TWO

It was dark, now, and the only light came from the fire. Each child had their plate and their can of soda and was busy roasting marshmallows and sticking them on top of their crackers and chocolate. Nobody wanted to go first with their story. Buttercup had made up her mind to wait, and she was staring into the flames, the flickering reflections dancing on her eyeballs. She pushed a marshmallow into the fire and watched it burst into flame, waited until it was fully engulfed, pulled it out and blew on it, then put the stick in her mouth and slid it out without the charred lump, which she bit down on. It made a satisfying crunch.

"Mmmmm, burnt offerings…."

"How can you stand to eat them like that?" Blossom asked in disgust while toasting her marshmallow to a nice even brown. Mitch got one blazing and with a wide grin, bent the top of his stick backward and released it. The flaming marshmallow took off like a shooting star toward the boys’ cabin and crashed to earth in the grass.

"Mitchell!" Ms. Keane scolded as most of the other children laughed. Blossom was not impressed and gave him a dirty look, but he was watching for Buttercup’s approval. She didn’t even crack a grin, just sat stone-faced burning herself another marshmallow. The campfire lit up her face with an eerie glow.

"No one else better try that!" the teacher warned, and the chuckling died down. "Now, if nobody’s going to volunteer, I’ll pick someone. Elmer, how about you?"

"Awwww."

"Go ahead, Elmer. Everyone’s going to get a turn."

The twins and Bubbles groaned. "But I’m no good at making up stories!" Elmer complained. "Me neither." Bubbles whined.

Blossom turned to her. "Yes you are, Bubbles. The Professor believes EVERYTHING you tell him."

Bubbles stuck out her tongue but Blossom missed it. She wanted to see Buttercup’s grin, and she was kind of surprised her sister hadn’t gotten that jab out before she did. But Buttercup just continued to stare into the fire. Blossom waved her hand in her sister's face. "I’m listening…" Buttercup said in a monotone, while chewing.

"Whoa… she must have a REAL good one!" Blossom thought. "I don’t have a very good one and I’ve been thinking all day!"

"Elmer…we’re waiting!" Keane prompted.

He hung his head. "Oh, all right… once there was this kid who everybody picked on ‘cause he was diff’rent from them." He looked up at his teacher for approval.

"That’s very good, Elmer. Please continue…"

"Ok. And one day they all picked on him, especially this one girl who wouldn’t ‘pologize and he got real mad and turned into a BIG MONSTER!"

He’d looked right at Buttercup when he said it, but she didn’t notice. Harry and Mitch both made raspberry sounds and Julie groaned audibly.

"Oh, brother!" Blossom said, beginning to wave her hands for emphasis. "Elmer, you’re talking about yourself! We already KNOW that! You’re supposed to make something up!"

"Yeah, that wasn’t scary!" Mitch rasped. "The only fraidy cat was you, paste-eater!"

The Floyjoydsen boys picked right up on that and mocked Elmer, but Bubbles said, "I was scared!"

Ms. Keane said, "Elmer, you certainly scared me, and it scares me now to even think about it!"

"Yeah," Julie agreed, smirking at Mitch. "YOU looked pretty scared when Elmer stuck you on the flagpole!"

"Yeah, Elmer, that was cool!" Harry laughed.

Elmer smiled a big smile and looked at Buttercup. "And it was cool when you hit the school bus, Buttercup, you looked like a bomb when you were falling! Buttercup?"

She hadn’t done a thing but shove another s’more in her mouth, chew and stare into the flames. "I’m listening…"

"She’s like a zombie." Floyd said.

Bubbles shrieked, "A zombie!" and jumped to her feet and began to walk stiff-legged, giggling while she did it. Blossom grabbed her by the arm and yanked her to a sitting position.

"Bubbles, why don’t you go next?" Ms. Keane told the excitable ‘Puff.

"But the only scary stuff I know is things that happened to us that you guys already know about!" she whined.

Julie, sitting next to her, said, "Aw, c’mon, you girls have seen things nobody would believe. There has to be SOMETHING you could make up a story from!"

Bubbles thought for a minute. "Weeeelll…..there WAS this one time….it was the middle of the night, and I heard this awful noise that woke me up. I said, ‘Blossom? Buttercup? Did you hear that?’ But only Buttercup woke up, and she told me to shut up an’ go to sleep, but then I heard it again and it went ‘ooooahhOWWWeeeeeeohAHHH!!!’ Buttercup jumped out of bed and yelled ‘What was that?’ and she put the light on and we both said, ‘Blossom! What’s that noise?’"

She turned to look at her sister, and said in a low voice. "Only you weren’t there!"

Blossom frowned and said, "I don’t remember this! I thought you said you couldn’t make up stuff, Bubbles!"

"Yes, Bubbles, this is very good so far, please go on!" Ms. Keane urged. The other children looked very interested in hearing Bubbles’ tale.

"But I’m not makin’ it up! Oh, well," she shrugged. "So, then Buttercup says, ‘Where’s that Blossom at?’ and I said ‘I dunno.’ And Buttercup says, ‘Well, we better go check it out. It sounded like it was comin’ from the lab!’"

"I never heard nothing like that before! I got real worried ‘cause what if it was some monster that got the Professor? An’ Blossom too, ‘cause if she was okay then we wouldn’t be hearing those noises. So we started to go down there real careful ‘cause we didn’t want whatever it was gettin’ us either. The noise kept getting louder and it hurt my ears. Buttercup looked at me and said, ‘This is bad, Bubbles, whatever’s down there is makin’ the worst noise I ever heard.’ We almost got to the door of the lab, and then we heard the Professor screaming."

Bubbles paused for effect. She had a good, natural sense for drama, even if she didn’t know it. The other kids’ attention was riveted on her, except for Buttercup, who sat with a fixed stare. Blossom wondered just where the heck Bubbles had invented this one from. It was pretty good.

"Bubbles! Don’t keep us in suspense!"

Bubbles stared at Blossom, then slowly looked around the fire. "Buttercup broke the door down." she said quietly. "It was awful. Professor was sitting at his desk holding his hands over his ears." Her voice rose suddenly in pitch and volume, imitating the Professor.

"‘Stop it!’ he screamed. ‘I can’t take any more!’ It was terrible! The screeching! The howling! Whatever it was, it was scarier than anything we’d ever seen and Blossom wasn’t there to help us!"

She lowered her voice to a whisper. "Then we saw why." She jumped, causing everyone else to jump, too. "It had Blossom!" she screeched. "That’s why Blossom couldn’t yell or do anything, because it had her! It was a big, fat black snake-monster with all kinds of weird little arms sticking out of it, and it was in Blossom’s mouth, tryin’ to strangle her! But she was wearin’ headphones and must’ve never heard it sneakin’ up on her! It was so awful! It made even worse noises and we flew at it and Professor screamed again even louder for it to stop, and then Blossom took her headphones off and screamed, too! And that made the snake stop attackin’ her and be quiet!"

"What did I say?" Blossom asked excitedly, her breath coming in short gasps. "What did I say?"

"You yelled, ‘What’s everybody yelling for? I can’t hear myself think!’

"Huh?"

"You were practicin’ with your clarinet, Blossom! It’s the worst thing I EVER heard!"

She burst into a fit of wild giggling. The other kids, stunned by the sudden switch from horror to comedy, didn’t know how to react, but when Ms. Keane laughed hysterically, putting her hands over her mouth, they began to chuckle, then laugh louder. They still weren’t sure why they were laughing. Bubbles had given them a good scare.

"Bubbles, that was a MARVELOUS story!" her teacher congratulated her. "What a twist at the end!"

"Heh heh, yeah!" Blossom said, her blushing once again concealed by the dark. "That was a GREAT story, Bubbles!"

"But…" Bubbles began to protest that it wasn’t a story, but a quick kick in the leg from Blossom shushed her. Blossom’s embarrassment at the time of the incident had caused her to push it way back in her mind and she never had a clue as to what Bubbles was telling. But now she remembered it well and knew Buttercup would, too. Her sister had rolled on the floor once she realized what was going on, and wouldn’t shut up about it for days. Blossom stole a glance Buttercup’s way, knowing she’d see a huge smirk, and saw only a tiny curl of Buttercup’s lips. That amazed her. What the heck kind of story did she have in mind to be so focused like this?

Everyone had been so spellbound by Bubbles that they forgot to eat their snacks, and the sudden relief of having their figurative collars let go gave them a burst of energy and they toasted, put together and ate their gooey confections. Harry wiped a smear of melted chocolate and marshmallow on his shirt and Julie inched even closer to Bubbles.

"Ok, who wants to go next?" Ms. Keane asked. No one volunteered. "All right, I’ll pick someone. Since you just went, Bubbles, we’ll go clockwise. We’ll start with you, Blossom."

"No!" she began to protest, but saw that Ms. Keane was only starting the ‘eeny-meeny-miney-moe, catch a villain by the toe’ routine with her. She breathed a sigh of relief. It quickly turned into a gasp when she saw where it was going to wind up, with everyone but her zombie-like sister pointing at her and shouting "YOU!"

"Ohhhhh", she groaned. "I don’t have one ready!"

"Now, Blossom." Keane looked at her. "Look how well Bubbles did when she didn’t think she could."

She was bummed. She liked to deal with the real world, real problems and real solutions. The fantasy world didn’t interest her all that much. If she’d had more time to think, it would have dawned on her that having a good imagination could help in finding creative solutions to real problems, but right now she was just worried about embarrassing herself.

"I’ll go next, Ms. Keane." Julie Bean spoke up suddenly.

"Really? Thanks, Julie!" Blossom smiled at the red-haired girl, then looked at her teacher to see if it was okay.

"Go right ahead, Julie," she smiled, then looked at Blossom. "But it doesn’t let you off the hook, Blossom. Everybody ‘s going to have a turn tonight…" she hunched her shoulders like an old crone, cast her gaze around the fire and cackled, "…if it’s the last thing they do! Hahahahahaha!!"

Everyone jumped a bit, and Keane smiled and returned to normal. "Please begin, Julie."

"Okay. Let’s see…once upon a time there was this little boy. He lived all alone with his Mommy and Daddy in a big city, but he didn’t have any friends. When he wanted to know why he couldn’t go outside and play with the other little boys and girls in the neighborhood, they told him it was because he was very special and they didn’t want him getting hurt, like often happens to little kids. But he would look out the windows at the other children running and laughing and having fun and it made him sad. He wondered if any of them had mirrors everywhere all over the place in their houses like he did. He asked his parents why about that, too."

"‘Mommy, why do we have mirrors everywhere?’"

Julie tried to make her voice sound older. " ‘Because you are so very beautiful and special, dear, that we want you to be able to always see just how beautiful and special you are.’"

"That made him smile, because he could see in the mirrors that he was. He had perfect pale skin, golden hair and eyes that were the deepest blue, just like the sky was tonight after the sun went down. But he still wondered what the world was like on the outside. His Mommy was always home with him, so he never got to go out by himself. He could go out to play if one of them was with him and they took him into town all the time, but they always made him put on a disguise first. It was so the sun wouldn’t hurt his beautiful skin, his Mommy told him."

"Wow, this is good!" thought Blossom and Bubbles at the same time. Buttercup remained in her trance-like state. Ms. Keane was impressed herself and looked around to see how the boys were reacting. Elmer and Harry both seemed to be paying attention, but the twins sat slack-jawed as usual, and Mitch smirked slightly.

Julie continued with her tale. "One day the little boy was left alone when his Mommy went to the neighbor’s house for just a minute. It was his chance to find out what it was like to be outdoors in the sun without his disguise on, so he opened the door and ran out…"

"And the sun shriveled him up into a raisin!" Mitch interrupted. Julie was too shocked to be angry but Blossom, Bubbles and Ms. Keane let Mitch know they didn’t like it. Julie was so disheartened she didn’t want to go on, but after Harry and Elmer both added to the others’ encouragement, she finally did.

"So the little boy ran outside. It was a beautiful sunny day and he was so happy that he ran toward the playground where he hoped some of the other children would be playing. When he got there the swings were full and so was all the other stuff, so he went over by a group of kids by the slide. All of a sudden the kids started screaming, 'A monster!', and they ran away. The little boy looked around for the monster but all he saw was the children running. Then more kids started screaming and pointing toward him. He was real confused and turned around but the monster wasn’t behind him, either."

‘Hey, where are you all going?’ he yelled, but none of them stopped to tell him. They just kept running and screaming and in a minute, he was all by himself. Without anybody to play with it wasn’t any fun so he left the playground and walked toward downtown. Every time he walked past someone they either screamed and pointed or ran back in their houses or shops. But every time he turned around the monster wasn’t there. He started to get scared. It kept hiding and he just knew whatever it was, it was going to get him. So he turned around and ran back toward his house.

‘Get it!’ some of the townspeople yelled. ‘Get the monster!’, and they started to run after him. He was glad they were going to help him, but he didn’t understand why they could see the monster but he couldn’t. He ran past the old-fashioned barber shop and when he did, he saw his reflection in the mirror out front. It was him! He was the monster! He had green skin like a lizard and it was all bumpy and his eyes were big like a frog’s and he didn’t have any hair. He had flippers with claws instead of hands and feet and his shoes were gone. He wasn’t the little boy he always thought he saw in the mirrors in his house, and he knew why. Those were special mirrors so he wouldn’t think he was a monster, and that’s why he always had to go outside with a disguise. He started to cry and he ran as fast as he could toward home, but more and more people started chasing him and yelling at him. Some of them even had sticks to hit him with if they caught him and other people threw stones at him."

Now, even the twins were paying attention. Bubbles’ hands were to her mouth in fear of what was going to happen to the poor little monster-boy.

"He ran faster and faster, and pretty soon he could see his house, and his Mommy was outside screaming for him to run, to hurry up and get inside the house. A rock hit him in the leg and he almost fell but he kept going and got to his door. His mother pulled him in and slammed the door and locked it. Rocks and sticks hit the outside of the house and the boy and his mother heard the people shouting, ‘Let us in!’ and ‘Monster!’ and other real mean things. The boy’s Mommy took him in her arms and tried to get him to stop crying, but he was so afraid the people were going to get him. He looked around at all the mirrors and saw just what he thought he would. He looked like the same perfect little boy he always thought he was, until that morning. He pointed at his reflection.

‘Mommy, why do those mirrors make me look different than I really am?’

‘They don’t, dear, that’s how you look.’" Julie said, in the older voice.

"‘But Mommy, I really AM a monster! I saw it!’

‘No you’re not, you’re my beautiful little boy and I love you!’

The people outside were getting louder and trying to break the door in.

‘Mommy, why do I look different in this mirror but you look the same?’

Before she could tell him, the door crashed open and people came in screaming, waving sticks. ‘Get him!’ they all yelled.

‘Stop!’ the boy’s mother shouted. ‘Stop, and look at yourselves!’

The yelling people looked at the mother holding her little scared lizard-boy, and looked in the mirrors on the walls. What they all saw was the same lady holding a beautiful, terrified little boy with perfect skin, golden hair and deep blue eyes. They also saw a house full of hideous creatures, worse than anything we ever had in Townsville, and they were holding sticks and drooling and worse.

The mother squeezed her little boy tighter and told the people, ‘These are special mirrors that show us what we really look like on the inside. Sometimes we don’t like what we see, but it’s always the truth.’

The people were ashamed of themselves and they all said they were sorry and went home. They told their children the lesson they had learned and whenever their kids were bad, they had to go to the little boy’s house to see what THEY really looked like. And from that day on, the little boy never had to wear a disguise again and he could run and play and have fun outside with all his new friends, and everyone lived happily ever after. The end."

"Bravo!" Ms. Keane cried, clapping her hands. "Julie, that was WONDERFUL!"

Blossom and Bubbles both applauded too, and Elmer, Harry and even the twins, to a lesser degree, followed suit. Mitch just sat there, playing with the edge of the fire with his stick.

Blossom wiped away a tear. "I can’t do anything that good!" Bubbles leaned over and gave Julie a hug. There were tears in her eyes, too.

"Thanks, everybody." Julie said, a bit embarrassed.

"Ah, gee, everybody’s gettin’ mushy!" Mitch griped. "We’re supposed to be scarin’ each other, not tellin’ stories with stupid morals!"

"What’s wrong with a good moral?" Blossom shot back. The fire was dying down, so she floated up and over to the woodpile next to Harry to re-stoke the fire, eyeing Mitch with disgust.

"Now, Mitch," Ms. Keane chided. "I think we all felt how scared that little boy was. I certainly did. And Julie’s story also teaches an important lesson, that we should judge people for what they are, not what they look like."

"You don’t know the half of it." Buttercup whispered. Heads turned to look at her and saw her face glistening with tears, but her eyes never moved from the flames.

Blossom laid sticks in the fire, wondering, "What IS she thinking about?"

"Buttercup, you’re so quiet tonight. Are you OK?" her teacher inquired. She got barely a nod in the affirmative. "Are you ready to tell yours?"

"Not yet…" came the quiet monotone. "…soon…it will be time…"

Chapter Three

Chapter One

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