When Chocolate’s owner disappears, she sets out on a mission to find them Chocolate licked her brown fur twice as her owner petted her and made some sounds with her mouth. Her owner made unusual sounds; humans made sounds Chocolate couldn’t make. Chocolate guessed humans made those sounds so the other humans could know how he or she felt. Today, the sounds sounded sad. Chocolate wondered why, but she usually guessed it was something like her owner had found out that her favorite coffee wasn’t on sale, but this was mega sad, like someone died. She wondered why, but guessed it was nothing really important. She buried her face in her owner’s replaceable fur so she didn’t have to look at the bright, orange sun, which was half hidden in the land and trees. She closed her eyes and rested her head on her paws. She fell sound asleep. When Chocolate woke up, she saw a wall. She stood up and yawned and saw the blue sky. She was outside! She jumped up in excitement, only to find her head banging on her cage roof. Why was she in a cage?! She glanced around looking for her owner. She wanted to run! When she realized that her owner was not nearby, she thrashed at the cage door. When she finally opened it, the sun was high in the sky. She wandered around looking for her owner’s scent. She then found it behind a tree. It led to the right, where the path was wide. Wide means happy! she thought and grabbed her favorite toy from the cage, and she ran, following the scent. Chocolate ran for a couple minutes. The scent led to her house! She clawed at the door, hoping her owner would answer. After a few minutes of clawing at the door, she realized that her owner wasn’t in the house or was ignoring her. She knew her owner wouldn’t ignore her, so she guessed it was because her owner wasn’t in the house. She traveled for days. She got chased by humans and other dogs. She had to find food, water, and shelter for herself. She looked around for her owner. Maybe they were playing hide and seek! She started looking for her owner. After a while, she sighed and wondered if they weren’t playing hide-and-seek. “I give up!” she called, and that is when she noticed a big truck. It was gray with lots of scratch marks on it. She neared and the door on the other side slammed shut and her owner’s scent wafted over to her  nose. She barked happily and ran to the other side and saw her owner in the truck. She barked. But her owner didn’t hear her. The truck with her owner rolled away, leaving Chocolate alone. After exactly five minutes of staring at where her owner used to be, she whimpered in protest. “Don’t leave me!” She then wandered to a nearby forest. The thick green leaves covered her from the sun, and she was grateful, but after a while she began to feel cold. She stopped when she heard rustling from a nearby bush. She ran, but she ended up falling in front of a cave with . . . other dogs! “Hi!” Chocolate said, and stood up. “Who you?” one of the dogs said. “You come where?” “Name what?” “Where come?” They asked a lot of questions. “I am Chocolate,” Chocolate said and resisted the urge to say, “You talk weird.” The dogs burst out laughing. “What’s wrong?” Chocolate asked, but Chocolate could pretty much guess why. Before they could answer, a big muscular dog fell on Chocolate. “Gotcha!” the dog said. “Umm . . . will you please get off?” Chocolate asked, trying to sound polite, but it was hard to hide the frustration when someone was on top of you. Serenity “We wolves! Eat you!” the wolf said. “You eat me? You are a wolf? You are a Wild Dog?” Chocolate asked. Wolves were called “Wild Dogs” in the dog world. “WE NOT DOGS!” the wolf on top of her roared, but it was more of a howl. Chocolate squeezed out of the wolf’s grasp. The wolves all gasped for some reason. They started saying things like: “She escaped from the Master!” “She is the leader now.” “Master Chocolate?” “That is a weird name.” “But she did escape!” “Yeah!” They huddled close and did some whispering, and Chocolate could only pick up some parts, like “leader,” “dog,” “wolf,” and “rules.” After a while the wolves said, “You are now our leader!” in unison. Chocolate asked them what that meant, and they all said, “You became the leader.” From that moment on, she was brought food and treated with respect. She didn’t like how the food looked, so she closed her eyes and ate it or ate fruit. She always had her favorite toy by her side, which was nice. But something about this place was unsettling. So she set off for her owner again. She traveled for days. She got chased by humans and other dogs. She had to find food, water, and shelter for herself. She had never really done that, so it was hard. First day. She got chased by people. Second day. She was chased by dogs. Third day. She couldn’t find food. Fourth day. She was almost hit by a car. Fifth day. A person caught her and brought her in and fed her. The feeding part wasn’t bad, but the owner had another big dog. Sixth day. She overslept. A week. A month. Finally. On the forty-ninth day. Finally—she smelled her owner. It led to a blue house. She clawed at the door. And the door peeked open, and she saw her owner. Her owner stared at her in shock. Chocolate could feel the shock waves. Then her owner smiled and picked Chocolate up. And for the first time, Chocolate understood what her owner said: “Thank you for coming

Zoe never turns down a dare—even a really dangerous one My name is Zoe. I am ten years old. I will tell you what I remember. I met with my friend Taylor outside my house after school. Taylor is my goofy friend who likes wearing Baby Yoda T-shirts and doing weird T-Rex dances where she holds her arms up as if she has tiny T-Rex arms. We kicked a soccer ball back and forth in the street. We are both good ball handlers and never let the ball fly into anyone’s car. We continued this for about thirty minutes, until we got bored. We sat on the curb, trying to think of what to do next while taking turns braiding each other’s hair. Taylor has long blonde hair. I have long black hair. Suddenly, Taylor stood up and said, “Let’s play Truth or Dare!” I was about to answer with an enthusiastic “yes” when I remembered the family rule. The thing is, I never give up and I never lose a game without giving it all I got. But this can be a problem in Truth or Dare, because my parents say sometimes the responsible or safest thing to do is to refuse the challenge. But there are no pass turns in Truth or Dare; the first person to decline a challenge loses. My parents had said that I was never ever allowed to play Truth or Dare again after the Bowl Incident. I was playing the game with friends at a sleepover at my house, and the dare was that I had to balance six glass bowls from our kitchen cabinet on my head for three seconds. I did it, but then they all came crashing down, and that’s how the family rule became No Truth or Dare for Zoe, Ever. But, then again, I do not always follow the rules. I considered it all for a minute and then agreed to play. My friend Taylor said, “Great. Do you want to go first, or can I?” I volunteered to go first. “Sounds good,” Taylor answered. I smiled and said, “Truth or dare?” I was secretly hoping she would pick dare so I could get her to put her whole hand into our smelly compost pile. But luck was not on my side today. “Truth,” she answered. I sighed and then blurted out, “Have you ever had a crush?” “Yes,” Taylor answered. Maybe luck was on my side today after all. Maybe I would finally get to know who Taylor’s secret crush was. “Who was your crush?” I asked. Taylor smiled slyly and replied, “I answered the question. I don’t have to answer another one.” I did my best Baby-Yoda-eyes impression and begged, “Please?” My Baby Yoda eyes unfortunately did not work this time. Taylor smiled and said, “My turn!” I nodded. “Truth or dare?” she asked. “Dare,” I answered. She laughed and exclaimed, “I dare you to climb the tallest tree in our neighborhood.” I gasped. She didn’t mean the monster tree, did she? All the kids in our neighborhood called it the monster tree. For a bunch of kids aged ten and younger, the monster tree was basically the tallest tree in the world. It felt like it was as tall as my Uncle Nick times ten, and my Uncle Nick is six foot two inches. “You don’t mean the monster tree?” I stammered. She smiled and said, “Of course I do. Do you give up?” “Never,” I answered. Taylor knows as well as I do that I never give up on a challenge, which, I acknowledged to myself in that moment, can be something of a disadvantage. She stood up and I did too, and we began to walk to the monster tree. We talked as we walked. “Please tell me who your secret crush is,” I begged her. “Never,” she answered. I moaned in exasperation. As we got closer to the monster tree, I began fidgeting with my hair, which I only do when I am nervous. But I was not going to give up. When we got to the monster tree, I reached for the first branch, grabbed it, and pulled myself up. After that, climbing from one branch to the next was easy. I quickly scampered up the branches until I was about a third of the way up the tree. I stopped to catch my breath and looked down. Taylor’s eyes were wide, and her jaw dropped. “You don’t have to do this, Zoe. I didn’t think you would actually climb it. It doesn’t matter if you win or lose. Come down!” Feeling energized and reckless, I yelled back in a loud, fake British accent, “I will emerge victorious!” The next branch was slightly skinnier. But I continued the climb. Don’t look down, don’t look down, I thought to myself as I got even higher. But even as I was feeling nervous, I was also curious what everything around me would look like from this grand height. I stopped again to look around. I could see the chimney on my house and the tops of smaller trees. Taylor seemed tiny, way down there on the ground. I looked up, and I could see the top of the tree! I reached for the next branch and CRACK! The branch broke. I was able to slow my fall a bit by grabbing onto a few branches on the way down, but I couldn’t get a good handhold and the green grass hit me in an instant. In my imagination, I always thought a big fall would feel slow, like the epic slow motion catastrophes in movies. Boy, was I wrong. And now I sit here telling, you, my doctor, how I broke my arm playing Truth or Dare. Zoe Kijak, 11Laguna Hills, CA