The Courageous Kitten Writing Circle

“Hi everyone. Welcome back to every writer’s home, The Courageous Kitten Writing Circle. We’ll open with hellos, like usual.”

Sage Brushstroke (her pen name) was the first to go in hellos. The premise was that everyone had to say hello in an odd way, to get the creative juices flowing before they did prompt-writing. Today however, the spirit was clearly lacking as each person’s hello was less creative than the last.

“Greetings.”

“Yo.”

“Hi”

“Hello,”

“Hola”

“Hey.”

“Meow.” The last person, Arthur Pendragon (another pseudonym), said meow, as usual. That was the Courageous Kitten tradition, that the last hello was a meow. But it was a lackluster greeting, not the usual smiling meow of last week’s circle.

Aquilla Day, the leader of the Courageous Kittens, looked around her circle with a frown. “What’s wrong with everybody?” 

Usually everyone was glad for The Kitten Circle. It was a haven for the few lost writers at their high school, the people that ‘non-writers’ looked down on as dreamers, weirdos, imaginators, and wimps. The ones who dared to write stories of other worlds, other places, other people, instead of notes or essays. The ones who always seemed off, aloof, or had the oddest search history on their laptops. The circle was a ring that protected them from the harsh criticism of the outside world. 

Oliver Shelley looked up from behind his long bangs. “Nothing’s wrong. We’re just tired.”

“Of writer’s circle?? You guys love writer’s circle! You said last time it’s the only thing keeping you sane!”

“We’re not tired of Kitten Circle. We’re tired of everything else.” This time it was Jack Snickerdoodle who spoke up. He leaned back in his chair and put his head in his hands. He was exhausted from soccer practice- and from always trying to be on the same team with his proud teammates.“I’m just tired of school.”

“Once the work’s done, there’s nothing. No parties, no games, no nothing. Not for us. It’s never for us,” Callie Graphy sadly fingered her stud earring. 

“I thought that was why we founded the Kitten Circle though- to forget about those guys. To have a place where we didn’t feel that way, a place just for us writers.”

“That is why we founded it Quilla. But that doesn’t make it any less sad.” Arthur Pendragon was fiddling with his sweatshirt. He’d just came from a parent-teacher conference to discuss his writing; how he needed to focus on notes and school first, and stories later, even if his story was a historical tale he wrote to be his notes. He had to learn the way they wanted him to, no matter how mind-numbing and soulless it felt. He should be a student, not a writer. Writer could come later, after student and successful career holder and good son.

“And how long is it going to go on like this? Are we just going to be shunned forever? Is it always going to be just Kitten circle, the one place where we belong?” Mycroft McCoy. He almost glared at Aquilla, even though it wasn't her fault writers were unpopular. 

“I think Kitten Circle just made us more separate from everybody else.” Callie whispered. “They don’t want to be writers, but they do want to be included, and since they can’t be in the circle, they’re mad at us. At least before we started the kitten circle I didn’t get the notes,”

Everyone jumped a little at Callie’s last words. “What did you say?”

Callie glanced up a little, afraid to be the center of attention. She dug into her bag. “I keep getting these notes. I find them all over. My locker, my seat, my backpack, the bathroom… They just keep coming and I don’t know what I did wrong!”

Callie ended up ashamedly passing the notes around and pretending to look for something in her bag. Arthur’s face twisted up in rage at the insulting caricatures. Oliver just shrugged concernedly, while Sage snarled at them. “The proportions are all wrong. And they call themselves artists.”

Aquilla looked at them. There were enough drawings to go around the circle, and more in Callie’s backpack. Aquilla’s showed a manga-eyed kitten in a beanie (Callie’s signature item) hanging off of a tree limb over a cliff. Under the tree was an anime girl saying, “I can’t reach you! If only the branch wasn’t so out of reach!”

“What are these supposed to be, hate notes?” Jack put his drawing down and peeked over at Callie, who was now holding back rather large tears.

“I-I guess?!” Callie took off her glasses and frantically tried to clean them, her way of hiding the fact that she was crying. “I don’t see what I did that makes people so mad!”

“These are all different styles. It’s a whole club of manga-maniacs drawing these.” Mycroft, like his namesake, was often the one who noticed the details of the problem. “But why they’d target just you about Kitten Circle doesn’t make sense.”

“Has anyone else got these notes?” Sage asked. She searched the group, but received no response. “We’re all on the same team guys. Who else got notes?”

“Sage… I got one once.” Not Jack too. Of course it was him- short, glasses, definition of pick-on-able- but why did their group have to be so hated? “It was a long time ago, when I first joined. Remember? Oliver brought me one day? Well, after I came, I got a note in my locker. But it wasn’t a drawing like this. It was a written note from...someone.” The girls could see Jack wasn’t mentioning the name out of politeness. It was more than the note-writer deserved. “It told me to choose Kitten Circle or Tennis club.”

"I had one too, but I ignored it."

"I had one."

"I had one."

"I had one."

“If anyone receives notes like this, you should tell us. We won’t let ourselves or our friends be treated this way!” Aquilla felt ashamed for being the only one without a note- she would rather go down with her friends than be the only one in a lifeboat.

She stood up. “We’re not giving those people anything else. They’ve taken our joy and they’ve taken the fun out of being writers. Forget them. I have this week’s prompt in my pocket- let’s write.”

“It’s not that easy Aquilla.” Callie glared up at their leader. “We can’t just ignore them!”

“We can. If we ignore them, their threats are nothing. It’s the only way to fight them- I'm sorry, but it's the only way.”

“It’s not the only way.” Mycroft gazed at each of his circlemates in turn. Slowly, he took his favorite pen out of his backpack. The lucky one, the one he only used on final exams and final story drafts. “Don’t you guys know what happens, what happens when you anger a real writer?”

He was met with confused yet curious stares.

Mycroft uncapped his pen and held it up to the light, so it gleamed like a sharp, silver sword. "The writers...

Get their revenge in print.”