The recess bell rang, and Sean found his place in line. There was Elizabeth in the girl's line, looking as beautiful as ever in her dress. He loved how feminine she was; all the other girls wore pants now that the school rules had changed. He felt butterflies in his stomach as he fingered the special gift in his coat pocket.
"Hey, freak," Mitchel said. "Hiding at recess again? I have a knuckle sandwich waiting just for you." Mitch started moving towards him, but Mrs. Till came around the corner. "After school," said Mitchel, "The park. Be there."
Sean had no intention of showing up at the park. Why go through yet another beating. Mitchel was really bigger than him, he thought, as Mrs. Till led them into the sixth-grade classroom.
After recess was math, followed by free science. The great thing about Mrs. Till's class was that they actually got to do science instead of just reading a book. Sean's experiment was to see how goldfish responded to ice in the water. Sean's guess was that they would swim to the bottom of the bowl to avoid the cold. He could write a paper from that evidence saying it would be harder to fish in the winter in ice covered waters because the fish would swim deeper.
He plopped the ice cubes into the water. After a bit something did happen, but it wasn't what he expected. The fish just dropped to the bottom of the bowl on their sides. He was terrified! Had he killed the fish? He took the ice out of the bowl and waited. Nothing. He added a bit of warm water to the bowl… Slowly the fish came back to life. He had to think about this. In the meantime, he took out his scientific journal and recorded everything that had just happened. Far out!
He finished before the other kids. They were too busy talking with each other to concentrate. But Mrs. Till let him do Math on his own. It was easy. He just had to read the instructions, and it explained the problems just fine. He never had to listen to her lesson or watch her at the chalkboard. He settled right in to doing the exercises. It was great to never have homework. On the other side of the room, his best friend Robert (Robert hated being called Bob) was also finishing up his math.
Sean had almost an hour to kill before lunch. This was the best part of the day, when he could go to the Learning Center, and explore whatever he wanted to: the library, the rats, the new computers or the media projectors.
It was only a few minutes before Robert joined him. Robert was his computer buddy. Together they were the two in the school that ripped on Basic programming! For next, Go to, If then… They got the last bug out of their Merry Christmas program and enjoyed the sound of the dot matrix as it printed out the banner for the afternoon's little party. They talked a bit about next year's junior high school program that would let them go and use the high school's computers where they could learn Fortran.
They split up. Robert went over to the media center where he put on headphones and listened to music as he watched film strips on the history of Mozart. Sean went to the library. He browsed the books until he found, "Life in winter." Perhaps he would find something in this book about fishes sinking to the bottom of ponds.
Like so often, he got distracted. He found himself in the mammal section, eating up information about snow leopards and arctic foxes. He got to bears and stopped as a light went on in his head. Hibernation. The fish had gone into hibernation. A thrill went through his body. He carefully read the entire section on hibernation. He found out that other animals such as skunks, groundhogs, and bats also hibernate, but couldn't read all he wanted to on that because he had to get back for lunch.
He hated lunch. He hated being anywhere around Mitchel and his minions. Robert was his only friend, and today was Robert's last day, he thought sadly. He wished the other boys would stick up for him, but no, not one ever did. Who was really the worst? Mitchel at least knew he was a bad apple. But the other kids thought they were good, and yet they let him suffer. Jerks. And now he would be absolutely alone.
The afternoon's Social Studies was fun and easy, which was good since everyone was squirrely, it being the last day before Christmas vacation. They learned to find the continents and different oceans, and got to label and color them on a map. Piece of cake.
He put up the banner for the party, and enjoyed the eats. There were a lot more snacks than the usual birthday parties. He went to the globe and had fun looking at the continents 3-D.
School let out early for vacation. His heart raced. It was time. He could see her in front of him, her dress swishing back and forth. He made his way through the crowd of children, half running. "Elizabeth!" he called when he was right behind her.
She turned and looked, a little surprised to see him. "Oh, hi."
"Hi," he said, trying hard not to be rude and look at his feet. "I… I have something for you." His fingers wrapped around the box in his coat pocket. "A Christmas present." He took it out and handed it to her.
Her eyes wide, she smiled. "Thank you. Should I open it now?"
"I guess so."
She pulled off the paper, and opened the box. Inside, on a soft, cushy interior, was a glass necklace on a gold plated chain. "Wow, it's beautiful."
He smiled. His heart soared.
"I've got to go now," she said. "Merry Christmas."
"Merry Christmas." He watched her walked away, a wonderful ache in his heart.
He hurried down the walkway, and onto the sidewalk, past administration. At the end of the chain link fence, Robert was waiting for him. "Well," Robert inquired, "Did you give it to her?"
"I really did!"
And?
"She really, really liked it."
"You rock. And you say 'really' too much." They began to cross the street. "I wish we could have just one last game of Chainmail."
"Yesterday was fun," said Sean nostalgically.
"For you, maybe, you twit. You won. That six-sided die was loaded," said Robert.
"I am not a twit. I am an asshole," Sean said with an English accent.
"What's the difference?" Robert asked.
"A twit doesn't know he's a twit. And asshole knows he's an asshole and doesn't care." They both laughed and turned right down the street.
They were silent for a while, knowing this was the last time they would walk together. They soon came to the yellow house with the olive tree in the front yard and paused.
"I've got something for us both," said Robert, and he took off his backpack. He pulled out two small figurines and showed them to Sean.
"Wizards!" Sean whispered.
"One for each of us. They're like from Chainmail, the new fantasy version. They can throw fireballs, they have magic swords and stuff. Look it up. I thought, well… We can't be with each other anymore. But wizards can use palantirs, like in the Lord of the Rings, to see long distances. With these wizards, we can kind of, sort of still be together. This one is yours." Sean took it in his hands, this thing of wonder. The world was filled with magic.
After a moment of silence, Robert said, "I've got to go."
"Yeah," said Sean, and he watched achingly as the wizard picked up his pack, walked down the street and turned the corner. He entered the house, closed the front door, sat down on the fuzzy, flowered couch, and allowed his wizard's heart to just ache. And ache. And ache.
