It didn’t start with Judy.  
It started at a farmers’ market.

A kid bounced a ball.  
It hit the underside of a folding table, arced over a jar of honeyed parsnips, and vanished into the rafters of the rec centre roof.

The vendor said, “Well. That’s gone to politics.”  
Nobody asked what he meant.

I saw two more balls that week.  
One lodged in a gutter.  
One trapped behind a real estate brochure rack at the library.

Then I saw three kids at the park, bouncing them quietly against the back of the tennis court wall.  
Each bounce felt… off. Too high. Too random. Like they weren’t coming back down the way they were launched.

I asked a fourth kid what was going on.  
She said, “We don’t tell grown-ups.”  
I asked again.  
She paused. Then whispered, “It’s silent rebellion.”

So I bought a pack from Temu.  
Rainbow assortment. Thirty balls in a crinkly foil bag.  
Each one the size of a jawbreaker. Brighter than they should be.

I kept one in my jacket pocket.  
Gave the rest to Judy and said, “Use them wisely.”  
She nodded and said, “Ground is optional.”

The trouble began at the **SPAL Community Day & Picnic-Based Pledge Drive**.  
Carol had organized it to build support for her **Commissioner of Public Appropriateness** campaign.

There were booths.  
Pamphlets.  
Ballot-shaped cookies.  
And a dunk tank filled with brine — which Carol insisted was symbolic.

Blaine was in charge of branding.  
He wore a sash that said **“Bounce is Betrayal”** and handed out pins shaped like tennis balls with Xs over them.

The kids were restless.  
SPAL had banned water balloons, frisbees, and even badminton (“projectile racketing”).  
So when the high bounce balls came out, they came out all at once.

Someone launched one from the sandbox.  
Another bounced one off a food truck.  
Judy lobbed hers into a tote bag and yelled “UNTRACEABLE.”

Within minutes, the lawn was chaos.

One ball hit the mayor’s shoe.  
Another rebounded into a coffee urn, which shorted out the sandwich warmer, which triggered the automated speaker system.  
Suddenly the crowd was listening to Carol’s campaign slogan on repeat:

**“Control Isn’t Restriction. It’s Direction.”**  
**“Control Isn’t Restriction. It’s Direction.”**  
**“Control Isn’t Restriction. It’s—”**

That’s when one of the balls went up and didn’t come down.

I watched it arc.  
Pink and green, with a shimmer I hadn’t seen in the others.  
It hit nothing.  
It disappeared mid-air.

Gone.  
Not over the fence.  
Not behind a booth.  
Just gone.

Judy saw it too.  
She whispered, “It skipped the rules.”

Carol took the stage.

“We are under bounce threat,” she declared.  
“SPAL has tracked a dramatic increase in upward defiance.”  
She held up a chart titled *Trajectory vs. Morality.*  
It featured arrows, frowny faces, and a very suspicious graph labeled *Projected Flight Path of Societal Decay.*

Then she pointed to a new sign:  
**“Unscheduled Bounce Protocol: In Effect Immediately.”**  
**“Any person in possession of ungrounded items will be enrolled in the Stability Education Pilot.”**

Blaine rolled out a tarp labeled *“Static Fun Zone.”*  
No one stepped on it.

That night, Judy set one of the remaining balls on the living room floor.  
She sat in front of it. Cross-legged.  
Marbles and Captain Whiskers flanked her like silent guards.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“I’m listening,” she said.  
“To what?”

“To the not-bounce.”

She gently tapped the ball.  
It didn’t roll.  
Didn’t move.

But the *window* did.  
Just a little.  
A breeze.  
From inside.

We found the **token** under the couch.  
Not sitting — *pressed*.  
Flat into the carpet like it had been stomped by something with too many legs.

It was warped.  
Not quite round.  
When we touched it, it made a sound we didn’t hear — we just knew it had happened.  
And then it was gone.

Not vanished.  
Just… not where we put it.  
Not anywhere.

Carol’s campaign went public the next day.

She gave an interview from the Appropriatorium™ construction site.  
The dunk tank was now sealed with plexiglass.  
Inside: still brine. But no ladder. No drain.

“Control isn’t restriction,” she said again, smiling. “It’s direction.”

Then she added:  
**“And direction begins with the cure.”**

Someone asked what that meant.

She looked toward the dunk tank.  
Then at the ground.  
Then said, very softly:  
**“You must soak the world to preserve it.”**

No one wrote it down.  
But everyone remembered it.

That night, in the park, Judy and her friends buried the last ball.  
Wrapped it in wax paper.  
Drew a chalk ring around the tree.  
Whispered something none of them would repeat.

Blaine watched from a distance.  
He held a clipboard with the campaign slogan and a note that read:  
**“Public joy trending downward — approval stable.”**

Then he looked at the hot tub blueprints.  
Crossed out *foam pit*.  
Wrote *containment feature*.  
Circled *temperature control*.

In our basement, the water meter skipped forward.  
Then back.  
Then stopped.

On the floor beside it, something glistened.  
A salt trail.

No origin.  
No destination.  
Just a curved line.

Like something had turned around.

0306 Bounce House of Commons