NOTE: This is only a first draft.

Chapter Four

 

Maxwell headed directly upstairs to his room to find two, old fashioned travelling trunks sitting in the middle of his room on the floor. They looked like steamer trunks, covered with stickers from all sorts of destinations. They could have been used as props from the movie Titanic, or some other old black-and-white movie from a long, long time ago.

The first thing Maxwell did was to bend over, knock on one of the trunks three times and then he snapped his fingers twice.

POOF!

In a puff of blue smoke, another travelling trunk appeared. Maxwell laughed with utter glee at the magic that was used to make a trunk appear out of thin air. He sat down on the new trunk and began to knock on it too.

Fifteen minutes later, the hallway outside of his room was littered with dozens of trunks. He realized he had better stop goofing around and get down to business.

Maxwell finally began packing up all of his belongings. This was a long and tedious project that took up the rest of the evening and most of the next day. He was worried about what his mom would say when she saw all of the trunks in the hallway. But when she passed by his doorway that evening and checked in on him, she didn’t mention them.

He ended up only using four trunks. As he closed the latch on the last trunk, he heard multiple poofing noises on the other side of his door, while some blue smoke drifted in underneath the door. He quickly made his way to the hallway to find that all of the extra trunks he had called forth were no longer there.

“Whew,” he said, wiping his forehead in relief. “I’m glad they disappeared.”

That evening, Billy came over for dinner. They sat down to dinner and Anna surprised Maxwell by putting a plate of his favorite dinner in front of him, a heaping pile of spicy spaghetti and some cheesy break she had broiled in the oven. His mother, who isn’t Italian, loves making spaghetti. When she was in college, she had taken her mother’s recipe and accidentally added a whole bottle of tabasco sauce to the spaghetti. Needless to say, it was extremely spicy, but darned good. Anna had since tamed the recipe down quite a bit, but she still added chili powder, chili peppers, tabasco sauce, and salsa to her spaghetti. It was hot and always made Maxwell sweat a little, but that’s the way he liked it. No other spaghetti sauce could even come close to the tasty sauce his mother made.

Maxwell twirled some spaghetti on his fork and popped it into his mouth. “Mmmm, delicious mom,” he said with a mouth full of food.

“Yes, Ms. Edison, this is very flavorful,” Billy said and then chugged his entire glass of water.

“Thank you, boys,” Anna replied, “and Maxwell, don’t talk with your mouth full.”

“Yes, mom,” he replied, smiling, a spaghetti noodle handing out of his mouth to his chin.

Billy stood up, walked to the sink, and filled up his glass and then drank half of it. He filled it up again and then sat back down, eyeing the spicy spaghetti. He dabbed his napkin on his sweaty forehead.

Maxwell took a bite of the cheesy bread and then more of the spaghetti.

Billy took a tentative bite of the cheese bread and then started wolfing it down when he found it didn’t have any spices in it at all.

“I’m going to miss you, sweety,” Anna said, her eyes getting misty. Anna had raised Maxwell by herself for as long as he could remember. In fact, he couldn’t recall his father at all. Anna didn’t have a single picture of him and she claimed she didn’t even know his name. Maxwell had never known who his father was, not that he really cared. His mother was everything to him.

Billy looked at Maxwell, not knowing what his mother meant by the fact that she was going to miss him. He looked back at Ms. Edison, who was wiping away a tear with her napkin.

“I’ll miss you too, mom,” Maxwell said, patting her hand on the table. “But this school sounds terrific and I cannot pass up the chance to go there.”

“You’ll call me?” Anna asked hopefully, raising a single eyebrow.

Maxwell smiled at her, “Every weekend, I promise.”

Anna smiled back and continued eating her dinner.

Billy’s head was swiveling back and forth, like he was watching a tennis match, going from Maxwell to his mom as they talked. “Um, what’s going on?”

“Shhh, later, after dinner, I’ll fill you in.”

After dinner, Maxwell and Billy headed into the den.

“So, where are you going?” Billy asked.

Maxwell hated to lie to his best friend, but he had promised Father Makenzie that he wouldn’t tell Billy anything about the school. Earlier, while he was packing, he came up with something that might work.

“My father, who I’ve never met, called my mom today,” Maxwell lied. “He said he wants me to come and live with him in Spain for a year.”

“Just like that?” Billy asked. “And you’re going to just up and go?”

“Well, he is my dad.”

“Yeah, but . . .”

“I know it’s sudden,” Maxwell said, laying a comforting hand on Billy’s shoulder. “It’s an opportunity I just couldn’t pass up.”

“Man, this sucks!” Billy said louder than he meant to. “Who am I going to hang out with? You and I do everything together. This bites!”

“It’ll go quickly and then I’ll be back.”

“And what about your silver hammer thing from yesterday?”

“I thought about it all afternoon. I guess it was a daydream. I’ve no proof that it even happened,” he said, raising both hands in the air and shrugging his shoulders.

“Yeah, that makes more sense than a magical hammer suddenly appearing in your hand so you can fight off the mysterious shadow creature climbing out of your teacher’s head.”

“Yeah,” Maxwell agreed, “it did seem a little far-fetched, didn’t it?”

“Uh huh, you know it.”

“Hey, let’s go watch a movie. How about The Princess Bride?”

“I haven’t seen that one,” Billy said. “This title makes it sound like something I wouldn’t want to see.”

“I find it inconceivable that you haven’t seen that movie,” Maxwell said with a smile. “You don’t know about the man with six fingers on his left hand?”

“Six fingers!” Billy yelled. “What are you talking about?”

“You’ll have to watch the movie to find out,” Maxwell said walking back into the kitchen. “Anybody wanna peanut?”

“No,” Billy said. “How about some popcorn?”

* * * * *

After Billy left, Maxwell dragged the four trunks down the stairs and put them in the living room, stacked two high. He said his goodbyes to his mother and she gave him the biggest hug ever.

POOF!

Maxwell looked to his right to discover a small, ornate mirror about a foot tall had appeared hanging on the wall to the left of the fireplace. “That must be the Amalgaphone, mom.”

Anna turned to the mirror and said, “That’s nice, sweetie,” totally unaffected by the sudden appearance of a magical mirror in the house. “I expect to hear from you every weekend.”

Weird, Maxwell thought as he looked at his mother. “Don’t worry, mom. I’ll call. I promise”

He walked up to his mom and gave her a long hug, his eyes misting with the thought of not being with her every day. He released her and she gave him a peck on the cheek.

He reached into his pocket and took out the dimensional dime. He turned it over in the palm of his hand.

“Humph,” he said. “This looks like any old dime that I have seen a million times. I wonder if Father Mckenzie gave me a regular dime by mistake.”

Maxwell peered at the dime and he thought he saw President Franklin D. Roosevelt wink at him. Startled, he almost dropped it.

Maxwell made a fist with his right hand and tucked his thumb under his pointer finger. He placed the dime on top of his thumb and looked at Anna. 

“Mom, you better step back a bit.”

“Yes, dear,” she replied, backing up and moving behind the couch.

Maxwell nodded at her and then looked back at his mom. “Here we go.”

He lowered his arm just a bit, and then moved it upward quickly, flicked his thumb, and sent the dimensional dime spinning into the air. It hummed as it moved upward, until it almost reached the ceiling, and then it froze in place, still spinning. The dime disappeared and what remained was a small blue outline of a circle, which began to expand directly over Maxwell’s head.

Maxwell moved closer to the travelling trunks and put a hand on top of each stack. He continued to watch with wide eyes as the blue light ring grew thicker and wider. In the matter of fifteen seconds or so, the glowing light was about eight feet wide, big enough to fit over both Maxwell and all of his trunks. 

Maxwell’s eyes grew even wider as the light ring began to lower toward him. He turned to his mother and said, “I love you, mom.” Then he closed his eyes.

Anna watched her son’s head disappear into the light ring and said, “I love you too, Maxwell,” but he didn’t hear her. By the time she finished speaking, Maxwell and the trunks were gone, and so was the ring of light.