Paintball with dragons, p.1
Paintball With Dragons, page 1
Xander Carson realized, five minutes into his first day at school, that he was probably going to have a tough time in seventh grade.
Reason number one? His brother, Mason, had died in a car accident this past summer, just thirty-six days ago.
Reason number two? A large black dragon, missing its front two legs, blocked the way to his locker.
His heart seized the moment he stumbled upon the large lizard creature, and he almost ran right smack into a wall. There was something really comforting about the safety of that wall. He wanted to stay there forever but forced himself to approach his locker once again.
A stuffed animal?
Maybe one of his classmates decided to pull a prank, or a gift. It was so hard to tell the difference between the two. What with the neighbors and church peeps and folks who claimed they knew him “when he was just one years old” and he had to pretend to “remember them”—bringing casseroles to his house.
Seriously, who remembers anyone before the age of four?
One buttery ritz chicken casserole too many felt like a joke, a prank on Mason. Because no matter how many times they visited the headstone at Black Horse Cemetery in Ohio, planting daisies at the circular slot next to the grave—it didn’t feel real.
Why couldn’t Mason have popped out of the car wreckage thirty-six days ago, and shouted, “Surprise! I’m not dead.”
Mason did, after all, love to pull pranks.
Back to the dragon.
Xander reached forward, to both probe the scales with his fingertips, and shove the ten-foot stuffed animal aside so he could get to the locker dial.
Hot breath snuffed from the dragon’s nostrils onto his neck.
Oh my. . . Did the creature just blink?
Well, Xander wouldn’t call it blinking per se. Like most reptiles, this dragon appeared to have a second inner eyelid that greased over its retinas.
While it ‘blinked’ the eyes made a slick, slimy noise.
Xander backed away.
Don’t think too much about it. Don’t think too much about it.
Thinking led to emotions. . . which led people like his mom to dissolve into tears every day over the kitchen sink. Or for his dad to get lost in thought often, mid-sentence. It didn’t use to be like that. Dad used to work as a reporter, never with a shortage of words.
But now.
No, he couldn’t think about now. He cut a glance to the wall behind him, then to the locker before him.
He didn’t need any books for homeroom, right? Not on the first day of school.
Balling his hand into a fist, he reached up and rubbed the blur out of his eye. Maybe this was a dream.
Five days beforehand a nightmare struck Xander amidst a bed of sweaty sheets.
That he’d gone to school in—no, not his underwear—but the same clothes Mason wore in the wreckage. A neon orange hoodie, much too hot for a heat-of-summer day, basketball shorts, and shoes to match for the court. Fingers jabbed in his direction, pointing, mouths gaping.
“He looks just like him.”
“A copy of his brother.”
Voices echoed in his head from the nightmare. It didn’t help all that much that Mason and he did look so alike—curly dark hair, tan skin, lean stature. Everywhere he went everyone made it an opportunity to remind him how much he mirrored Mason.
And how much he was a walking reminder of the biggest mistake of his life thirty-six days ago.
He shook the thoughts away and glanced up at the ceiling. . . just in time to watch a dragon wiggle past, its tail making S ripples all the way. This one had four legs instead of two, like the dragon stationed at his locker.
Two thoughts struck him at the same time.
One, Are there different types of dragons? Ones with different numbers of legs?
And two, What the heck is happening???
He held a breath deep in his abdomen.
Looping his thumbs around the bottom straps of his backpack, he dashed toward his homeroom door. Divine providence must’ve been looking out for him because the administration had stationed the room a few steps away from his locker.
Not that divine providence really helped all the much until now.
When was the last time he’d prayed? During the moments after the accident? Like that did anything. . . .
He slid into a desk on the front row, unzipped his book bag with furious speed, and pulled out a laptop.
Brightness from the screen stung his eyes when he flipped open the lid.
Just before his fingertips could fly across the keyboard, typing in his password, he felt a tap on his shoulder. Angling around, he placed his arm on the desk behind him. The most pitiful expression greeted him.
Boy did Angeline have that puppy dog face down with the droopy lip melting almost clear down her chin and the large, green eyes forming squinty teardrop shapes.
“I’m—”
He braced himself for the word. One month into this, and every time, that word still made the contents in his stomach curdle.
“—sorry.”
A grin forced its way up his cheeks. No, he wouldn’t start off seventh grade this way. “Don’t worry about it. I—it’s hard, but I’ll get through it.”
Mason had been his best friend. And although Angeline probably would invite him to a birthday party, they couldn’t claim close friendship status. In fact, no one in the school would consider Xander as having ‘close friendship status’. That had only belonged to Mason, and no one else could take his brother’s place.
He whirled around and plugged his password into his laptop. The screen dissolved into a picture of him at his sixth-grade basketball championship last spring. He cringed.
Need to change that.
It didn’t help that he’d spent the last thirty-six days away from his computer, holed up in his room. His younger brother, Owen, did manage to coax him out of his cave to play SmashBros. For hours, they’d toggled joysticks and pressed buttons until his eyes dried out, and thumbs ached.
He took a deep breath and trained his focus on the computer screen.
Pulling up a search browser, he glanced over his shoulder. Angeline busied herself with her phone—something their homeroom teacher Mrs. Vern would confiscate, no doubt. All the teachers at Maranatha Christian Academy had a personal vendetta against all devices, except for the school-issued laptops.
Which seemed to ban most websites anyway, so he didn’t know how much luck he could muster with this search.
Nevertheless, he typed, “Can you see dragons?”
Nothing promising appeared, just some listings of a famous card game from the early 2000s and anime sites. Hitting delete, he retyped, “I see dragons.”
Something green slithered in his periphery. His adrenaline spiked as he glanced up from the laptop lid. A dragon—if he could call it that—with no legs wiggled around the front of the row. Its horned head bumped into the teacher’s desk. A loud squeak sounded from it.
A boy beside him, in a school uniform polo, snapped up from his phone. Then the boy’s shoulder’s relaxed and he went back to his device, muttering, “Stupid thin walls.”
Walls that could break.
Xander didn’t know why that particular thought struck him. But it sent goosebumps up his arm. Something about the image of brick reducing to dust curdled his gut.
Xander glimpsed the boy, wide-eyed, as the dragon with no legs slithered out the door.
Didn’t he see it?
If so, the boy made no indication. And the last thing Xander needed was for people to think he was crazy.
He wouldn’t mention it.
Slumping back into his seat, Xander flicked his eyes to a poster on the wall of a cat hanging onto a tree. “Hang in there,” Mr. Kitten said in bubbly green letters.
The boy would’ve said something if he’d noticed a GIANT dragon worm in the classroom.
That meant he heard it. . . but didn’t see it.
So why can I?
Results blinked on the screen of Xander’s most recent search. Once again, the popular 2000s card game “Dragon-dom” took up most of the listing. Except for one at the bottom, from the answers forum Quaestio.
With a shaky finger, he tapped on the link.
Thread: I’m seeing dragons now—AM I GOING CRAZY???
Hi, everyone! Username ISeeDragonsNow44, here. I know this site likes to protect our names from people. So, my name is definitely, most certainly not Thomas.
Anyway, to cut a long story short, I’ve been going through a hard time lately. My sister was put in jail, and she’s basically abandoned the family. Refuses to keep up contact.
And the thing was we were really close. She’s older than me, and I’m just entering high school. I mean, HAHAHA, I definitely did not disclose my age or anything (please don’t alert the admins). My sister, whose name is definitely most certainly not Alina—when Alina cut off all contact, it. . . was bad. I was so depressed.
My family wouldn’t talk about her, and it was almost like she’d died. And even though my family is pretty religious, I’m feeling pretty far away from God right now too. It’s like my prayers aren’t going through or something.
I’m probably boring you with details.
To make a long story short, I started seeing dragons a few weeks after she cut off co
AKA, “I think you’re crazy, son.”
Henceforth, I dropped the dragons topic of conversation. But am I going crazy, y’all? Let me know in the comments if you’ve heard of anything like this.
Comments
Penguin575: Your mom’s right, you are going crazy. Have you looked into how grief can cause hallucinations? You’d be surprised at the results.
This thread has fifty-seven comments.
Thirteen comments in—all variations of “You need to see a doctor”—another tap poked Xander’s shoulder.
In a flurry, he shut the laptop and spun around to catch Angeline’s narrowed brows.
“What were you looking at, Xander?”
He snorted and leaned back on his desk, playing it cool. “Oh, just this crazy comment thread about a guy who can see dragons. Like in the hallways, in his classroom, everywhere. Do you—?”
His voice hitched.
“Do you think he’s crazy?”
Her features went from icy to amusement. “Absolutely. I have a brother who is obsessed with soap carving, so that’s saying something if I think someone’s insane.”
“Haha, yeah. For sure.”
Rotating back to the front of his desk, he bunched his hands in his lap, ignoring the thrum of his heartbeat.
If he went to Mom and Dad with this, would they make him go to that counselor more than once a week?
Would they check him into some place until he could un-see the dragons?
They already spoke to him in soft tones all the time, as if they worried some wrong word would crackle him like an eggshell.
Like a dragon’s egg.
Like a crumbling wall.
Digging his nails into his palms, he firmed his jaw.
No, he wouldn’t tell them.
He wouldn’t tell anyone.
Basketballs thudded the gym floor the moment Xander entered through the swinging door.
No, not this.
Not today.
Of all the sports they could’ve chosen to do for their mandatory fifth-period gym class. . . they had to pick the one that led to the accident.
Wrinkling his nostrils at the stank of sweat that had seeped into the floor over the past who-knew-how-many-years, he stared at a whiteboard, plastered on a cinderblock wall. It was painted in the school colors, scarlet and gold.
Hi, Class! Every day you will complete the warmup. Once everyone has finished, we will start our game for the day. Today we’re doing basketball.
Warm Up for Today
4 laps around the gym
15 pushups (ladies you may do ‘girl pushups’ if you prefer)
30 crunches
Rolling his fingertips into fists, he began his jog around the gym. A group of boys ahead of him talked about how they already had gotten an assignment in their first few classes of the day. Part of him wanted to join the conversation. But would they look at him the same way Angeline did? With pity in their eyes? His stomach knotted at the thought.
Xander scanned the gym for some sign of the teacher. Possibilities mulled in his head about how he could ask to sit today out.
He glimpsed a boy going up for a layup in his scarlet gym shorts and gray uniform t-shirt to match. He must’ve been the one to escape the locker room first when they had to change out of their school uniform khakis and polos into the gym clothing.
Blinking away images of Mason doing similar drills in their driveway over the summer, the heat cooking their calf muscles, he forced his glance onto the bleachers.
There sat a boy with light brown skin and a dragon-patterned backpack nestled onto his stomach. He hugged the bag and stared forward.
Even from the distance at the other end of the gym, Xander recognized him—Zayn, the biggest nerd in the grade.
According to the social politics of Maranatha, nerds, geeks, and the like tended to fall into a number of categories.
The Cool Nerds: Those obsessed with Marvel and DC shows and cosplayed as the latest hero during Halloween celebrations. Sometimes Star Wars fans and Fortnite players fell into this category.
The Sociable Nerds: Middle schoolers who just happened to geek out about certain fandoms but could carry on a normal conversation with others. AKA, not talking about Harry Potter or Percy Jackson every two seconds.
The Nerdy Nerds: People who, if given the chance, would talk in medieval English and would wear dragon onesies to school—if not for the dress code.
One could imagine which category Zayn fell into.
Rounding the corner of the gym and passing the placards of past won championships for basketball, Xander’s gaze fell on an adult female in a blank white polo—not monogrammed in the school logo. An orange whistle hung from her neck.
Bingo.
Cutting across the gym floor, he jogged to her and skidded to a halt once her neck swung in his direction.
“Mrs.—”
“Chaves.” She tightened her ponytail. “And you are.” She consulted a clipboard.
“Xander Carson. I, umm, am not feeling the greatest. Can I sit out today?” Rocks piled in his stomach at the thought of gripping a basketball again. Shakiness overtook his fingertips and when he clenched them, his whole arm quaked.
Be strong, dude. Stop shaking.
Darkness fell over Chaves’s face, and lines formed on her forehead.
Ugh, he knew that look, dreaded that look.
Pity.
Chaves bent down, and a hand reached out, perhaps to clasp his shoulder. At the last minute, she withdrew her arm and looped her thumbs into her short’s pockets instead.
“Tell you what, complete your warmup, and you can sit this week out. We’ll be doing a different sport next week.”
Relief filled his insides.
What would he tell everyone else? Could he feign some sort of ankle or hand injury?
Finishing his laps, he met Angeline at the base of the whiteboard. She opted for “man” pushups today and glanced up at him, sweat beading on her forehead. A challenging expression filled her face, as if to dare him to tell her to do the “girly” warm-up instead.
Not wanting to face that sort of intimidation, Xander completed his crunches and pushups and settled on the bench next to Zayn.
Well, not exactly next to him.
He left a dragon’s width apart.
How did he know it was the precise berth of a dragon?
Because a dragon, with eight heads, literally sat between them. If Zayn noticed the serpentine creature, he didn’t let anything on.
Blinking the blurriness in his eyes, Xander hoped the dragon would go away.
It didn’t.
Could he get used to this, when he couldn’t even get used to everything happening at home?
“So.” Zayn leaned back into the bleachers, perching his elbows up. Unable to see around the dragon, Xander followed suit. “What took you down for the count? Sprained ankle? Panic attack? Asthma, like me?”
A group of girls jogged past. In the midst of them, a girl with icy blonde hair, shooting out of a thick fabric scrunchy, scrunched her nose at Zayn in a sneer. A laugh followed out of her lips, smothered in some pink lip gloss she liked to reapply every fifteen minutes or so.
Great. Luna.
Back in fourth grade, Luna had invited everyone to fishing parties with her grandpa at the lake near their house and had earned herself the paper plate award for “Kindest Classmate.”
All that went downhill in sixth grade, when Luna traded invites for gossip in locker rooms. Xander didn’t often find himself at the mercy of her rumors, thank goodness. According to Mason, back in the day, Xander had earned himself a spot as one of the more well-liked students in his grade.
Although, Xander had once found himself on Luna’s radar when he yelled at her in sixth grade—for the time she stuffed someone’s locker full of banana peels.
Was that Zayn’s locker?
Aside from a few sneers, memes sent to other middle schoolers with his face, and cold shoulders that week, Luna resumed her usual I-won’t-bother-you-if-you-don’t-bother-me dance with Xander. Since then, they hadn’t interacted much.
