The Guinea Pig Left Behind    The guinea pig shuffled around, pacing in her cage, and padding about on the  soft scraps of wood beneath her paws. She had been waiting in a lonely, desolate  classroom for nearly a month now, wondering if anyone would ​ever ​return.  Blasts of scalding heat would occasionally float through an open window, and  the soft, comfortable evening breeze would come along after. This guinea pig  was quite a sociable one, always grateful to have the students and teachers  around when they were, but now that there wasn’t a human in sight, she found  herself bored from morning to night.    It was a sunny, summer Sunday afternoon. A child sat in his backyard on the  cool grass under the shade of an ancient willow tree that had been planted long  before his birth six years back, playing joyfully beneath the chirps of cheerful  birds. He lived right beside the local elementary school, where there were often  mysterious whistling sounds echoing out of it. Today’s noise was especially loud,  and the boy was also in the mood for adventure and mischief, so he sprinted  around the bushes of his yard and past the school gates one building down the  street.    The guinea pig whined as loud as she could. Still? Still no one? Why did all of  the usually friendly ones at the school suddenly want to starve her? She was  always well-behaved. Up until now, at least. Gnawing on the bars of her cage  which suddenly felt like a prison cell, she broke free, and took a flying leap off  of the dresser that she had sat on for so long. She fell painfully onto the  gray-speckled tiles of the classroom floor, whimpering harder than ever.    The boy ran faster. And faster, into his classroom he had spent so much time in  the previous year.   “Patches!” he shouted, “Patches? Is that ​you ​?” The child burst through the door  of Room 302, shocked to find the beloved class pet lying abandoned on the  ground. “Patches!” he cried, worried, as he kneeled down to lift the creature into  his hands. The tiny guinea pig turned up its small, piebald-colored face to view  the child with its own dark eyes. The creature smiled the best she could, feeling  comforted at last. With that, the boy took off running again, and disappeared  down the school halls and all the way back home, ready to care for the guinea  pig that would be his for the remainder of summer.