The sun shone brightly in the sky above on the morning of the twenty-fifth after having risen before I had even awakened for the day. Spring was coming around at last and the air flourished in the first touch of warmth from it. I took the walk to work thriving in the knowledge that this was the start of something incredible, a new advancement into Happy Home's best future. I could hardly wait to get started.

An entirely different atmosphere lingered in the building today. It almost seemed lighter inside as the sun's glow crept across the floors, dancing with the breathtaking sensation of leaving something behind to share new beginnings, new eras. Even the beginning portion of my schedule felt to be thrown off with the sudden upcoming change. The building was buzzing with activity in the morning with the excitement of the upcoming event and because of this, a prickle of enthusiastic anticipation settled in my gut as the hours rolled by.

My lessons finished right at three and it was time to begin work in Happy Homeroom for the very first time. I packed up my assignments to leave the room with my mind reminding me that it wasn't my office that I was heading to today, since the abrupt switch would take a while to get used to, but when I exited the room, I didn't have the chance to forget where I was going because Lottie and Lyle were already waiting for me outside in the hall to show me the way to the new room. Together, we travelled through the hallways out of the academic area and into a segment of the building I had never visited before with halls of dark carpet, pale walls, and strips of piercing lights along the ceilings, all the while Lottie proceeded to explain the plan for the session.

"Since the program is still technically in development, the number of sessions we will initiate is going to be less right now than what we hope it will become in the future," Lottie told me as we made our way swiftly through the new hallways to reach our location of Happy Homeroom. Lyle followed close behind us, but appeared to have nothing to add as he shuffled along silently. "Until the project is fully complete, only one session per day will be provided. Since there will be only one for a while, it's very likely that the session will not require the entire three hours that have been offered, so as soon as it's finished, the three of us will be able to leave early for the day. It should take about an hour at most for the procedure to be executed, so we should be done around four, but in the future, I'm hoping that we'll be able to support three separate sessions per day.

"The procedure will be fairly simple, I think. The participant will select from a number of room templates and design the room from there for an evaluation, which is given through a numbered score that we'll provide. If the results they receive become a number that exceeds a certain amount, then the participant will pass the lesson and will be invited to return for a more difficult challenge. If the results don't exceed that amount, then the lesson will be failed. That will be the basic procedure and each session will be recorded to allow animals to receive an idea of what the process will look like for if they choose to apply. Each recording will be released the day after it has been filmed."

We filed into the new room just minutes later. It was a comfortably sized room with floors of neatly set strips of wood, pale pink walls that encased the space in a cozy fashion, and gentle lights that peered down over the area. At the back wall of the room, two rows of cushioned chairs lined up for a potential audience, one that would not be present for quite a while yet, and on the opposite wall stood a screen nearly from floor to ceiling that remained dark as it appeared not to have been activated yet. Between the seats for the audience and the screen sat a wide modern-looking table with three black swivel chairs that faced the direction of the dimmed screen, the back of each chair holding slates engraved with the names of each worker at the HHDA.

The faint sound of classical music drifted through the room as we entered. My gaze jumped to examine every corner of the room as Lottie and Lyle went to lower themselves into their seats at the table, with Lottie on the far left and Lyle on the far right while leaving a place for me in the middle. I found my seat at the table to find an electronic tablet propped up at every seat, each also darkened as the activity had yet to begin, and in front of Lottie in particular protruded a thin microphone from the surface of the table, a remote control with a number of buttons in bright colors, and a single sheet of paper that had since been scribbled on with information.

As the three of us settled quietly into our chairs at the judging table, I sent my focus sweeping across the room again to fully burn it into memory as the soft music settled peacefully throughout the room. There was a dark wooden set of double doors on the far end of the right wall that presumably led to some kind of back room and bolted to the wall next to those doors was a different screen, similarly dimmed and notably smaller in the size of a regular television, and held a peeking glow behind it that seeped out onto the pale walls.

Rustling from beside me pulled my attention back to Lottie on my left. She had taken up the remote control from the table in front of her and silently studied it in her paw for a few moments as if she had to remind herself what each vibrant button controlled before she pressed a particularly large blue button, which emitted a beeping sound. And just like that, all electronic life proceeded to awaken, each screen on the table, in the front, and next to the back door flooded with an identical white image. The glow from the main screen seemed to swallow every shadow creeping through the corners as it stood distinctly, and then thin words sank into sight on the white visual.

Welcome to

Happy Homeroom

Lottie next pushed down a tiny red button near the top of the remote control, but this one had no beep or clear changes to greet it. Evidently finished with setting up the project by remote, she set it down again to the left of her propped-up electronic tablet and spared Lyle and me a brief glance before she gathered up the sheet of paper on the table in front of her in her paws.

"I'd like to begin by introducing our participant who will be attending this activity today, the day of Monday, March twenty-fifth," Lottie announced. "The participant is fairly new to the procedures at the HHDA and this will mark the very first event of her interaction with our services. She has stated that she doesn't have a particular template to bring out herself and has requested to choose from our current selection. An extra note has been added at the bottom to bring to our attention."

Lottie adjusted the sheet in her paws, lifting it slightly to glance through the extra note to bring voice to it.

"This is her mother, Kaitlin," Lottie read aloud. "I sincerely apologize for the intrusion of our request to be placed so early with the exclusivity of accepted attendees. I had signed up my daughter to share a session with you as an early half-birthday present and I assure you that she is very grateful for the opportunity, but she cried until I promised she would be first."

A long silence crawled through the room. The three of us shared an uncertain glance at the table at the statement in the shared curiosity of just who we were about to meet for the first session, and then Lottie took hold of the thin microphone pointed up from her desk and leaned into it to be able to speak.

"Let's enter Katie, please," Lottie said hesitantly into the microphone.

The response was almost immediate. The silence lasted hardly a couple seconds more as Lottie, Lyle, and I waited in anticipation for something to happen, and a thunderous crash struck the room as the back double doors were flung open. After thrusting her way through the doorway like she owned the place, in strode a yellow kitten no older than her early teenage years in an overalls dress and an arrogant flick to her skinny tail.

"I'm supposed to be helping this dog I met find a job, but she doesn't have to know I took a break to come here!" Katie's high-pitched, youthful, self-important voice rang out through the room as she burst through the doors, but then she came to a stop as abrupt as her entrance just about five steps into the room.

Katie's dark eyes had fallen on me. However, the pause in her stride lasted hardly a moment as she was filled with the eager energy to be constantly moving, and she sprung forward to cross the room to approach me as a sunny smile found its way to her face.

"Hey, you're really cute! You must be Diggy," Katie exclaimed enthusiastically as she was bounding over to greet me. Lottie bolted upright from her seat beside me.

"All right. No. That's not allowed," Lottie warned her as her paw jolted out to stop her from approaching. Katie came to a halt a few feet from the table, shooting Lottie an offended glance. "You can't approach the table while the session is in progress and I ask you to please remain professional during that time. His name is Digby."

At my right, Lyle shifted slightly in his seat to remove his glasses from his face with one paw and tiredly rub his eyes with the other with a faint sigh. "Oh, boy," he mumbled to himself, but I seemed to be the only one who heard him.

"I know what his name is," Katie told Lottie, and snuck me a teasing smile as she whirled around on her way back confidently to the massive screen in the back of the room.

We certainly had a good connection already. It was nice to hear that someone thought so highly of me. A smirk rose involuntarily to my face at the words Katie had shared with me as she strutted back to the front of the room, but Lottie was less happy. She lowered herself back into her seat and folded her paws on the table in front of her, drawing in a slight breath to contain her composure, and spoke politely.

"Thank you for your cooperation, Katie," Lottie said as Katie found a stop at the screen and shifted to stare back at her. "I'm going to get the activity set up for you now. Please give me a moment to do so."

"Then hurry it up, please. I didn't come here for nothing," Katie reminded her.

"I understand that the wait might be a little bit frustrating to get through, but it would be appreciated if you would continue to wait respectfully," Lottie told her, picking up the remote control from the table again to examine the buttons for the one she would want to press.

Katie only stared at Lottie for a moment, her eyes squinting as if she couldn't believe she had said such a thing to her before she folded her arms. "No, I walked in here in a good mood. You were the one who had the attitude the minute I came in," she retorted.

Lottie appeared to have no response to this. She quietly pressed the same blue button as she had in the beginning and the visual on each screen began to reform itself. The giant screen at the front developed into the image of a room that held nothing but sunkissed wooden floors and walls with windows along the sides. Dark words dropped into place at the top of the screen over the image: Please select your template. A different visual popped up into place on my own tablet, one that provided the roster for three separate numbers available to be adjusted higher or lower by arrows on the top and bottom to form a combined triple-digit number. That must have been for scoring.

Lottie put down the remote on the table again as Katie whipped around to face the big screen, having just noticed that it was changing. "You're able to activate the screen by touching it," Lottie informed Katie, clasping her paws together on the table again as she addressed her. "I'd like you to swipe through the options of templates and select one to your liking, please."

"Okay," Katie mumbled, hesitantly reaching up with her yellow paw as if not entirely sure what she was meant to do and giving a sharp swipe to the right on the screen.

The screen altered to a different image within moments at Katie's touch. It transformed into the visual of a modern, high-tech looking room with dark walls and streaks of green light across each wall, causing the space where she stood to darken slightly by the dimmer screen, but she wasn't fond of this option as she gave a mumble of displeasure and swiped again. The next image that was presented to her was more of a playful vibe, perhaps a room that would have been offered as a young animal's bedroom, with walls of vibrant colors and floors of carpet with small shapes like stars and triangles.

"Yeah, that one's good," Katie decided, firmly slapping her paw over the screen to select the template. Once again, the screen responded to her touch, slipping the words at the top up and out of sight and sending scattered alerts of exclamation points in bubbles throughout different places in the room to begin designing. A switch in the smaller screen on the right wall caught my attention and I noticed where it had once been a blank whiteness, now a message was displayed at the bottom. Points to Pass: 175.

"If you touch one of those pop-ups, it will give you a series of options of furniture to place down for you to create the design in the room you have chosen," Lottie explained.

"Yes, I know what I'm doing," Katie shot back, sending a glance over her shoulder at Lottie before she turned back to the screen, raising her paw to begin.

Katie jabbed at the first alert, the one closest to her below the right window of the virtual room, and the image shifted to plaster a white box above the alert providing visuals of various plants on tables to scroll through and select from. For the first time since she had entered, Katie managed to be completely quiet as she swiped through her options, silently deciding what would have been best to fit in the room, before she prodded the screen again. She withdrew from the screen at last, allowing me to catch sight of the start of her design, revealing a tall pink desk with a burst of white lilies in a spotted vase. The colors clashed against the rest of the room, but I could see where she was coming from with the approach.

"Pretty!" Katie remarked, happily shifting her weight between her feet before she sent another glance in my direction. The same teasing smile from the beginning was back again. "Do you think it's pretty?"

The way she looked at me made me feel noticed, that was for sure. It was an interesting feeling, like everything I did was automatically going to be liked. Because of that, I couldn't help but feel a tugging urge to meet that energy, to reflect the vibe so as to flourish in that enchanting feeling and to continue to feed off of it.

"Very pretty," I told her.

"You know, I'm not entirely sure what strategy I should take to this in order to get the most points out of it," Katie replied, turning her face back to the screen as she examined her progress and folded her arms in her contemplation. She studied the screen for just a few seconds before she sent me a smile again. "What do you think I should do?"

I rested my elbows on the table in front of me, leaning my weight as I observed the unfinished activity behind Katie. I knew how the procedure was designed and what the initial goal was. To get the most points, the participant was meant to shoot for a room designed in an aesthetically pleasing and reasonable way.

"Always good to have a specific theme to aim for," I suggested. "That way, even if it's not the theme set up with the template, you'll still get good points for maintaining a pattern. Based on your skill, I'm sure you'll have no problem with it."

Katie seemed to accept this advice as she started to reach up her paw again towards the next bubble closer to the middle of the room, but withdrew again and snuck me yet another teasing glance. "You look adorable when you're deep in thought, by the way," she told me, but didn't spend another moment focusing on me as she faced the screen.

Lottie didn't seem quite as relaxed as she had before at the start of the activity. "Katie, please focus on finishing your design so that we can take your score," she said. Her professional attitude remained unwavered, but a sort of tension of frustration was gradually slipping into her voice. It killed the energy a bit to be told so abruptly to focus like that, if I was to be honest.

Katie shot Lottie a judgmental, irritable look before she returned her attention to the screen in front of her. "Bossy much?" she mumbled to herself, lifting her paw and striking the bubble she had reached for earlier.

Over the next several minutes, Katie filled out the design on her template. The clock on the left wall slowly crept towards three thirty as she worked, an unbroken, dedicated focus that I watched intently. It was just a few minutes before three thirty before the room had been completely decorated with furniture, a distinctly colorful space that nearly confused my eyes to look at and determine what was happening in the image. Very artsy-- I could stand by that.

"Are you ready for your results to be recorded?" Lottie asked Katie at last as she retreated a few steps to glance over her hard work.

It was a few seconds before Katie gave an answer, and when she did, she turned to cast an annoyed expression at Lottie as her tail flicked sharply. "Well, it looks done, doesn't it?" she replied.

"Yes, it does," Lottie agreed, setting her paws on the sides of the electronic tablet in front of her as she glanced down the table at Lyle and me. "Let's collect scores and see where we go from there. We'll give the results in the order we're lined up in."

Since she was first along the table, Lottie shifted her attention to the tablet between her paws to take the score for Katie's design. She took her time, silently glancing between the tablet's screen and the design, and then she appeared to have come to the decision of a well-fit score according to her own judgment. I watched her as she tapped at her screen, quietly entering the results, before she lowered her paw and raised her head to look at the screen to the right.

A sort of musical ding escaped from the screen as I turned my focus towards it. Lottie's score had been locked in. The numbers dropped onto the left of the screen above the point tracker at the bottom, labelled by Lottie's name above it. Fifty-five points. Katie still needed a total of 120 points from Lyle and me to pass.

Personally, I decided that a creative, original design such as the one Katie had offered deserved more than just fifty-five points. My mind was whirring as I narrowed down the numbers in my mind, searching for something that would fit the skill of the piece, and when that number came to me, I adjusted the score accordingly. And then, after I submitted the score, there it appeared on the screen: Eighty points. All that Katie would need from Lyle was twenty points and she would be eligible to return once again.

Lyle's score was recorded with the least time of consideration. He only had to examine the design for no more than three seconds before he was already entering his score. The score was recorded, sinking onto the screen next to the first two numbers as well as a prompt at the top if the scores were ready to be submitted and finalized. Lyle had given twenty points. Katie was twenty points short of passing.

Katie was silently studying the screen with her results, her dark eyes darting between the numbers as she made the calculation of just how many points she had received, and then the truth seemed to strike her as well as panic set in. "Wait, wait, no!" she exclaimed, her voice turning shrill as she broke into a hurry back towards the screen and her design. "I want to change some things."

"You can't change your design after the score has been taken. That's not a part of the..." Lottie began, but her voice trailed off as Katie ignored her warnings and proceeded to hastily smack her paw over the first addition on the screen she could reach, the plant at the window, and caused it to pop out of sight as she cancelled the change. Lottie sent Lyle and me an uncertain glance, but I only had an indifferent shrug. The scores hadn't been officially submitted yet, so there was technically the possibility of going back.

Katie hurriedly replaced the lilies with a brown desk with a white vase of daisies instead, a switch that popped to stand out in comparison to the rest of the playful mood. After succeeding in getting away with making changes, Katie seemed to collect herself again, calmly turning back to face the table.

"Well, since this is a different design, I think we'll need to record the results a second time for more accurate results," Lottie said hesitantly, sending another glance down the table.

"Fine with me," Katie replied, but hardly wasted another moment focusing on Lottie as she faced me, shyly holding her arms behind her back as she stood at the screen. "You might be new, but you know how to give a good score. It's pretty impressive. I'm definitely impressed."

All right! I could roll with this. This was a game for two. A smirk easily found its way to my face again as the previous scores dropped from the screen as Lottie cleared them from her tablet and my paws itched to re-enter a score. I was on a rollercoaster of thrill, surging through me as if I were soaring at the top of the sky from the pleasant attention, and I didn't want to come down.

The numbers of Lottie's updated score reappeared on the screen just seconds later. She had given fifty-five points again, hurling me into the same situation as the first time, but I knew it wouldn't be the same this time. Once I entered my score and submitted it to the screen on the right, it sunk onto the board accordingly. Ninety points.

I wasn't sure that I would have used the word patient to describe Lottie at this point. As soon as she appeared to take notice of the fact that my score was different this time around, she jolted in her seat to fire a pointed look of warning, clearly not happy with me for my decision. Like, okay? Why would she even be mad about it? It was kind of stupid.

After I had entered my next score, it was Lyle's turn to do the same. He spent a couple of seconds putting his score into his tablet before he withdrew again and the number dropped into place. Twenty, again. Katie was still ten points off. I couldn't help but glance at her again, sneaking a glimpse of her reaction and anticipating another dissatisfied shout, but it didn't come this time.

Katie was just as calm as before as she analyzed the results of her second design, seeming that she couldn't care less that she hadn't received a passing grade. After processing the situation that she had landed herself into, she tore her gaze from the screen again and then, despite Lottie's earlier request against it, stepped to approach the table.

"That's not the final score, right?" Katie asked innocently as she walked up to the table. "I still have another go?"

"Well, actually, you--" Lottie began, but Katie cut her off.

"Shush, I wasn't talking to you," Katie told her, coming to a stop at the other side of the table in front of me.

Katie rested her paws on the surface of the table behind my tablet, leaning her weight onto them, but she wasn't looking at me as her black eyes jumped to scan the room as if she was looking for something. She quickly noticed the clock on the left wall and only stared at it for a moment, reading the time that laid out a couple minutes after three thirty.

"It kind of looks like I'm running out of time a little bit here, aren't I?" Katie asked, and then her eyes sank down to meet mine again as I sat in front of her, and a smile picked up the corners of her mouth again. "Well, that's okay. I'll stay as long as you need me to. I'm happy to stay over here with you."

Katie shifted in her stance, extending one of her paws to set it on my cheek. The warmth from her paw settled into my face as she gave it a gentle stroke and my smile involuntarily emerged again at the soft affection, thrusting everything else around me out of my focus. A sudden lurch of movement to my left nearly sent me jumping out of my skin, and Lottie's paw shot out to firmly smack Katie's wrist away from my face.

The screeching sound of what was either a long exclamation of "hey" or simply a shout of protest instantly escaped Katie as she yanked her paw away and clutched it with her other. I snapped right then and there, words jutting out of me quicker than they had the chance to run through my mind first.

"Hey, can you chill out?" I retorted, staring Lottie right in her face. "This was actually fun until you went and ruined it."

A dead silence fell over the room, even from Katie as she pouted from her hurt paw. And just like that, Lottie's focus was locked upon me as if everything Katie had done meant absolutely nothing to her anymore. A rustle of movement at my right told me that Lyle had turned to stare at me as well, and when I caught his eye, the expression that had fallen over his face was blank and unsmiling as he gave a slight shake of his head.

An abrupt cough of a laugh from Lottie pulled my attention back to her to find that her eyes had widened in a sort of disbelief to the point where she was almost amused. "I'm sorry?" she said sharply.

"Yeah, you should be," I snapped back before I raised my head to return my attention to Katie again. She was still miserably studying her smacked paw when I looked at her, but her eyes jumped up again almost expectantly. I softed my tone. "Katie, would you like to try again?"

"Digby, no," Lottie broke into the conversation again. All formality had now vanished from her tone as she rested her weight on her elbows on the table in front of her to frustratedly address Katie instead. "Katie, you've done enough. You can't just flirt your way into a better score."

"Yeah, nice try. I'm a Libra, sweetheart," Katie sneered, whipping around to return to the screen again after evidently aiming to get the last word in the argument, but Lyle finally spoke up to stop her before she could take a single step and he wasn't pleased either.

"Katie, we don't have all day here," Lyle grumbled and she turned to look at him again, folding her arms in a defiant manner as she stared at him. "Make the changes to your design and go. We'll take your score again and that'll be it for you."

"Oh, shut it, old man," Katie replied curtly, spinning on her heel to march across the room to the screen again. A little laugh escaped my throat, causing Lyle to shoot me a displeased look. Lottie, however, was no longer focused on me at all as she gave Katie the death stare while she walked away. She was completely losing her temper.

Katie's second change was more time-consuming than the first. She seemed to have realized that if she didn't pass this time, she wouldn't pass at all, and so she was putting more effort into it. For the next several minutes, she carefully reviewed her choices on the screen, adjusting her options where she saw fit, before she eventually withdrew again and gazed up at the screen on the right side of the room for scoring.

Lottie, even through her growing irritability, sustained the same exact score that she had been giving since the beginning of the activity--Fifty five points. I had another chance to push Katie higher in her ranking. Just as I was concluding my final score, the reminder of the warmth that had touched my face when Katie had put her paw on my cheek resurfaced in my mind, and then my score sank into place on the board. One hundred points. Just enough to allow her to pass, as long as Lyle's score remained the same.

"Digby," Lottie said firmly, but I didn't even look at her.

Lyle was quietly examining the results board, like I was. He had made the same realization as I had. After a long pause, I caught the sound of a soft sigh that he made to himself, and then he aggressively tapped the screen of his tablet to enter his score, which materialized to the right of mine as fifteen points. He had lowered it. Lottie didn't leave any room for reaction as she pressed down on her own tablet on the cerulean box at the bottom with the option to submit, and then the results were final. A sort of somber, abrupt chime sliced through the quietness in the room and the glow behind the screen flicked to become a deep purple in color.

Katie had failed. She wasn't coming back to the HHDA.

Chaos was unleashed within moments. Katie immediately saw the change in color and what it symbolized and the reaction followed just as quickly as she gulped in a deep breath. "Wait, but I wanted to try it again! But I wanted to..." she shrieked, her voice diminishing into incomprehensible blubbering as tears began to spill down her face. She crumpled down onto the floor in a fit of breathless sobs, clutching her knees close to her and muffling the sound of her tears in the fabric of her overalls dress.

Lyle was the first to respond to Katie's distress. He thrust himself up from the table, already seeming fed up with the entire event, and shuffled across the space to reach her. As Lyle crouched down next to Katie to speak with her in a hushed voice, swinging his paw out towards the door she had come from as he presumably told her to get out again, the scratching sound of a pen writing on paper sent my focus back to Lottie. She was scribbling down a note on the bottom of the information sheet that she had first received from Katie and her mother, Kaitlin, and she was shaking visibly in her anger.

Lottie finished her note, slapping the pen back down onto the table as she rose from her seat. She didn't even say a word to me. All she did was make a short movement urging that I follow her and started off briskly towards the door to the hallway where we had entered. I pushed myself up from my seat and followed her out to the hallway with the notion that I was about to get scolded, if not in trouble, and that this was as bad as her anger would get towards me. I was soon proved wrong, as it was just the beginning.

"What is the matter with you?" Lottie burst out the moment that the door had fallen shut behind us. We were the only two animals that stood in the hallway, causing her harsh voice to pierce through the silence, and her gaze was so sharp as it stilled on me that it nearly cut right through my very being.

It was still kind of pathetic that she would even get upset over something like this, and so I couldn't help but poke fun at it a bit. "Hey, it's not my fault that she likes me so much. You don't have to get upset just because somebody doesn't like you," I reminded her. "What's the matter with you, anyway?"

"Unbelievable," Lottie mumbled to herself, reaching her trembling paws up to run them across her face to help collect herself. It was then that a different thought struck me, a potential reasoning for such behavior that my mind suggested, and suddenly it made a little more sense why there had been so much conflict between Lottie and Katie.

"Listen, if this is jealousy, you can just say that," I told her. The same smirk that Katie had brought out in me was resurfacing at such an amusing idea. "There's nothing wrong with that."

Lottie's paws slammed back to her sides and she stared at me as if she couldn't believe I would ever say something like that to her face. At first, she was speechless at the statement as it settled, and then her eyes narrowed in an expression that clearly stated try me, jerk.

"Watch yourself, Digby. I don't let anyone treat me that way. Not even you," Lottie told me, and then she swept past me to make her way back into the room.

I had expected to enter the house that afternoon to an empty room. I thrust open the door a few minutes after six thirty, stepping through the doorway with the intention of emerging to first return to my room for a nap after the tiresome day that I had, but the dining room was not deserted as I had anticipated. When I ducked through the doorway, both of my parents were seated at the table facing the door, and both of them weren't smiling.

"I'm home," I announced, though it was clear that I was home, and shut the door after me.

There were no happy greetings like there usually were. There weren't even any questions of how my day had gone. "Sit down for a minute," Dad instructed, outstretching his paw to pat the table in front of the seat across from him and Mom.

Unusual. I jolted on the zipper of my coat to unzip it, pulling it from my shoulders and tucking it over my arm. "Am I in trouble?" I inquired, approaching the table to take a seat.

"Yes, Digby," Dad told me as I lowered myself into the chair across from him and Mom that he had invited me into.

Shoot. What had I been doing wrong? Had I accidentally disregarded some of my responsibilities around the house? This was definitely not the most likely occurrence, since I rarely heard the answer of yes to that question as my parents were far too nice to me for my own good, and so I must have really messed up this time somehow. I balled up my coat in my arms and tossed it down onto the floor next to my chair as Dad folded his paws on the table in front of him to wait for me to have a discussion.

"I received a call from Lottie's uncle Lyle," Dad informed me as I straightened up again. "Do you want to tell us what happened at work today?"

Yeah, it was starting to make more sense now. They must have heard about Katie. My own mother and father clung to the belief that everything has to be fair, patient, and respectful, and there were a few things I'd done today that didn't exactly meet those standards. I wasn't too keen on letting every part of it slip.

"I just got into a little bit of trouble at the end," I confessed, making a point to study my paws to keep from meeting my father's stern gaze. The argument that I had shared with Lottie minutes before leaving for the day flashed through my mind, and I added reluctantly, "And I got in trouble with Lottie."

"I think that isn't the whole story, and I think you know that," Dad said. While he clearly wasn't happy with me, he refused to raise his voice, leaving a soft but firm tone instead. He hadn't raised his voice with me for as long as I could remember, but the soft but firm voice he used whenever I did something wrong was precisely what I needed to have guilt crawling through my gut.

I didn't have an answer for him. My paws were fidgeting together as I held them on my lap.

"Well, here's what I was told," Dad went on when I didn't say anything to him. "I was told that there was a little bit of a disturbance from you during the first session of a new activity called Happy Homeroom. I was informed of the general procedures of that activity and how they were disrupted because you allowed the results to be exploited due to the influence of a cat named Katie. Not only that, but you showed disrespect towards the other workers at Happy Home and gave Lottie some rude comments. Is all of that true?"

Wait. Lyle hadn't been present for everything that had happened. How had he known what happened with Lottie and me? The answer struck me as swiftly as the answer did: Lottie had told him everything I had said about her. Just like that, I knew that whatever progress I had made towards trying to fix my connection with Lyle had been wiped away. After everything I had done wrong in the past few weeks and all the ways I had upset him, maybe my biggest concern was losing my job when I returned to work tomorrow.

"Yeah," I mumbled, reaching up to swipe my tousled bangs out of my face just so that I wouldn't be sitting still feeding off of the negative energy sitting in the room and to have something to do instead.

"I appreciate your honesty, but we are very disappointed in you," Dad told me as I lowered my paws to the table. A jab of guilt tugged at my heart from the upsetting words. "This is not why we allowed you to go to work at that company. If you don't change your actions, I'm worried about how this will affect your image from here on out. I don't think you understand how serious this is. You remember that each session is recorded for public viewing to use as examples, don't you? Just think about how you would feel if Isabelle saw that."

My heart plunged into my stomach like a stone hitting water. I hadn't even thought about that. Somewhere, at some point in time, my sister could be watching a recording of me shamelessly breaking the rules of the activity and insulting my coworkers simply because I enjoyed the way I was being treated by someone I'd never met before. Was that really the image I wanted to create for her after she took such a risk in order to protect me?

Maybe this wasn't okay anymore. Maybe I needed to more carefully monitor my actions and words because I was, literally and figuratively, setting an example for my sister and the future of the HHDA. The idea of who I wanted to become remained unshaken, but I had strayed from the path as it was coming to my attention how my actions affected those around me. From this moment on, I was going to be something a little different, to work to be more patient and kind while remembering the part of me I wasn't eager to leave behind. I was going to be more like my family.

"I just want you to think about what you've done and what you will do differently in the future, okay?" Dad asked me, but with the revelation that had just tumbled upon me, I already had. He pushed himself up from the table, inching out from his seat to excuse himself out of the room, leaving me alone in the room with Mom.

In the silence of the moment, Mom reached her paws across the table to take hold of my own and give them a gentle squeeze. A glimmer of worry danced in the darkness of her eyes.

"It's very scary to try new things, and it's even more scary for that new thing to be putting something out into the world," Mom said softly. "Would you agree with that?"

"Sure," I replied. I wasn't entirely sure where she was going with her point.

"Now, what if it's something that happens to mean a lot to you?" Mom inquired. "What if it's something that is very dear to your heart and you're excited to share it with the world, or it's something you've spent a lot of time working on? You would want animals to like it and to support you rather than bring you down and cut down your progress."

I forced myself to nod. There was always going to be haters in this world, no matter what anyone did. I never quite completely grasped the idea of why it was still happening in the first place. If something meant so much to someone, how could it possibly have felt right to break them down for it?

"Please think about how Lottie must be feeling right now," Mom said gently. "I've heard a little bit about Happy Homeroom and I know how proud she was to bring it to the company. She was so happy and so excited for it to bring the change to Happy Home to advance into its best future. She was taking a very big risk presenting it for the first time and must have been anxious to see how something so special to her would have been received, but you didn't take it seriously. She needed your support to feel comfortable sharing something she was passionate about and you turned her away. How do you think that makes her feel?"

I considered how I would have felt. My ability to present my interests to the public would have taken some damage, that was for sure. It would have taken an immense amount of strength to put myself back out there again with the urge to withdraw and keep myself from revealing parts of my life that I was proud of with the knowledge that it wasn't well received. Had I really caused her that much pain?

"Probably not very good," I muttered.

"Right," Mom answered. She quieted for a few seconds, gazing down at our paws clasped together, and then she raised her head to glance across the table at me again. "You have a good heart, Digby. I know you didn't mean to hurt her. I want you to apologize to her when you go to work tomorrow and let her know of that as well."

That I could manage. "I will," I promised, offering another confirming nod. "Thank you, Mom."

I didn't find Lottie in her office the next morning when I arrived at work, but the break room was where I ran into her. When I emerged into the room, she was standing at the beverage-prep segment of the counter at my right, steeping herself some tea in a tall lavender mug. Her dark eyes darted to meet mine as I pushed my way through the door, but she had no smile in greeting for me. She still wasn't happy with me.

"Good morning," I said, advancing into the room to approach her. Her eyes followed me with every step. "Can I talk to you for a minute?"

"Mm-hmm," Lottie murmured, finishing with her tea as I stopped a few feet from her. She turned around to face me, setting her back against the edge of the counter and crossing her arms across her middle. A defensive tactic, maybe.

"I want to talk about what happened yesterday," I said.

"Well, there's certainly a lot to say," Lottie replied. The entire room around us was completely silent as we spoke, almost as if time was holding its breath for this particular moment.

That wasn't the answer I needed. Burning annoyance throbbed inside of me, but I drew in a deep breath and tucked my paws into my pockets as I regained my composure. I wasn't going to get upset over the little things again.

"What I did and what I said was wrong," I acknowledged. "It wasn't okay and I'm not going to do that anymore. I don't like how I treated you and I'm going to do what I can to change my behavior and make things better. Thank you for bringing it to my attention that a change needed to be made."

The sharpness of Lottie's gaze had softened. Her focus remained unbroken, but in the break of my statement, she lowered her arms back to her sides, clearly more open to listening to what I wanted to say to her. Well, it was progress.

"I'm sorry about what happened," I went on. As Lottie's resentment wore down, my wall of frustration crumbled as well. "I promise that I'm going to be different."

Lottie didn't answer at first. She appeared to be considering the best way to respond, quietly studying one of her paws as a sort of guilty expression crept over her face. I watched her thickly decorated eyelashes flutter slightly with each wordless blink.

"Thank you, Digby," Lottie said after a long pause, raising her head to look at me. "I appreciate your apology. I think that there are ways for us to work past this. Acknowledging that you need to make a change is the first step to making that change."

A surging, breathtaking sense of relief sunk into me. It wasn't too late. I had made the right choice. Everything from here on out was going to be okay. But what did it mean for our friendship?

This question received an answer as quickly as it had struck me in the first place as a relaxed smile snuck its way onto Lottie's face. "But as you're my best friend, it's my responsibility to keep from letting this kind of thing slide," she told me. It was the very first time that she had ever used those words to describe me.

And just like that, I knew that Lottie was my closest friend. My best friend, as she gave it the name. With her by my side, everything would be fine.

"I expect nothing less," I teased her, and then I outstretched my arms to invite her into a hug. Lottie didn't even hesitate, launching herself forward to throw her arms around my shoulders and pull me into such an abrupt and firm embrace that I had to shift my weight between my feet to keep from losing my balance. I locked my arms around her, closing her into the hug, and then I just held her.

I wasn't sure exactly how long we stood there in each other's arms, savoring the warmth of our affection, but it didn't strike me as something to take note of because there was nowhere I would have rather been. If I could have fixed this much, I could take the steps to fix everything else. And so, settling in the knowledge that this could have been where everything got better at last, I wasn't eager to let go.

And for a while, I was right. March slipped away into April, which crawled by in its own time with the blossoming of the springtime season. Isabelle's absence became something that was usual, easing off the weight it pressed upon me, and everything calmed. For the first time since she had left, I was regaining control over my life, and things were okay for the most part.

Instead of a tireless struggle, working became a persistent routine instead. The plans that I had set up for myself during the race to show that I could complete it proved to be the foundation for my success. All of a sudden, it seemed like much less of an immovable obstacle and more of something that I could manage to take on each and every day.

As promised, I changed my behavior in Happy Homeroom, reminding myself who I wanted to present myself as even to the less satisfied visitors, and I began to notice the proud glint in Lottie's eyes that I always had before. In the peace of the moment after moving past the dilemma that had occurred at the end of March as May gradually opened up after April had come to an end, it was an easy task to predict that everything was going to be okay.

But Katie was just the first.

. . .

There was ten minutes until noon and hunger was already eating away at the edges of my stomach. Waves of conversation made their way through the room as I stood in the center in the midst of it all, watching the seconds tick by on the clock on the wall in the final moments of Open Advisory. It was a generally uneventful early May day where only few interactions had come to me during the event and now I was ready to begin my lunch break.

I ignored the rumbles of my stomach, confidently jolting the ends of my sleeves further down my wrists as I swept my gaze around the room. Clusters of animals skirted the edges of the room, taking in the sights of the exhibit while others drifted through the space and layered conversations bounced off of the walls. They didn't seem to need me for the current moment. I would be leaving again before I knew it.

As the minutes crept by towards my lunch break, few animals departed from the room and few more entered to observe the sights. I was distractedly fidgeting with my sleeves again to draw away my focus from my hollow stomach as the hour slipped closer to noon when a voice directed at me captured my attention.

"Oh, excuse me," a timid, uncertain voice spoke up to my left. I quickly raised my head to find a caramel-brown dog straying nearby in a blue and white floral dress with nothing more than a swipe of mascara in makeup to decorate her black eyes. She was no older than me, maybe even younger.

I shifted in my stance to face her, outstretching an arm in an inviting, friendly manner. She seemed a bit uncertain of everything that was going on, so the least I could do was show her that I was there to help. "Yes, of course. What can I do for you today?" I asked her.

"My friend..." The dog's voice trailed off as she began to hastily search the crowd, likely for the friend she spoke of. Just moments later, a different dog around the same age emerged from the crowd to join her, this one a highly pale yellow in color with long ears of baby blue dangling down the sides of her face, and the first dog seemed to relax again as her friend stepped to stand with her. "My friend and I haven't been here before and we're not quite sure what any of these room displays mean. Could you show us what they symbolize?"

She seemed so confused and uncertain that I couldn't help taking her under my wing to tell her what she wanted to know. "Absolutely, not a problem," I replied, briefly setting my paw on her sleeved arm in a reassuring gesture before swinging out my paw to direct the focus to the exhibits along the walls. "These are various designs executed by the HHDA that have been decided favorable and eligible to present as examples over the years. Would you like me to show you?"

The dog gave a brief nod, but her friend evidently felt less interest in the conversation as her gaze flicked distractedly throughout the room. "I think that would be great," the brown dog answered.

"Of course. If you will follow me, I'll show you each of the different designs," I suggested.

I weaved my way through the building crowd, slipping across the room to be able to reach the first display in the array of design examples. After breaking free from the crowd to find myself at the rope separation presenting a smooth surface with furniture of different tones of wood, I snuck a glance up at the clock again to find that there was no more than three minutes until noon. I was running out of time here. I would probably just help out the two dogs and get going.

"If you look along this side, you'll find formly-executed designs that date back all the way to the 1990s," I explained, straying along the side of the rope as I tossed a quick glance over my shoulder to make sure the customers were still following me. They were indeed, hastily shuffling to escape the crowd and follow the path I was setting for them.

My eyes darted back to the row of designs as the words to describe the hard work that had gone into them prepared to leap from my tongue, but I nearly lost my breath at the sudden grasp on my paw. The brown dog had stepped to hurry at my side and had grabbed hold of my paw in the process. What was she doing?

I didn't have the faintest clue what to do, so after my stumble, I found my words again. "Each design was put together with careful precision and great attention to detail," I went on, outstretching my free paw as I sauntered along the side of the rope, now awkwardly in order to walk with someone literally holding onto me, to present the exhibits. The dog's grasp on my hand shifted into a more secure hold, as if she thought I would try to walk away from her. "I have only been working here in this building for about three months, so the majority of these designs were made long before I was here to witness them in progress."

"Hey, um, Maddie," the paler dog cut in before I could continue, likely talking to her friend at my side. Her dark eyes had dropped to examine her friend's paw latched onto mine. "I don't think you should be grabbing him like that."

"Well, it's really busy and crowded in here right now. I'm just trying not to get lost," the brown dog, evidently called Maddie, replied in disagreement. "Plus, he's really friendly. He doesn't mind."

"I don't know," the yellow dog mumbled uncertainly, sneaking a suspicious glance towards me. "I don't fully trust him."

I knew exactly what they were talking about in a matter of moments. The video of me bending the rules for Katie had been out for quite a while now, and it looked like it had begun to make its rounds throughout the customers. And it seemed that this was the response I was receiving from it.

My skin crawled, and so did my stomach, a bitter sensation pooling out and drowning whatever hunger had been there before. My paw itched to pull away from Maddie's grip and the words to tell her to stop her behavior swirled in my mind, but they fell short before I could bring them into sound. The memories of the Happy Homeroom session with Katie were resurfacing in my mind, etching even into the current moment, and I could see Maddie throwing a fit and storming off if I pulled away from her and told her to stop. So much as freeing my paw could have meant losing potential customers.

I kept on walking. My paw was limp in Maddie's hold, testing if that conscious action would be enough to say what I could not, but she didn't let go. I continued the presentation with only one free paw.

I could feel the minutes creeping by as I commented on designs across the years that we passed by, all the while Maddie was just a little too close to my side. I spent the rest of the session with eyes shifting in my direction and I kept myself quiet because I knew I couldn't tell them what was happening. I could sense the time inching further into the twelfth hour until I was sure that I was no longer meant to be here, moving into the unknown, uneasy period of being away from somewhere I was expected. I only saw my window of escape when I caught the sound of the doors opening at last for Lyle to emerge into the room to retrieve me, motioning to his watch to remind me of the time.

I had never been so eager to leave the room.