evinciveMagazine_October2017

October 2017
Just as Sylvester said this, Liza, one of the girls in
their class, walked by. The boys in Joey’s fourth-grade
class didn’t really like the girls much, but you couldn’t
really count Liza as one of the girls exactly. She never
wore dresses and she didn’t mind getting dirty like the
other girls. And everyone said she had “gazelle legs”
because she could run faster than anyone in the class.
All the boys, including Joey, thought Liza was ok. Joey
had even seen Sylvester talking to her once or twice,
probably showing her his magic rock or something.
Liza stopped in her tracks. “Yeah, do it, do it!” she
said and Sylvester grinned, sliding his eyelid back and
digging his thumb and forefinger until they practically
disappeared into his eye socket.
Joey felt his stomach do a somersault.
He turned to Liza whose eyes were still glued to
Sylvester. “He’s just making up stories again,” Joey
said.
Liza just shrugged and walked away.
Sylvester looked after her. Then squinting his eyes
up tightly, he glared at Joey. It wasn’t exactly his usual
“evil eye,” but it was close enough.
“You’ll see” was all he said and walked away. The
hairs prickled on the back of Joey’s neck.
At the end of the day as Joey was chaining his
bicycle up outside the school, Sylvester came up to
him. “I’ve got my eye on you,” Sylvester whispered to
Joey, winking over and over. Boy, was that Sylvester a
weird kid.
When Joey slid his books in the rack under his desk
the next morning, he heard something hit the floor.
Looking down, he saw a greenish marble rolling across
the floor toward the back of the classroom. He sure
hadn’t put it there. The teacher didn’t let you have toys
in class; she had a whole drawer full of stuff she had
taken from kids.
The marble rolled all the way to the coat room and
stopped. Just as Joey was about to go grab it, the
teacher walked in so he sat back down. When the bell
rang for lunch, he walked to the back of the classroom
and looked for the marble. It was gone. He was a little
disappointed because it didn’t look like any other
marble he had ever seen before and would’ve
looked cool in his marble jar.
Sylvester wasn’t in school that day or the day
after when Joey noticed the marble tucked snugly
behind the teacher’s chair leg. It was big and green
and glinting in the sunlight. When he tried to pass a
note to Liza about it, the marble rolled out from
beneath the teacher’s chair and slammed so loudly
against the wall that it made Joey jump. No one
else in the room seemed to notice.
By the end of the day, just like the day before,
the marble had vanished.
Joey caught up with Liza as they left school.
“Have you seen Sylvester lately?” he asked her
since she was really the only other kid he had even
seen talk to Sylvester.
She scratched her head. “I don’t think so, not
even in his backyard,” Liza said. “He’s usually out
there blowing up something or looking through his
telescope.”
Joey didn’t know they lived on the same street.
“Yeah, he’s sort of a weird kid,” said Joey.
Just then, something hard hit him right between
the shoulder blades. He spun around to see if some
kid had lobbed a rock at him, but there was no one
in sight. Whatever had hit him seemed to instead be
dribbling around – as if gathering steam -- inside
his backpack. Then with even more force than
before, it pelted him right where his dad had told
him his kidneys were. “Oweeeeee,” he squealed in
pain.
“What’s the matter with you?” Liza stared at
him funny.
He yanked the backpack off before the crazy
jumping bean inside could cream him again.
“Ummm, I’m ok, see you…” he managed to get out
before taking off at a fast clip to find a safe place,
away from the other kids, to let his attacker loose
from his backpack.
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