Day 23

Start writing a story that…

Step 1: has a character who has to make a gift
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Barbara watched as Julien sketched a hippopotamus and colored it in. His chubby six-year-old fingers gripped the colored pencils, first brown and then black, with white-knuckle tightness. In dark red he proudly wrote "Happy Birthday, Ms. Jenkins" above the hippo. He insisted on writing the words himself, but asked his mother to spell them for him and remind him how to make the "r" and the "y."

The class moms had asked each student in Ms. Jenkins's class to make a birthday gift for her. An email was sent to the parents with instructions that each gift should be handmade and must represent what Ms. Jenkins means to that student. When Barbara picked Julien up from his after-school program, she told him about their project for the night and asked him what he'd like to do. Julien said he wanted to draw a hippo for Ms. Jenkins. He said it was because she liked swimming and because she had a beautiful brown winter coat that made him think of the hippos he had seen on TV. After dinner, Barbara and Julien looked at some pictures of hippos online, and then Julien went to work on his own creation.

The next day, Julien insisted on carrying the picture in his hands instead of putting it in his backpack. Barbara drove him to the school and then kissed his shaggy brown hair before releasing him to the wilds of the hallways.

At 1:00, she received a call from the school. There had been an incident, an altercation between Julien and another boy in his classroom. She was to come to the school immediately to discuss the situation and pick up her son.

Barbara sped the entire way back. She arrived at the school anxious and disheveled, and rang the outside bell in quick, determined bursts to let them know she needed to be let inside. Once she was buzzed in, she hurried into the school office.

There he sat, on a blue, plastic chair in the open space behind the secretary's desk. His hair lay matted and stuck to his forehead. There was a rip in his t-shirt and, was that blood on his sleeve, she wondered? Barbara rushed toward Julien to check that he was okay.