The boy woke up and walked to school. He did not have to
wear the purple sweater today, thankfully. He eagerly went to the hedge to
retrieve his jacket and found that it was gone. He rooted around in the
branches and leaves to make sure. He couldn’t find it no matter how hard he
looked. He called out plaintively as if the jacket could hear him and would
come running like a pet.
He searched the whole length of the hedge and couldn’t find
it. In frustration, he kicked the hedge and hurt his big toe very badly on a
trunk. He hopped on one foot and spun in pain. He hobbled to the neighbour’s
house that was always empty and walked in. He tread cautiously even though he
was limping. Fortunately, he hadn’t made any noise because someone was in the
recliner watching the incessant television. The boy froze in fear watching the
hand that laid causally on the arm rest.
After a long time that seemed like several minutes, the boy
didn’t see any movement in the hand. So he carefully turned and walked out of
the house. He cursed his luck today and walked past the trivium. Tomatoes,
bananas, and cucumbers are botanically berries, but it’s a good thing the
dolphin boy doesn’t know this because he doesn’t like to eat any of them.
He walked down the hill and stayed as far away from the road
as possible to avoid dogs, cars, and people while still trying not to get too
close to mongooses and snakes in the tall grasses. He was so preoccupied with
this balancing act that he neglected to look at the town dump as he crossed the
street to turn left. If he had looked, he would have seen three cows, two pigs,
and one white unicorn on the top floor of a fifteen storey flat, leaning over
the balcony with champagne flutes in hoof.
He walked farther past the bridge and over the stream, then
hurried to the second path that led to the clearing with the metal barrels
where the vampire blades were hidden. He searched in the dirt and leaves, but
couldn’t find the knives. He was about to kick a sapling tree when he
remembered the pain he had experienced earlier and stopped with his foot in the
air.
He made a more thorough search of the surrounding area where
he and Robert had hidden the blades. They were definitely gone. The only
possible explanation for the disappearance of all these items was that the
vampire was following the boy and removing all of his armour and weapons so
that the vampire could strike when the boy was defenceless.
The boy walked unsteadily toward the school buildings,
unsure whether he should attend school or ditch for the day. He was unaware of
the deathly quiet and closed doors of the school buildings. He wandered the
breezeway for a long while before he realised that there was no one at school.
It was some kind of holiday that the boy had been unaware of. Rather than feel
chagrined, he smiled at the thought of a whole day left to his own devices.
He walked back to the library, which wasn’t open yet. He
climbed into a skip and played in the trash and papers for a long while. There
were three skips inside a three-walled concrete area. He opened the plastic
hinged-top of all three skips and alternately climbed and jumped into each. He
shouted the name of a famous Apache from New Mexico as he landed.
The library had opened its doors and the boy went inside. He
scoured the kids’ book section but had already been through all the picture
books that were available. He was not interested yet in books that had only
words in them. He met several children there who seemed to know about the
holiday. He found several boys and they agreed to play a popular game the boy
had invented.
The game involved going outside and grabbing a branch from a
trumpet tree (cecropia obtusifolia), stripping the
large leaf from the end, and forming a yellow, flexible sword. Taking their
swords inside the library, they entered a conference room on one side of the library
that had a large table and seats for twenty. They spread out around the table
and one person (usually the leader, our hero the dolphin) would count down from
five before turning off the lights.
In the dark, windowless conference room, they would swing
their “swords” randomly and excitedly. Anyone who was hit by a sword could
either “die” and leave or, if they felt like continuing, could go on and keep
swinging their sword. The boy had learnt the trick to the game of detecting one’s
enemies effectively: he would position himself near the corner of the large
table and climb under. He could then watch as the shadows of legs moved past
the lighted crack under the door to the room. Then he could time his attack for
the unknowing victim based on the direction and speed of the leg-shadows that
crossed in front of the door.
Whoever was left in the conference room after everyone else
had yielded or “died” was the winner. The boy often survived to the end, but
the game was not as fun without many players, certainly more than three. Thus,
when the game dwindled down, it usually ended in a draw. They played several
rounds of this game until the librarian kicked them out. She locked the
conference room door and confiscated their swords (some of which were broken
and hanging by pulpy threads).
The boy wandered along the street to the shopping centre and
“played” some games at the pizza hut. In between games, he would grab a bag of saltines
from the salad buffet and squeeze out some ranch dressing on a plate for
flavour. He especially enjoyed crumbling the soda crackers to a near-powder
before opening the packets, then pouring them on top of the ranch dressing to
make a paste.
He made one such plate of paste and placed it on an open
booth facing the back of the building. He went to “play” the table-top football
game for a while and walked back to eat his food. He spotted two men standing
near the booth. One of them wore a waiter’s uniform, but the other wore a suit,
which meant that he was a manager. The boy tried to casually walk by the two
men, and even pretended to be whistling with an utmost air of indifference.
The men saw through his lie, for the boy did not actually
know how to whistle. They had also been watching him in the restaurant for a
half hour. The manager asked the boy where his parent were. The boy replied
that they were just over there. The man looked around the sparsely filled restaurant
and asked for clearer directions. The boy said they must be just outside,
getting something from the car. The manager told the waiter to escort the boy
to find his parents and left.
The boy was relieved his lie had worked. He had pointed
toward the front of the building so that he could make his escape. The waiter merely
let the boy go past the entrance, telling the boy he should lie about his
parents being there. Appropriately chastised, the boy walked home, deciding it
might be about the time that school would have ended.
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