I Found A Leather-Bound Case In A Tree And I Really Wish I Had Never Found It

I didn’t know what to say. For a long time I didn’t really answer her, just gave her non-answers like “Oh, you know…” and “It’s not a big deal…”, but these did not satisfy her. I felt like I was being interrogated. I remember my room feeling unbelievably hot as she examined sketch after sketch becoming more and more insistent with me, almost angry. Finally, I felt I had no choice but to tell her the truth. Something deep in me screamed out to not to say it, but I silenced that voice quickly and explained everything. Not in great detail, and certainly nothing about that day in 7th grade, but just about the pencils in general, and how they gave me a sort of supernatural edge.

To my shock and astonishment, she laughed, an easy, beautiful laugh.

“Oh, you are so adorable!” she said.

Sarah went on to explain that she had a special paint brush that her (deceased) grandmother had given her that she had a similar sort of attachment to, and upon hearing her story I felt as if a weight lifted off my chest. I felt like laughing or even crying at this revelation. Laying in bed later after she had been picked up and taken home, I decided that all the weirdness with the pencils had just been superstition, and that whatever had happened that day in 7th grade had been just some weird coincidence played up in my young mind. I never actually showed Sarah the pencils, though. In spite of all the relief, some nagging feeling kept me from going that far.

I was still careful with the pencils, but after that day they were no longer the dark magician’s tools I had once thought of them as, they were just something sentimental to me. I began to use the pencils more and to worry less about whether they were out on my desk or buried deep within it. There still seemed to be a certain edge I had while drawing with them, but the difference seemed smaller than ever.