“Magicae et Plumbum”
(“The Magic Pencil”) CHAPTER 1 “MEPP!! MEPP!! MEPP!!” the alarm yelled at the top of it’s lungs. “IT’S TIME TO WAKE UP!!” it seemed to yell. “MEPP!! MEPP!! MEPP!!” 7 year old Kellen slowly opened his eyes and groaned at the sound of the noisy alarm clock. He reached over and turned it off, and then closed his eyes again for a second so he could think about his day. It was a school day. Only a boring Wednesday, but he was looking forward to hanging out with Cyrus later to show off his new Pokemon cards, or maybe play a little Hydro Thunder. Cyrus was his best friend and one of the keepers of his secrets, and he always knew that when they hung out together there were going to be some good times and some good laughs. “Well, time to get up,” he thought, and sat up on the side of the bed. It looked like the sun was just coming up outside of his window as he slipped his feet into his slippers. He could hear his brothers and sister in the dining room already eating their breakfast and noisily chattering about the busy day ahead. He heard a soft knock on the bedroom door. His grandmother, Tutu, opened it and said, “Breakfast is on the table, Sweetie. Better hurry and get ready for school.” “Okay Tutu. ‘Morning,” he said, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. “Morning Kellen. How’d you sleep, Honey?” Tutu asked. Through a yawn, Kellen said, “I slept pretty good. But I had a really strange dream.” “I want to hear about it,” said Tutu. “But can you tell me while you’re having breakfast? We don’t want to be late.” “Sure. I’ll be there in a minute,” said Kellen as he stood up and started to get ready for his day. Tutu, his grandmother, had made French toast for breakfast (one of his favorites), and his plate was ready for him at his spot at the table. His brother CJ who was 5 was debating with his sister Kaily, 9, about the Anaheim Angels versus the Los Angeles Dodgers. His older brother, 14 year old Brenden, was busy playing a game on his phone. Tutu was in the kitchen washing dishes. As she finished, she reached for the kitchen towel hanging from the hook , and as she dried her hands she said, “Okay Kellen. I’m all ears. Do you want to tell me about your dream?” “Sure. Okay. I was dreaming that I was in school, and Mrs. Jimenez was giving us a math quiz. I thought I knew most of the answers, but I wasn’t sure about some of them. Then the weirdest thing happened: When I was trying to figure out the answers to the ones I didn’t know, the pencil started moving in my hand all by itself. It was writing down numbers that turned out to be the right answers! I think it was a magic pencil. It would be so cool if they could make one of those in real life!” “Wow! What a crazy dream!” said Tutu. “You’re right, that would be fun! It would be great if someone could invent a magic pencil that only wrote the correct answers to all of the questions. It might get kind of boring, but…” “Why do you think it would be boring, Tutu?” Kellen asked, thinking this would be the best invention ever. “Well, it would be boring for me,” she said, “because I like to figure things out for myself. It makes things more interesting, don’t you think?” Kellen nodded his head, but he crunched his eyebrows up just a little and thought about what Tutu had said. It would be so cool to have something like that. It would. Right? “Alright everybody, time to go. Get your stuff together!” Tutu said, loud enough to be heard over the ruckus. Kellen put his plate in the sink and jogged off towards his room to get his backpack. His homework was still out on his desk, so he grabbed that and his pencils and other supplies and quickly crammed them into the backpack before jogging back to the kitchen and out the back door. It was important to get to the car early so you could get the best seating with such a big family, but he ended up stuck in the back anyway. “Oh well,” he thought. “I’m cool. I can do this. ****************************************** Kellen waved goodbye to Tutu as she dropped him off at school. As he walked towards the front door he saw several of his friends standing in a circle, and it looked like one of them had just told a good joke because everyone was laughing and smiling. Manny, Darren, Eric and Sebastian (or “Seabass” as his friends called him) turned to shout, “Hey Kellen!” to him as he approached the group. They stood around for a few minutes talking about how they thought the day would go and baseball and XBox games. Cyrus walked up just in time to hear the school bell start ringing to announce that it was time to head to class. As they all began to walk towards the entrance, Kellen walked next to Cyrus to make plans for the afternoon. And since he’d been thinking about it all morning, he said to Cyrus, “Hey! I had the weirdest dream last night! It was about a magic pencil that always writes the correct answer. That would be so cool! Don’t you think?” Cyrus nodded his head up and down quickly. “Man! That would make school so much easier! Somebody should invent that!” Kellen smiled, because that’s what he’d thought, too. And he didn’t think about it again that day...at least not until Mrs. Jimenez announced a math quiz right after lunch. “Hmm. That’s strange,” he thought. “It sounds kind of like my dream. But it couldn’t be. Wish I had a magic pencil right now, though.” Kellen was good in all his classes, but sometimes he was a little worried that he didn’t understand quite everything in math, even though he had an A in the class. Seabass, who sat in front of him, made a nervous face as he passed the blank tests back to Kellen, who then passed the rest backwards to Manny, and so on. He was only a little nervous. He thought he might do well, but you never know. Mrs. Jimenez stood in front of the class and said, “Okay class. Please turn your quizzes over, and begin solving the math problems. No talking, and please keep your eyes on your own paper. You’ll have 15 minutes to complete the quiz.” She then walked behind her desk, sat down, and began grading papers. Kellen looked at the quiz, and there were only 10 questions. It would be close, but he thought he could complete them all in time. The questions seemed easy enough, and he answered them each, quickly and neatly. Question 5 seemed a little tough, so he decided to skip it and come back to it. He finished the rest with no problem, so he went back to Question 5 to try it again. “You have 5 minutes left,” Mrs. Jimenez alerted the class. He was still unsure of how to solve the problem. He tried a couple of different ways, but none of it looked right. So he closed his eyes for a moment, just to clear his mind. And that’s when it happened. Kellen felt a small tickle in his hand. At first, he thought it was just an itch. But it kept going, and pretty soon, he had to open his eyes to see what was happening. The pencil was wiggling, just a little, but enough that he could feel it in his hand. He thought he must be imagining it, but no, he wasn’t. The tip of the pencil began to move slowly in small movements on the page, and then right before his eyes, it began to draw what looked like numbers. Kellen couldn’t believe his eyes! In a matter of moments, the math problem had been solved. This was amazing! He couldn’t wait to tell his friends about his good luck! The possibilities were endless. ***************************** A gentle hand upon Kellen’s shoulder startled him as he realized he had fallen asleep in class. His friends snickered a little, and he realized that when he closed his eyes to concentrate he must have dozed off. He looked down at his paper and saw that Question 5 was still blank except for the eraser marks from his earlier attempts to solve it. He did his best to answer the question, and then handed his completed quiz in to Mrs. Jimenez with a sheepish grin. “I’m sorry for falling asleep, Mrs. Jimenez.” “That’s okay Kellen. Just try getting a little more rest so that you can do your best while you’re here.” She smiled, and he smiled back. ******************************* Later that afternoon while Kellen and Cyrus were comparing Pokemon cards and eating an afternoon snack, Kellen told him about his dream the night before, and how he had a dream just like it during the math quiz that day. They both thought it was pretty weird and laughed about it, and agreed it probably wasn’t a big deal. Some of their friends came over to play baseball in the park across the street, and they never talked about it again. Kellen thought about it every once in awhile though. He thought it was strange to have a dream one night, and then dream the same thing again the next day. “Hmm. Probably nothing,” he thought. “But, what if…?” Tammi VanBuskirk, 04/18/2019 Revised 04/29/2019
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