Wonder

She squinted her eyes at the sound of the chalk on the black board. The teacher thought it’d help the kids understand what a tributary and a distributary was if she drew a diagram. The girl, however, was too busy staring at the marvel that was her 1.5-inch long pencil.

She wondered how it got to this. She hadn’t intended it, not at all. She sometimes misplaced her pencils but mostly, her classmates borrowed them and never thought to return them to her. The class’ Stationery Shop- that was the term of endearment her fellow students used for her.

The teacher stopped drawing and turned back to the class to begin her explanation again. The girl only paid a bit of attention; just enough to grasp what was being said. She turned the pencil round and round between her fingers and gazed at the waves the pink flowers on the white background made where the pencil had been sharpened. She suddenly heard the tone that teachers usually use when they dictate notes, and she turned her attention back to her notebook and to what was being said.

She couldn’t help smiling at the way her fingers clutched on to the tiny pencil while she wrote. She always had a different grip from anyone else she’d ever met; she used four fingers to write instead of the usual two or three. She wondered how much longer she could use the pencil- she’d never used one until its very end. Of course, she knew she couldn’t finish the entire thing up, that was impossible, but she just wanted to see how long it would last. The poor longer ones in her pencil case must await their chance.

All of a sudden, she realized that the voice booming the definition of a delta was coming from above her. She lifted her head to flash her teacher an innocent smile when the voice stopped and lowered its volume to whisper to her, not in a harsh way but perhaps in a rushed one, ‘What are you doing? Throw that pencil in the bin right now. Grab a normal one from my desk.’

‘No, ma’am, I’m able to write with this and-‘

‘No no, just throw it. Take another one from me.’

‘I don’t need a longer one, ma’am, I have them. I just wanted to see-‘

‘No more arguing. Go, now.’

The girl sighed and started to walk up to the dustbin at the front of the classroom. She so badly wanted to see what would happen to the pencil if she sharpened it a bit more. Now, she would have to start all over again with another one. As she neared the bin, something struck her. She casually turned her head to locate the teacher who was busy chastising a student about his bad handwriting. She made a motion as if to throw something in the bin while she secretly stuck the pencil in her skirt pocket. She tried to control the smile that was creeping on to her face and hoped that she was instead projecting a disappointed self as she mused, ‘I should try magic tricks next.’