It was a dark and stormy night when someone, somewhere in the town of Weirdsville, stood near their window watching the tempest. Lightning was crashing and thunder was roaring. Shutters were flapping and howling noises were made by the wind. Clar Klent was staring out his big living room window at his marvelous pop can castle hoping that the glue and tape would hold out through the wild and vicious storm. Piles and piles of bags and boxes full of extra pop cans were stacked near his fence. Clar watched about twenty or thirty pop cans blow away with the wind.

"Oh well," he thought, "what's a few pop cans going to do to the land? Nobody really cares about a few pop cans being scattered around on the ground, I hope." Another bolt of lightning crashed and Clar felt the hair on the back of his neck rising. He listened to the wild thunder rumbling in the sky and watched the rain hit against the window. Splat, splat, splatter splut... BANG! Clar's head bolted in the direction of the sound. It was coming from outside, in Clar's front yard. It was very dark that night and almost impossible for him to see out the window. Crash, bang, pow! Lightning was striking left and right! That's when Clar noticed something was missing. His extra pop cans were gone! They had disappeared right under his nose! "Where could they have possibly gone?" he asked himself. "They couldn't have all blown away with the wind! Oh my gosh!" Clar started panicking. He didn't know what to do. He ran to the closet and threw on his rain coat and quickly pulled on his boots. Clar's head was spinning like a merry-go-round in fast forward. His mind was racing and his muscles felt like jelly as he rushed out the door and into the stormy night. Pushing hard against the wind, it seemed like hours before he got to the fence, to where all his popcans used to be. "They're gone! They're really all gone, gone in a flash. Right in front of my eyes!" Clar was shouting in rage. He ran back in the house to call the police. "Oh, by golly, what bad luck! The phone lines are dead!" Clar lay down on the sofa and cried himself to sleep.

Clar was awakened by bright sunlight shining through the window and the sound of birds singing happily outside his window. "Ah, maybe it was only a dream!" he shouted excitedly, remembering what happened that night. "Maybe it was all a terrible nightmare!" He ran to the window and looked outside expecting to see his popcans piled up where they were supposed to be. But they weren't there, and his heart sank. Clar phoned the police and explained to them what happened.

Somehow he got search warrants to search all the houses that he suspected would have done such a thing. He searched and searched but didn't find any popcans. Clar was losing hope. "I'm never going to find them," he thought sadly to himself. The last house came into sight, but it was emtpy too. So Clar started walking home. Just before he got home he heard an odd noise coming from his neighbor's house. Crunch, crunch, crunch! The sounds got louder and louder and Clar got closer to the fence. "Neighb, you thief!" Clar shouted, as he sneakily peeked though the cracks in the fence then he ran inside Neighb's yard. "Why did you steal my popcans?"

"Aw geez," Neighb cried, "last week when I asked you what you were going to do with all the cans after you finished your pathetic little castle, you said you were going to throw them away and it ticked me off. I just had to do something. Those cans can be recycled. Clar and Neighb argued and argued about the popcans until they finally came to a stop.

"Clar, if you promise to recycle the cans when you are done, I will promise to give back your cans.

"Okay. Good deal."

They both went home smiling.

By Charlotte Alstrom

"When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe!"