Open Malfunction

[Auden Sheldrake]

One arm looped around the swing chain, Auden smacked his pocket sneakoscope against the palm of his hand. His dad had picked the toy up out of a ‘FREE STUFF’ box down the street, and it hadn’t taken Auden long to find out why it had been thrown away. Stupid thing hadn’t stopped going off all morning. The whistling was driving him nuts. It must have been broken - there couldn’t be that many untrustworthy people in Brightstone Village. He supposed it might just have an extra-long range on it, but that was stupid; the whole point of a sneakoscope was that it helped you figure out who was being sneaky. It would be a bit pointless if it whistled because someone ten miles away stole someone else’s lunch money.

He smacked it again, hard. Maybe it couldn’t be fixed. Maybe he’d just have to smash it up, or bury it in a hole in the park somewhere. Although option A sounded better. ​

 

[Matt Alcott-Ward]

Matt was not in Brightstone and was up at the castle reading a book, whoops

 

[AJ Carpenter]

AJ was kicking a ball around the park when he realized he had been hearing a high pitched whistling noise for a while now. Curious, he looked around for the source. He realized it seemed to be coming from the swings, and after picking up his ball, AJ went over to investigate. He saw a boy sitting there, the noise seemed to be coming from him. He was smacking something that was whistling. "Why are you doing that?" he asked. "Is it making that noise because you're hitting it?"

 

[Auden Sheldrake]

Auden looked up, continuing to smack the sneakoscope. No-one he knew. But stranger danger didn't count if they were your own age. "It's broken," he said. "Look. On and on and on and on, it's going. They're only supposed to go off when someone's doing something untrustworthy. It wasn't me. I didn't do anything untrustworthy." He stopped shaking it and started looking for a catch - some way to open it up or switch it off. When he couldn't find anything, he tossed it at the boy instead. "Catch."​

 

[AJ Carpenter]

The piercing whistle of the toy was getting a little annoying, but he tried his best to ignore it and focus on what the boy was saying. He frowned. "You sure? You didn't like, lie or anything?" That was something untrustworthy, right? AJ caught the thing as it was thrown at him, more out of reflex than anything else. He wanted to throw it back, but paused as the noise suddenly stopped once the thing was in his hand. He raised his eyebrows a little. "Are you sure you didn't do anything?" He asked again, smiling slightly.