Robin Carter was a lonely child. He had no friends, and he couldn’t remember a time when things were different. He was twelve, in the seventh grade. He was only open when he was reading and had such great passion for it that it was the most dominating factor in his life. He had loved reading for as long as he could remember, and his parents told him that he still loved reading even before that. His parents had tried to drive him out of his shell, but when he was put out into the world he would pull out a book and read. As much as it broke their hearts to see their son alone and cut off from the world, they eventually gave up. At school he was no different. He was average in nearly every subject, barring English, in which he excelled. The kids acted as if he was invisible, and even the teachers sometimes forgot about him. And when they did remember him it was only to give an acknowledgment when they passed back a test. His English teacher, Ms. Murkly, was perhaps one of the few people in the whole school who realized that he existed. He was her best student. He always turned in his homework and always had something to say about the author of the book they had been reading most recently. On the other end of the spectrum was his sister, Judy Carter. Eighth-grade diva, Judy was one of the most popular kids in the school. She was a motormouth and always had something to say or a story that she had just remembered. The parents of these drastically different children were Mabel and Albert Carter. Mabel was a thin and kind woman with long flowing dark hair and a large intellect. She would read to Robin when he was a baby and never ran out of books, since she was the head librarian at the Guava County Library. Albert was a slightly rotund man with hair like a bonfire and a deep love of botany. The first thing he did when he bought the house was build an extension in which he housed his vast collection of plants. Just recently his collection had grown too vast and he had been forced to make an extension to the extension which he classified as “For Bonsai Trees Only.” “No books!” he spluttered. “Mom, this is outrageous!” On this particular day, Robin was in the fiction section of the Guava County Library, currently reading E. Nesbit’s The Magic City, when his mother walked in. Robin was a curious figure in the library. While the librarians loved his passion for reading and encouraged it often, Robin could be quite aggravating due to his tendency to check out the maximum amount of books at a time. Sometimes he would use his parents’ library card too. When his mother spoke, she startled Robin out of his fantastical reverie. “We’re going on a vacation,” she said. “Where?” said a surprised Robin. “The beautiful Hibiscus County,” she replied. “OK,” said Robin dismissively, and continued reading. “Also, we were thinking you shouldn’t bring very many books, if any,” she continued. Now Robin was really surprised. “No books!” he spluttered. “Mom, this is outrageous! Books are great!” “I agree, but I think you read too many books for it to be healthy,” responded his mother. “You have no friends, Robin, you don’t stop and enjoy this world because your head is in another.” “Books are my friends,” muttered Robin. But it was hopeless and he knew it. Unlike his father, his mother was a strong woman, and he would be even more shocked if she did back down than he was about this atrocity. He quickly relented and stormed down the street towards his house. A cloud of fury was about him. * * * Judy had a similar reaction, but for very different reasons. “The country! We’re going to the country!” she screeched. “There’s no cell reception in the country! How will I talk to my friends?” “This is a family trip,” responded a tired Albert Carter. Judy continued to complain, but Robin didn’t stick around and listen. He was walking upstairs to his room, hoping that it would provide him some calm and sanctuary. His room was a veritable treasure trove for people like him who loved books. Robin’s dream room, in other words. It had stacks of books everywhere. Robin had tried to put them all into shelves, but he was unsuccessful, as they repeatedly spilled out. He had so many books that you would wonder why he goes to the library at all, as his room was a library in its own right. This remains a mystery. Once upstairs he walked straight to shelf A-6 and pulled a book from the shelf. It was his favorite book, Edward Eager’s Magic or Not. He found it was calming, a charming story about a young girl, her brother, their friends, and their adventures in a rustic town. He sighed. This was going to be a horrible vacation. * * * The Carter family’s red truck rumbled down a bumpy dirt path. Up ahead was the house they had rented, a small ivy-encrusted cottage, which was barely large enough to avoid being classified as a hut. Goodie, thought Robin as they pulled up to the “parking space.” In truth it was brittle twigs forming an open rectangle. Robin’s father was the first to leave the car, followed closely by Robin’s mother. “All right, gang, let’s go see the place,” said Albert Carter in a voice that suggested that he had won the lottery. He was answered by the chirping of the birds. Judy was giving them the silent treatment, and Robin… well Robin just didn’t feel like talking. Unperturbed by the apparent lack of enthusiasm, Albert pushed on. He had a brief tussle with a door that appeared to have never been opened within the century, but eventually
Friendship
Rainstorm
The hot, arid California air that is usually scorching in the middle of July has—for some odd, outlandish reason—quieted down. It is like a rain forest: wet and hot with great clouds like the feathers of an African gray parrot that ooze languidly along the horizon. It is like the South; the air is saturated with lazy banks of humidity. The hay that the Smiths have purchased (it’s sitting on their pristine lawn, ugly and out of place as a baby swan in a duck’s family) is steaming. Literally steaming. Wisps like ghostly hands rise from it, trailing their lacy tendrils in the swampy air. The air smells of storm. We sit on the old couch and sniff the air rapturously, like hounds pausing in pursuit of a fox. Nothing is more satisfying than sitting at the big living room window with a friend and watching with relish as the rain floods the uneven backyard. If only the lights would go out! We shiver with the sheer excitement of it all. It is truly delicious. The wind has picked up, wailing like a lost toddler, tossing leaf handkerchiefs in the gray sky. Trees rustle, whispering half-heard rumors to one another, swapping gossip, passing tales back and forth. When a human picks one up on the wind, all the truth will be swept away into history, leaving nothing but a faux shell of fabrication. Lunch? No. Mom leaves the room. No time for idle chewing and chomping: important things are happening. The first raindrops begin to fall. They are too small to make a difference, but to us they are like gold coins falling from the heavens. We count them. There is one. Plip. Did you see that one fall on the chair? Plop. There are too many! Pitter-patter. We can’t possibly count them all. We shiver with the sheer excitement of it all The intervals between the drops become shorter and shorter, until they vanish altogether. They speckle the patio and slide down the windows, creating tiny rivers, swirled with rivulets and eddies that channel the course of these miniature streams. And then we can hear it. The melodious symphony of a thousand raindrops, falling from the endless Above. And the roiling sky: it is like the angry sea and it seethes and churns and it is a lion, ready to destroy. And we laugh and it is like the jingling of keys and it eggs the storm on. But we are ready as the lightning flashes. And it lights the room for a mere second in an eerie bluish spike of electricity. Lights, can you please go out! “Why don’t you just turn them off?” suggests practical Mom, so calm, so maddeningly oblivious to necessity. “It’s the same in the end.” Nuh-uh. No way. That defeats the whole purpose. And then we jump as the booming of thunder rends the air like a gong. And the house shakes as we land on the couch again and shudder and shiver and realize that more will follow. And we gaze out at the rain and wind and the blinding sheets of droplets pelting at our house like it is a mere tin can, forlorn and meek and quiet in an empty alleyway. And the grass looks greener than before and we wish it would grow in the browning parts. And then Sister screams as lightning strikes again and the lights go out! We cheer and high-five and Sister’s textbook is on the floor and one of the pages has scribbles from where the pencil marked it when she dropped it. But then the lights come back on and it was just a flicker and we whine and yawn and boredom has returned. But then it hasn’t because the light flickers and it is fun to watch and the storm still rages on and the patio is drenched and flooded with puddles. And we itch to go and jump and step in them until we are all wet and we can dry off and put on clean clothes. But Mom says no, you might get struck by lightning. And we whine but we know in our hearts she is right and anyway, who wants to be outside when you could get electrocuted? Not us. The backyard trees are wet and drooping from the excess of rain. Little droplets of silver fall from their somber black trunks and onto the soaked earth. Maybe our unassuming backyard will become a rain forest and we can have monkeys for pets! Sister says we’re crazy, but who cares if we are. And then, crash bang boom! Lightning and thunder rising to a crescendo, creating a duet in the sky of blue and gray that pulses like a heart. The lights have to go out for real now! But they still don’t and we are battling the storm and the house is now nothing but a tepee or a lean-to. We must fight for survival in the cold, wet, roiling blackness. Mom is saying something about going to the grocery store and we don’t listen to her until we remember that the gutters will have overflowed. We plead to Mom to bring us along too; there is nothing better to do at this moment. And she complies and tells us to put on our jackets and boots. We oblige and walk out the door in bright colors and face the rain. We taste the adventure, craning our necks up to the gray sky and sticking our tongues out to feel the sweet fizz of excitement bubble in our mouths like a sugary soda. And then we see the gutter, the streaming gutter, torrents and all, cascading down the curb in a cataract of currents and eddies, ebb and flow. We long to wet our feet inside our snug Wellington boots and feel droplets explode around us. Mom says no. Of course she does. We get in the car and rain slides down the curved windows and
The Service Project
Madeline anxiously gathered her books and half-jogged towards the classroom door, praying that her Civics teacher, Miss Jones, wouldn’t notice her. “Madeline, can I speak with you for a moment?” Madeline’s Civics teacher called in her high, soprano voice. Her eyes scanned the room and then narrowed when they met Madeline’s. Madeline heaved a sigh. So much for being unnoticed. I bet she’s going to call your parents, Madeline silently thought, scolding herself. She made her way to Miss Jones’s desk, prepared for the worst. Miss Jones towered over Madeline and pointed a perfectly manicured finger at her. “I told you last week that you need five community service hours to pass my class. Why don’t I have them?” Miss Jones snapped. “I’m sorry. I guess I forgot. Besides, I have drama and acting classes filling up my time,” Madeline mumbled apologetically. Miss Jones huffed. “Because of your procrastination, I have no choice but to assign you a project.” She rummaged through her desk drawer, searching for something. Madeline groaned. She’d heard rumors about the handpicked projects from Miss Jones. Two kids received trash duty and one even got a job volunteering at the local jail. Madeline imagined herself picking up a rotten banana peel on the side of the road or talking to a prisoner with face piercings and shuddered. Miss Jones finally pulled out a flyer and placed it in front of Madeline. “That’s really cool. Can you tell me about it?” Madeline asked, amazed “This is an advertisement from Nature’s Nursing Home. They are looking for volunteers to help entertain the elderly there. The number and address is at the bottom,” Miss Jones said smugly. “I have to babysit old people?” Madeline screeched. “I don’t have time! There’s a reason why their friends and family don’t visit them anymore. This will be so humiliating.” Miss Jones frowned in disapproval. “You will start next Monday, volunteering right after school. Don’t skip this,” Miss Jones said, shoving the flyer in Madeline’s hand. That night, Madeline tried to forget about Miss Jones’s idea during dinner, but it was nearly impossible. She pushed a piece of chicken around her plate and dug holes in her rice. “Are you OK, Madeline?” Madeline’s mother asked and then shot a look at Courtney, Madeline’s older sister, who was playing on her phone. “Yeah, I’m fine,” Madeline replied, looking down at her plate. “You actually look kind of horrible. Did your friend realize that you’re a doofus? Oops, you don’t have any friends,” Courtney snickered. Madeline stuck out her tongue. She wasn’t in the mood for her sister’s juvenile comebacks. “Courtney!” Madeline’s mother exclaimed. Later, Madeline decided to do her homework. She dumped the contents of her backpack on her bed and searched for her math worksheet. When she was searching on her bed, Madeline’s eyes traveled to the half-crumpled Nature’s Nursing Home flyer that she shoved in her bag that afternoon. Madeline sighed, grabbed the flyer, and went downstairs to the kitchen phone. * * * When Madeline walked inside Nature’s Nursing Home on Monday, her instinct was to run away and accept a failing grade from Miss Jones. Instead, she kept her head down as she made her way to the front desk. “Hi, my name is Madeline. I’m here to volunteer to entertain the old, sorry, elderly people here,” Madeline said politely to the lady at the front desk. The lady smiled. “That’s excellent. We don’t get a lot of volunteers, never mind young ones. Many people are hostile toward the seniors here. Follow me, please.” The lady led Madeline to a door and knocked twice. It was very quiet until a frail voice answered, “Come in.” Inside, the room smelled heavily of perfume and baby powder. A bed lay towards a corner, unmade, and an assortment of cards and game chips were scattered all over the bedroom floor. Sitting on a chair next to a square table sat an old woman with frizzy, gray curls forming a halo around her head. Her floral shirt and blue jeans stood out against her pale skin. “This is Mrs. Blair, the senior citizen who you will be spending time with every day this week,” the lady at the front desk said proudly. She gave Madeline a wink and shut the door behind her. Madeline stood awkwardly in front of Mrs. Blair. She cleared her throat and spoke. “Hello. I’m Madeline.” “Hello, Madeline. You have a pretty name,” Mrs. Blair replied. “Thank you,” Madeline replied shyly. “May I sit?” She gestured to the other chair. “Sure,” Mrs. Blair shrugged. Silence filled the space between them. Mrs. Blair’s eyes shifted to and from Madeline to the room. “Tell me about yourself, Madeline,” Mrs. Blair said suddenly. “Well,” Madeline started, “I don’t have any grandpas or grandmas, so I can’t relate to elderly people much. I love the performing arts. I’m mainly here because I have to volunteer here to get a good grade in Civics.” As soon as Madeline said the last sentence, she winced. Mrs. Blair didn’t seem to mind. “Many people, especially teens, don’t seem to care about old folks like me. Thankfully, I’m going to change that about you. Ask me anything.” Madeline thought for a moment. “What was your job?” Madeline finally decided. “I was a Broadway star in New York,” Mrs. Blair answered, looking down. “That’s really cool. Can you tell me about it?” Madeline asked, amazed. Mrs. Blair grinned. “It was in 1948 and I was fourteen at the time. There was a crazy superstition that the lead actor or actress had to wear a special bracelet or they would be cursed forever in their acting career. Back then, I was the lead in almost all of the plays so I always wore the bracelet. Till this day, I still have it and used to wear it when performing plays for the others here when I was more flexible.” Madeline laughed along with Mrs. Blair and listened carefully to
