by Jon Herrera
way up. The boy wasn’t among them.
“Go to class, please,” someone said. Emma turned and saw one of the teachers. He was a tall man with gray hair and a round belly.
“Sorry,” Emma said. “I was just looking for someone.” She fled up the stairs.
When she reached her classroom, Emma saw that the boy she had been looking for was sitting at the desk nearest the door.
“You’re in my class? How did you get here?” she said.
Everyone in the class turned to look at her, including the teacher.
“Emma,” she said. “Please sit down. And try not to be late next time.”
Emma turned pink. “Yes, Miss Robins,” she said and took her seat.
Emma tried to catch the boy again during lunch time.
She entered the busy cafeteria and sat down with Will and his friends, Kevin and Joey. The room was filled to capacity. Laughter erupted now and then from one table or another.
“So full in here this year,” Kevin said. “It’s all the stupid grade sixes.”
“Yeah, so many new ones,” Joey said. He motioned toward Emma with a tilt of his head.
“Sorry, Emma,” Kevin said. “You’re not actually that stupid.”
When she finished eating, Emma scanned her surroundings as she sipped out of a box of apple juice. There were too many kids and she couldn’t see very far because she wasn’t tall enough. With a sigh, she climbed on top of her chair.
A carrot stick flew by her head while she looked. From her vantage point, she estimated that she could see maybe two thirds of the students in the cafeteria but that she would miss the boy if he was somewhere on the periphery. If the boy didn’t have any friends, and wanted to avoid company, then he was certain to be somewhere along the edge of the room. She needed to go higher.
Without thinking, she climbed on top of the table.
“Emma, what are you doing?” Will said.
“Looking for someone,” she said absently. A pizza crust sailed past her.
“Mr Clarence is coming,” Joey said.
“Who?” She spun around in time to see the arrival of the elderly man from before, the one she had run into at the bottom of the stairs.
“Oh. Hello,” she said.
“Emma, he’s the principal,” Will said.
“Oh. Hello, sir.”
“What is your name, young lady?” Mr Clarence said.
“Emma, Mr Clarence.”
“Please get down from there, Emma.”
“Yes, Mr Clarence.”
Emma looked for the boy again during the afternoon’s recess period. She climbed up the slide in the playground and stood at the top like a sentry.
Over by the basketball courts, Will and his friends were bouncing a ball around. Emma waved to him but he didn’t wave back. On the soccer field, there was a gathering of eighth graders. They were hanging around the goal posts. The playground was filled with younger children. They were running about and playing.
Emma scanned the school in this way for a few minutes. From school building to basketball courts, over to the soccer field, and then to the playground. She saw no sign of the boy. It was like he was invisible.
When she finally spotted him, it was where Will and his friends were shooting the basketball around. He was standing on the grass beyond the court, leaning under the shade of a tree.
Emma went down the slide and ran through the playground. She took her eyes off the boy for only a moment but when she reached the basketball courts he was nowhere in sight.
Will saw her and stopped in mid-dribble.
“Emma?” he said.
“Hey, Will.”
“What are you doing?”
“Just looking for someone,” she said.
During dinner that evening, Emma didn’t say much. She was lost in thought trying to figure out how to corner the disappearing boy. She imagined a giant box and a stick with a string tied to it, but she couldn’t think of anything that she could use as bait.
“Who were you looking for today, Emma?” Will said, interrupting her imaginings.
“A boy,” she said.
“A boy?”
Mr Wilkins arched an eyebrow. He was at his normal place at the head of the table. Will was to his right while Emma was sitting at the other end of it.
She snapped to attention. “Not like that!” she said. “There is a boy in my class and I think he has powers.”
“Powers?”
Emma nodded. “One, at least. I’ve been trying to become his friend and he keeps disappearing.”
“I don’t blame him,” Will said.
“I’m serious!”
She was about to explain her failed attempts to catch the boy when a peculiar idea occurred to her.
“Dad, what if Andrew Milligan disappeared on purpose,” she said, “just like this boy does? What if they both have powers?”
“Like maybe they’re wizards?” Will said.
“Yeah!” Emma said. “Maybe that’s it. Maybe they’re both wizards.”
“Now,” Mr Wilkins said, “while that’s entirely possible, maybe there’s another, more reasonable explanation. Do you know the boy’s name?”
“No,” she said. “How can I find out his name if I can’t even talk to him?”
“Don’t they take attendance at Briardale?”
“Brilliant, Dad!” Emma said.
The next morning during attendance, Emma kept her eyes fixed on the suspected wizard. He was plain and hard to notice. The boy was slunked down on his seat but not so much that it would draw attention from the teacher. His hair was neat and his clothes were clean, if a bit faded. As Miss Robins called out the names of the students, the boy sat perfectly still and avoided looking at the teacher.
“Collins, Suzanne,” Miss Robins said, and the girl who sat behind him raised her hand.
“Close!” whispered Emma, but then she realized that was silly.
The teacher went on down the D’s and the E’s and so on.
“Grieger, Eric.”
Another boy raised his hand. There was also “Johns, Jeff” and “Laurier, Molly” and other names that were familiar to Emma from previous years. Even when Miss Robins got to her name, way down the list, Emma didn’t stop looking at the boy. She raised her hand and barked a swift, “Present!”
“Good,” Miss Robins said. “Everyone’s here.” She walked back to her desk and put her clipboard down.
“What!” Emma yelled.
“Emma, is there a problem?”
Everyone was looking at her. She hadn’t meant to shout. Even the wizard boy was watching her. She hadn’t taken her eyes off him during all of attendance. She was sure that his name simply hadn’t been called.
“Do you people even see him?” Emma said, still more loudly than she intended. “Is he invisible too?”
“Emma, settle down,” said Miss Robins. “Who are you talking about?”
“Him!” she said and stood up and pointed at the boy. Her hand hit her notebook and it flipped up and hit the boy in front of her in the back of the head. Jeff Johns turned to glare at her as he rubbed his neck.
“Emma Wilkins!” Miss Robins said. “Sit down right this minute. That’s one strike for disturbing the class!”
Over on the side of the room, on the wall, there was a poster board with the word “STRIKES” written at the top of it. The rest of it was blank but Miss Robins took a permanent marker and wrote on it:
EMMA WILKENS: X
Emma was mortified in equal amounts by being the first one on the Strike Board and by the misspelling of her last name. She tried to protest but the teacher hushed her down and threatened to give her another strike immediately if she didn’t stop talking.
She pressed her lips together into a thin line to keep herself from speaking. She reasoned that at least now she knew that the boy was, in fact, a wizard and there was a strong indication that she was the only one who could see him. She was more determined than ever to find out his secrets and q
uestion him about the disappearance of Andrew Milligan.
The chase went on that same way for the next day. Emma didn’t give up trying to catch the boy but he always got away from her somehow. He was always in the classroom before she got there and he always rushed out before she could catch up to him. He wasn’t in the cafeteria during lunch time.
On Thursday morning, the boy didn’t show up at school at all and his desk stood empty. Emma raised her hand.
“Yes?”
“May I go to the bathroom?”
Miss Robins nodded and continued her lesson. Emma stood up. On her way out, she paused in front of the boy’s desk. Suzie Collins gave her a quizzical look.
“Are you here?” Emma whispered at the empty chair. She waited a moment but when there was no answer, she waved her hand through the air above it. “Oh, alright,” she said and looked up to see a look of puzzlement on Suzie’s face.
“Emma,” said Miss Robins. “Are you going to the bathroom or are you just going to stand there all day?”
Emma ran out of the room.
The worst time of the day at the Wilkins household, as Emma saw it, was right after dinner because it was time for violin practice. Mr Wilkins, being a physicist, idolized Albert Einstein. Because Einstein had played the violin, he was trying to learn to play it as well.
Emma was sitting in the living room trying to do her math homework on the coffee table but the screeching from her father’s office was making it difficult. She put her pencil down, went to his door, and knocked on it.
The screeching continued uninterrupted.
“Dad!” she screeched back and knocked again.
The door opened and she let herself into the room. Early on, Emma had figured out a trick that cut down on practice time. Mr Wilkins always set a countdown on his computer for exactly one hour. If someone
