's a psychic neurosurgeon. Plus I'm an only child.

If my parents weren't so understanding maybe it would be easier to be rebellious. But that would just be stressful in its own way. Can I actually blame them for having high expectations? I guess I am sort of setting the bar myself.

I'm more of a science person. The psychic sciences, of course. But the buzzy class on campus this term seems to be Upward Mobility and the Modern Worker. Business classes seem so... fanciful? It's like they're describing an alien culture. It's one of those new private/public funded courses. This one is sponsored by @GROTTO G.S.M. INC. The mattress company.

I didn't get one of those beds because I live off campus. At home with my parents. Everybody I know in the dorms really loves theirs.

But who'd want to work at a mattress company?

I am pretty sure the credit would help round out my transcripts though. The ultra-competitive psychic college system wants to see expertise in everything, from alchemy to Faraday cage phase mechanics. And that's on top of all the volunteer hours and extra-curricular activities. This class seems like it ought to fall into one of those categories.

I'm honored to be September's student of the month. There are so many amazing students out there, I feel a bit embarrassed to be singled out like this. But thank you to the administration and the Dean for selecting me.

I know it's traditional for the Student of the Month to sit in the Student of the Month Throne in the cafeteria, but if I don't show up I wanted everybody to know they can sit there in my place. I usually bring my lunch and eat it in Ms. Beletseri's classroom.

It was Friday so I decided it was time to visit the Chicken Lady again. She was at her camp writing in her journal. She's right handed but she writes in her journal left-handed backwards to keep her mind and her body free. She said that she'd always done that but since the Reality Accident it was more important than ever.

The Chicken Lady said "I used to live in a house. I still have the house and I'll show it to you sometime if you like. It's the last house in town that doesn't have any power lines or phone lines over it. That was liveable until the Reality Accident, but it's still inside the grid--the big electrical field that keeps everybody in check. Like a great big checkerboard. Since the Reality Accident happened it's become even more of a weapon to control people's minds. All that power is turning in on itself and it's poisoning everybody. So I had to move to the woods."

The chickens were loose, and not wearing their masks. As she spoke, the chickens slowly formed a circle around us, looking at the Chicken Lady.

The Chicken Lady continued. "The electricity is real, but the power is fake. The electricity becomes a conduit for all this hate and it excites people so they pay for more and more, and to pay for more of it they get jobs doing things. The worse things you do to people the more you get paid. Like the Milgram experiment. Do you know what that is? Except the bad stuff is real. They just make it seem fake, so people pretend it's not bad. It makes real things seem fake and fake things seem real."

All the chickens nodded.

I didn't know what to say. So I said "I got picked as Student of the Month."

The Chicken Lady said "Well I think that's great. Good job! It's good to have people like you in positions like that. Just be yourself and you'll do fine."

It's nice the Chicken Lady has confidence in me, knowing what she does about the world.

Gang symbols are a new thing on campus. There's the S/C, which you see spray painted (or paw and hoof painted?) on walls and buildings. It stands for the Stimulus Committee. There's the big shrimp tag -- that's for the Shrimp Chimps. And most lately the H-C-CL stencil you see tagged on the bus stop and on transformers and things. That's for the Chloroform Kids.

Even though I study a lot, I'm not a total square -- but I really don't know anybody who's part of any of these gangs. Isn't tagging some kind of art kid thing? Do we really have "criminal gangs" on campus? I have to say I really don't get it.

How are people liking the new mobile classrooms? With so many new students on campus I guess they needed more space for classes.

Last year they used all Baba Yaga™ brand mobile learning units, but they had a tendency to wander off at night. Or sometimes with students still in them. I think most of the students were eventually found.

This year it looks like they're using all outdoor projection systems. Pretty realistic, just not great in the cold or rain. I wonder if they'll be using them for the Upward Mobility and the Modern Worker class. Being a public/private hybrid funding thing, it seems like something corporate sponsor @GROTTO G.S.M. INC. would be into. Because cheaper.

Lately I've been getting rides home from school from @Candi Wolfe. She lives on my side of town and has her own Volvo station wagon. She inherited it, and it's way older than either of us, but her parents invested it with so many preservation spells that now it has a life of its own and won't stop running. Candi says it's made of more than 70% "positive thinking" at this point, and not to worry when pieces of it fly off.

Candi's dad is a ritual mechanic, so he knows how to do this stuff. They have a ton of rusty old contraptions in the big metal barn behind their house that still work if you just speak to them nicely.