Ordinarily, Sara didn't make a habit out of trying her key in other people’s locks.  She was the type of girl who wiped her shoes on the doormat and raised her hand to speak.  She always said, “Please” and “Thank you” and never interrupted when someone else was talking, chewed with her mouth closed and shared her belongings without complaint.
        She stood silently now, brushed her hair out of her eyes and turned to look right and left, standing with the key in her hand, turning it round and round in her fingers.  One thumb traced the jagged toothy edge on one side.  She wondered if it would even fit in any other lock but hers.
        She had walked down this hallway so many times and had never wondered that before.  Once, when she had been alone in the hallway, as she was now, she had tried counting the doors, but it was the sort of hallway that seemed to lengthen the more time you spent there, and eventually, she had lost count, and then lost interest.  
        She turned to look right and then left again, turning the key in her hand, wondering if she should take advantage of the fact that she was alone.  Wondering if she should try her key in a different lock.  She took a few steps in one direction, and then turned, taking a few steps in the other.  She peered down the hallway, to where the double line of doors diminished into darkness.  She had never walked far enough down the hallway to get to where the shadows made everything disappear into a sort of hazy forgetfulness.  She was afraid to walk that far.  She thought that passing into the darkness might make her disappear too.
        This hallway was a very familiar place.  She walked through it at least once a day, and sometimes more, to get to the place where she would fit her key into the lock in her own door.  She always passed several doors on the right and left before coming to hers.  Sometimes it was six doors on the right, sometimes five, but she always knew her door when she came to it, and had never been tempted to try someone else’s.  Of all the times she’d been in this hallway, she’d never been tempted.  Until today.
        She wondered how many times she had been in this hallway.  She wondered how many cumulative steps she had taken to get to her door, how many doors she had passed walking back and forth.  She had walked down this hallway so many times; she didn’t think she could count them, even if someone asked.  
        Echo probably could, she thought.  And as if in response to the thought, Echo was there, walking quietly toward her from the far end of the hall, out of the dim region that Sara remained vaguely afraid of.  Echo moved the way someone moves in a dream, her feet silent on the steel colored carpet, one hand trailing behind her on the wall.  She was looking at the floor, as she often seemed to be, but Sara knew that she saw much more than people generally supposed.   She knew that Echo kept her eyes open.  She knew that Echo’s secrets, and maybe everyone else’s, were neatly captured in the rows of numbers scrawled across every page of the battered notebook she perpetually carried under one arm.
        Echo seemed very far away.  Sara waved at her.  Echo didn’t wave back, so Sara waited patiently for the other girl to come closer.  She almost called out to her, but then didn’t, feeling that the hallway wasn’t the sort of place where a little girl should raise her voice.  She turned the key over in her hand and wondered what Echo would think about her idea to try it in someone else’s lock.  Maybe she would think it was an exciting idea.  Maybe Echo would let Sara try the key in her lock.  Sara thought it would be nice to see what was behind Echo’s door.  She imagined that it would be something quiet and orderly.
        Echo seemed a take a great while to cover the distance between the two girls, but Sara didn’t mind.  She turned the key over in her hand and felt the ridges that made the key just her own.  She wondered what other people’s keys felt like.  Were they sharp like hers?  She wondered if Echo would let Sara hold her key, so that she could compare.  Sara wondered where she had gotten her key from, and then felt the wondering slide out of her mind and slip away, like a leaf floating lightly down the current of a little stream.  She watched the wondering, felt it float away, held on to remembering what she had been wondering about until the thought was gone and she was left rubbing her thumb across the toothy side of her key, thinking about leaves floating on streams.  She realized that she thought about leaves on streams a lot, and wondered why.  She guessed that it was because it was a solitary sort of thing to think about.  She liked being alone, especially after the stifling atmosphere of the common room.  But if she couldn’t be alone, being with Echo was the next best thing.  So she waited.
        Finally the other girl was there, standing before her and rocking noiselessly back and forth on her heels, staring at her toes.
        “Hi,” said Sara.
        Echo didn’t look up.  She raised one hand slightly and moved each of her fingers, starting with her smallest, in a tiny wave.  
        “What were you doing down there?” Sara asked her.
        Echo shrugged.
        “Do you have your key?” Sara wanted to know.
        Echo nodded, reached into her pocket and then pulled her hand out.  Her key gleamed dully in her hand.  Sara smiled.
        “Can I see it?” she asked.
        Echo looked up at her, furrowed her eyebrows minutely and shook her head, putting her hand back in her pocket.  This time Sara shrugged.
        “Okay, I just wanted to see if it was like mine.”  She looked past Echo and down the hall.  “Have you ever been in anyone else’s room?”
        Echo’s brow furrowed even further.  She shook her head.
        “Oh,” said Sara.  “Me neither.”  She turned the key over in her hand.  “I was wondering.  Do you think that my key would work in any of the other locks here?”
        Echo turned to look where Sara was looking, turned back with a troubled aspect.  She raised her eyebrows at Sara as the girl stopped turning the key in her hand and held it up for Echo to see.  Echo shook her head again, a little more emphatically.
        “I want to try it,” Sara told her.  “If it doesn’t work in any of the other locks, then it doesn’t work.”  She walked a few paces down the hall, Echo following.  She stopped in front of one of the doors, dark, grey, non-descript with a burnished silver latch.  “But if it does,” she continued, “maybe we could find something… I dunno…. interesting.”
        She put out her hand, as if to fit the key into the lock above the latch, but Echo’s hand snaked out and held her wrist.  Sara looked in surprise at the other girl.
        “What’s wrong?” she said.  
        Echo just shook her head, her dark eyes intense.  She didn’t let go of Sara’s hand.
        “Just tell me,” Sara said.  “If you don’t give me a good reason, then I’m going to try it.  No one will know.”
        Echo quickly opened her notebook and pulled the nub of chewed pencil from her pocket.  She wrote, Please don’t.
        Sara read the words.  “Why?” she asked.
        Echo scribbled.  I’m scared.
        Sara pursed her lips.  “What are you scared of?”
        Echo’s pencil scratched at the stillness.  What if He’s in there?
        Sara turned from the notebook to regard the door for a moment, and then waved one hand dismissively.  “I’m just going to see if the key turns, that’s all.”  
        But really, she knew that if the key turned she would open the door.  Echo closed the notebook and watched as Sara slid her key into the lock.  They both inhaled slightly as she braced her hand to turn it, and when it turned easily they look at each other.  Sara put out her other hand to press the latch and felt Echo clutch the back of her shirt.
        “C’mon, you scaredy cat,” Sara whispered.
        As the latch clicked open and the door swung wide.