NOTE: This is only a first draft.

Chapter Two

 

The next day, time seemed to be creeping along. It felt like a year had passed since the minute hand had gone all the way around the face on the classroom clock. This clock, which was hanging crooked on the wall in the classroom, made wheezing noises every once in a while and sometimes the larger hand shook a little before it clicked into the next minute slot. The second hand, which was red, for some reason, seemed to move once every ten seconds or so, at least that is what Maxwell thought.

He stared at the clock in his Geography class, unblinking. Mr. Mundane droned on about something or other in front of the classroom, but Maxwell wasn’t paying any attention at all. As he tore his eyes from the clock, he swung his head from side to side looking around the classroom. With a quick glance at the other students, he observed that no one else was paying attention either. Two kids had their heads on their desks, fast asleep. Three girls leaned together, their heads all but touching while they whispered about some boy, or party, or app for their phone. Two jocks in the back of the class were playing finger football. Everyone else was staring at their phones. No one was paying any attention to the teacher . . . well, no one but Georgie Wood, the smartest kid in Maxwell’s class. Georgie’s left hand was up in the air, as it had been for fifteen minutes, while he supported it with his right hand.

Mr. Mundane blatantly ignored him as he talked about something while staring out the window. His voice was even and flat, with absolutely no enthusiasm about the subject he was teaching. All-the-while, he held the cord from the window blinds and twisted it around his finger; wrapping it up, unwrapping it, wrapping it up, and so forth.

“As the rain falls to the Earth, it gathers in bodies of water,” Mr. Mundane said while gazing out the window at the fountain in front of the school. “The sun warms the water and causes it to turn from a liquid into a gas. In other words . . . evaporation. The gas then floats up into the atmosphere where it starts to cool. The molecules gather together and form a cloud. The cloud then . . .”

Mr. Mundane yawned loudly, barely covering his mouth.

Georgie Wood waved his arm weakly back and forth and also yawned, as he was the only one listening to Mr. Mundane.

“. . . releases the water where it falls back to Earth and the cycle begins again.” Mr. Mundane sighed and turned back to the class. He sighed again when he saw the pained look on Georgie’s face as he attempted to keep his tired arm in the air while he weakly wiggled his fingers.

“Yes, Georgie?”

Georgie’s arm flopped to his desk with a loud bang that made a couple of the students look up from their phones and frown at the teacher’s pet.

“Shouldn’t you also talk about snow and ice? After all, they are also forms of water?”

Mr. Mundane just stared at Georgie, who dropped his arm off of his desk to his side and swung it back and forth trying to get the blood flowing back down to his numb hand.

“Of course, Georgie.” Mr. Mundane carried on monotonically, “Water can appear in three states: liquid, gas, and a solid . . .”

Maxwell leaned back in this chair and closed his eyes. He’d never liked the structure of public school all that much, and high school was such a bore. He loved to read, and he read fast. He loved to discover new things through reading. Because he had been reading since he was one year old – yes, I said one year old – Maxwell had already learned just about everything this school was now trying to teach him. In fact, he’d finished all of the courses high school could teach him by the time he was 12-years old, which was three years ago, by reading books in his spare time. Then he’d moved on to college courses, but found that he was struggling in some of them. Without peers to go to for help, he tried to figure out some of the complex ideas that some of these books put forth on his own. Sometimes he succeeded with his Encyclopedia set, but it was over fifteen years old. He wasn’t much into computers or smart phones.

A couple of years ago, he stumbled upon a fiction book about fantastical creatures and magic. From that point on, he started reading Fantasy books by the masters. He gobbled them up, often staying awake past midnight, turning pages when he should have been sleeping.

Because of the wonderful stories he had read, Maxwell now lived in a fantasy world filled with dragons, warlocks, swordsmen, witches, demons, goblins, and other creatures. These fantasy beings continuously interrupted his life and he often found himself in situations where he was forced to fight them off or die trying. Using a multitude of weapons and armor, Maxwell always saved the day and was declared a legendary hero to all that knew him. A small smile spread across Maxwell’s face as he thought of his latest feat.

In actuality, Maxwell doesn’t really live in a world filled with magical creatures, but he does spend a lot of time thinking about them. He often visualizes the creatures that he has learned about, even while he’s at school. They all live inside his head, which is where Maxwell prefers to be, except for when he and Billy are hanging out.

As usual, Maxwell’s mind began to wander, which happens many times a day to this young daydreamer.  Sometimes he thinks about himself being a dwarf, spending all of his days in a mine digging for precious gems with his magical pick that was bestowed to him by a beautiful fairy princess after he saved her from being eaten by an evil wandering minstrel. Other times, he sees himself and a dark elf, defending the elven hometree with a sword in each hand as the hordes of viscous blue-skinned, poison-tongued toad goblins attack. He has spent time reveling as he galloped across the grassy plains as a centaur, a sturdy bow strung across his broad and muscular chest with a fletcher full of golden arrows strapped to his hairy back. He even once dreamed he was a lumbering black orc with a black serrated sword who had a trusted goblin friend beside him as they pursued a mysterious human girl that he was somehow attracted to, but that adventure took a turn for the worst and he doesn’t like to think much about that one anymore. The daydream he finds himself reliving the most is one about a group of young adventurers out to save the world from the evil plans of Baron Bar Bannik. In this fantasy, he has many friends that love him, which is something that is lacking in the real world, but at least he has Billy. The friends he pictures are always different, like he cannot get a firm grasp of who they are.  They are usually made up of different kinds of creatures, like gnomes, centaurs, elves, dwarves, halflings, and even humans. Today was no different than any other day, and this time he and his companions were in the process of stopping a group of smelly red-nose trolls from smashing down a dam that would flood the valley and wipe out the Halfling town of Toathly.

Maxwell glanced up at the clock. It was just a couple of seconds until lunchtime.

Tick, tock, tick, tock.

The lunch bell rang and Mr. Mundane continued to lecture, like he either didn’t hear the bell or just didn’t care. All the kids hopped up, chairs scraping across the linoleum, and practically ran out the door. Maxwell was the last to leave. He stopped in the hallway just on the other side of the doorway and turned to look back at his teacher as the door shut behind him. Mr. Mundane was still lecturing, his eyes closed, not noticing that the classroom was empty. Maxwell shook his head as he headed down the hallway toward his locker where Billy was waiting.

He grabbed the brown bag out of his locker, threw his books inside, and slammed the door shut. Maxwell spun about and both he and Billy walked quickly outside to the old, massive oak tree that sat in the middle of the lawn by the Administrative Building. This was their favorite place to eat. The southern California weather was almost always perfect for eating outside.

“What do you have today,” Billy said, opening his classic Partridge Family lunchbox that his mother had found for him on eBay.

“I don’t know,” Maxwell said, sitting down beside the trunk of the tree.

“I have an egg salad sandwich, some nacho cheese Doritos, an apple, yuck, and a vanilla pudding.” Billy took out his thermos and moved all of the food around in the lunchbox. “Well, no spoon. That stinks. Do you have one?”

Maxwell looked at Billy frowning. “Now, if I had a spoon, don’t you suppose that I would need it for something?”

“Aw, man. We could just share it. I don’t have cooties. ”

“I’ll bet you do.”

“Do not.”

“Do too.”

During this riveting conversation, Maxwell removed a peanut butter and strawberry preserves sandwich, a small bag of Chili & Cheese Fritos, two Cuties, and a cookie from his brown paper lunch bag.

“No spoon. But I do have a pencil if you want it.”

Billy made a face and stuck out his tongue. “I don’t want lead poisoning.”

“That’s not how you get lead poisoning.”

“Yes, it is.”

“No, it’s not.”

Eight minutes later, after Maxwell had eaten his lunch, except for his cookie, he silently watched Billy stick his finger in the pudding and pull out a glob. He stuck his finger in his mouth and moaned appreciatively.

“Pudding is sooooo delicious,” Billy said, sucking the vanilla goo off of his finger.

Maxwell rolled his eyes.

After Billy finished his pudding, he took out his handheld electronic journal and started writing down some ideas, getting pudding all over the screen.

Maxwell leaned against the tree and looked up into the branches with the intent of eating the cookie in his hand, but he started daydreaming. As he always did, he wondered about the life that must live in that tree. After all, it was a pretty massive oak tree that was hundreds of years old. There must be small creatures that never left the tree, living their entire existence in, on or around, this ancient oak tree. As he often did, he imagined ants with hardened armor and sharpened incisors battling other insects for their right to live on a certain branch. This time, the bumble bees were invading the ant’s home. The bees had metal stinger swords and were dive-bombing the ants. They had the advantage because they could attack from above, rather than meeting the ants head on. As they attacked, the bees impaled the ants with their swords. The battle raged all over the largest branch on the tree, the dead tumbling off the branch to land all about Maxwell as he held his cookie in his hand, not yet taking a bite. At one point, it looked like the bees were winning, until the ants massed together to form a giant shield and closed on the dive-bombing bees. Just as the ants were ready to claim victory, a swarm of praying mantis swept down to smash everything in sight with spiked maces. The bees, not to be outdone, flew up into formation and . . .

The end-of-lunch bell rang and Maxwell snapped back to reality. He quickly gathered up his trash and stuffed it inside the paper bag while shoving the cookie in his mouth as he ran toward the trash can. Billy was close behind still trying to put the journal in his front pocket as they avoiding other students. When Maxwell was ten feet away from the trash can, he jumped into the air like a basketball player and shot the wadded bag toward the can. A perfect swoosh! Maxwell and Billy ran to their lockers and gathered their textbooks and binders for their next class. They had Freshman English together and knew not to be late, for Mrs. Skinner believed in punctuality beyond anything else, and she wasn’t one to be trifled with.

A couple of hours later, Maxwell sat in his Astronomy class bored out of his skull. There were only fifteen minutes left until school was out for the weekend and Ms. Marschak was not holding his attention.

He looked out the window and couldn’t wait until he could be out there, out of this prison, free as a bird, that is, at least until Monday morning when he had to come back to school.

Maxwell groaned with the thought of returning to school in a couple of days.

A dragonfly passed the window shooting fire out of its tiny mouth. The jet of flame caught a passing butterfly, which blossomed fire as it plummeted to the ground. This caused all of the other butterflies, which had been resting on a leafless bush nearby, to rise up and hover in front of the dragonfly. The butterflies began to rub their antennas together, which created an ear-shattering shriek. The dragonfly tried to get away, but the shrieking noise played havoc with his system.  He managed to turn around and began to fly away in a wobbly line from the vengeful kaleidoscope of butterflies. As the pitch of the butterfly piercing cry intensified, the dragonfly’s head began to bubble and then expanded until it exploded.

“Mr. Edison,” Ms. Marschak said again, this time with a tinge of irritation in her voice.

“Huh? What?” Maxwell said, whipping his head around in a daze.

A couple of the girls giggled softly and they looked at him.

“I asked you why you thought planets were round,” Ms. Marschak said, pointing to the image of Jupiter that was projected on the screen in the front of the class.

“Um,” Maxwell started. Not thinking clearly, he said, “Because the world is round, um, it turns me on?”

There was dead silence in the class as everyone’s mouth fell open in shock. It took a couple of seconds, but then the class lost it. Everyone started laughing and yelling, pointing at him. Papers flew into the air and some of the students fell off of their chairs and rolled around on the hard floor, tears streaming down their cheeks as they laughed hysterically.

Ms. Marschak grabbed her Teacher of the Year gavel, awarded to her when she was a young teacher thirty-five years ago, and hammered it repeatedly on the desk.

WHAM, WHAM, WHAM!

“That’s enough! That is enough!”

WHAM!!

“Everyone,” she shouted, “back in your seats!”

Kids pulled themselves up from the floor and sat back down, wiping tears away. Everyone looked at Maxwell as he shrank down in his seat, trying to disappear under his desk. He hadn’t meant to say what he said, but sometimes things just came out wrong, mixed up. This was a problem he sometimes has when he is woken abruptly out of a daydream.

“You may think you are quite funny, Mr. Edison, but you are not!” Ms. Marschak said with a bit of venom in her voice.

Some of the students laughed quietly.

“I wasn’t . . . that is, I didn’t mean . . .”

“I don’t want to hear excuses, Mr. Edison. What I do want is to see you after class.”

Maxwell groaned.

“You’re going to write on the whiteboard fifty times, ‘I must not be a distraction for other students in Astronomy class.’”

Maxwell groaned again.

The bell rang and within seconds, the classroom was empty except for Ms. Marschak and Maxwell.

He looked forlornly out the second story window at the kids streaming out of the building, yelling and whooping it up. He saw Billy standing there waiting for him, sitting on his bicycle. Billy looked at his watch and then back to the front doors. Finally he looked up and saw Maxwell in the window. Billy shrugged his shoulders and waived to his friend. Then he wheeled around, pedaled like crazy, jumped off the curb, and tore up the street trying to do a wheelie, but not succeeding.

“I don’t know if you are waiting for an engraved invitation, Mr. Maxwell,” Ms. Marschak said while taking a seat at her desk.

Maxwell jumped a bit and turned around to face his captor.

“The whiteboard marker is in the pen tray and it’s waiting for you to get started. I cannot wait to see how this all turns out,” she concluded with a malicious hiss. She leaned back in her chair, plopped her feet up on the edge of her desk, took out her cell phone, and checked the news.

Maxwell shuffled up the whiteboard and stood there looking at the pens in the tray. There were all sorts of colors there, as Ms. Marschak needed them to draw the many astronomical things that were discussed in her classroom. Maxwell eventually settled on the blue one, took the cap off and was about to begin writing when Ms. Marschak said, “You can choose any color except for blue. Blue is my favorite color and I don’t want you using it all up.”

Maxwell sighed, put the cap back on the blue pen and placed it back on the tray. He then opted for red, removed the cap, and began to write.

I MUST NOT BE . . .

Ms. Marschak didn’t even look Maxwell’s way when she said, “In cursive, Mr. Edison, in cursive.”

Maxwell gave the teacher a dirty look, picked up the eraser, wiped the whiteboard clean, and began again.

I must not be a distraction for other students in Astronomy class.

Maxwell turned to Ms. Marschak and asked, “Like this?”

“Looks good,” Ms. Marschak replied, without looking up from her phone.

Maxwell sighed again and began to write the same sentence over and over again.

And so it went for the next twenty-two times.

Maxwell stopped writing and shook his right hand to get some feeling back into it. He stood back and looked at what he had written. He hadn’t written cursive in years, so what he’d written had taken longer than he had thought it would and looked pretty sloppy in the first ten or so sentences. But now he was getting faster and it was looking more like the way it was supposed to.

Unconsciously, he began scratching the palm of his right hand. After a couple of seconds, he noticed this action and looked down to see that his palm was red from what he was doing. He stared at his hand, moving it closer to his face. Now it really started itching.

What is going on? he thought as he began to scratch his palm with the end of the pen.

“I don’t hear you writing, Mr. Edison,” Ms. Marschak said from her desk, her back still toward Maxwell.

Maxwell looked over at his teacher and stared at the back of Ms. Marschak’s head. He thought he saw something strange. He leaned over, just a little, and squinted his eyes to get a better look. Ms. Marschak’ hair, which appeared as a mass of gray hair piled on top of her head, kind of like a beehive, seemed to be moving of its own accord. It wiggled around, like it was caught in some kind of weird windstorm. And then the strangest thing happened: a dark, shadowy face seemed to materialize out of the top of the beehive. It’s yellow, burning eyes stared right at Maxwell and seemed to pierce straight through his soul. It slowly opened its mouth wider than any human could ever do. Hundreds of razor sharp two-inch long teeth filled its mouth in two rows. Black mist swirled around in the open maw as it let out a voracious, gurgling scream.

Ms. Marschak didn’t seem to notice and kept reading about what was happening in the world.

Maxwell’s jaw dropped open. Was he daydreaming again? No, this didn’t feel the same.

Why is my hand itching so badly? he thought.

Suddenly, he felt something in his right hand. He looked down and saw his hand was clenched tight around a silver war hammer, sort of like the one Thor has in all his movies, but maybe just a little smaller. Maxwell lifted it up in front of his face to get a better look at it, his mouth still hanging open. The handle was wrapped in brown leather and had a loop on the end. The head of the war hammer appeared to be made of solid silver and was covered with inscriptions he couldn’t understand. A slight red glow seemed to be emanating from it and the inscriptions appeared to be slowly pulsing in a bright red light. It felt light in his hand, but looked extremely heavy. He swung it back and forth a few times and smiled, then he almost dropped it. He fumbled with it for a moment, put his hand through the loop, and then tightened his grip on the handle.

“Awesome,” he whispered.

Maxwell looked back at Ms. Marschak and the shadow creature hissed at him. Two smoky arms seemed to slowly lift out of Ms. Marschak’ arms. They came down on the teacher’s shoulders and began to push downward with some effort. The shadow creature began to lift out of the top of Ms. Marschak.

Somehow, Maxwell knew what he had to do. He let loose with a war cry, something he’d always wanted to do, and charged the shadow creature. He felt like his favorite dark elf character that’s always fighting other creatures with his two swords. He swung the silver hammer at the creature’s head. The hammer passed above Ms. Marschak and made contact with the shadow creature.

BANG!

The shadow creature’s head snapped to the side and then returned. Again, its mouth opened and it let out an ear-splitting shriek. Its smoky arms sprang forward and swiped at Maxwell. One of its fingers brushed Maxwell’s left forearm just below the elbow. Maxwell hissed and looked down at where his arm was hurting. It was pale with frost and stung like the dickens, like it had been flash frozen.

Maxwell reared back, his mouth now set with firm resolve, and charged again. The shadow creature swiped at him but Maxwell dropped to his knees and slid forward. He heaved the silver hammer upward and caught the creature just under its chin.

BANG!

The shadow creature let out one final shriek and then dissipated. Tiny tendrils of the creature floated to the floor where they sizzled and rolled around for a couple of seconds until they shrunk and disappeared.

Ms. Marschak slumped in her chair, unconscious, breathing heavily, her phone falling to the floor.

Maxwell stood up and looked at the silver hammer in his hand. “Wow!”

Not knowing what else to do, Maxwell placed the silver hammer on his desk while he ran out of the classroom to his locker. He quickly grabbed his backpack, sprinted back to the Astronomy classroom, shoved the hammer inside, and zipped the backpack closed. He ran out of his school, hopped on his bike, and pedaled like a madman. He flew down the street, cut the corners, switched between the sidewalk and street, swerved around people who yelled at him, until he skidded onto his front lawn, where he threw down his bike and ran up the front steps. He slammed the front door behind him, bounded up the stairs to his room, closed the door behind him, jumped onto his bed, and unzipped the backpack.

“No!” he screamed.

His backpack was empty.