Jesse couldn't stand Friday afternoons any more.
Once, he'd enjoyed them so much, but already the time when they'd been the single highlight of his week had faded into a dim memory, a forgotten fairytale. No, not a fairytale, because that had not begun until Leslie came and she had become what made his life worthwhile. And what a fairytale that had been...
He was the Prince of the piece, he supposed, and Leslie the Princess. But it wasn't quite an ordinary fairytale, because Leslie had not been a damsel in need of rescuing. If anything, Jesse was the one that had been saved, shown the magic that he had never dreamed of before he'd met her. She was the one who made him believe in fairy stories, in a happily ever after. And another role was filled by the Dark Master, who played the evil villain of the story. Everything fitted in.
But no, that still could not be right. This wasn't how fairytales worked. Every fairytale Jesse knew, in every one of May Belle's books, ended happily – with the Prince and Princess living long and happy lives forever after their tale had finished. Yet he was the only one left. And the Dark Master had won! He had taken Terabithia's Queen - Jesse's Queen - and the world had turned to darkness. Jesse might not know much, but he knew that that was wrong. But what could he do about it? There wasn't even any Dark Master any more, because Leslie had taken the magic away with her, and Jesse couldn't follow to ask for it back. He'd follow one day, he supposed, and maybe they could share the magic again then. But what about until that happened?
Until the fairytale was mended, Jesse would not enjoy his Friday afternoons with Miss Edmunds. He could not stop thinking of all the time he'd spent watching her in class, when really it was Leslie he should have been staring at to absorb every detail. He should have made the most of each fleeting second because in the end, there somehow seemed to have been so few of them.
He didn't watch Miss Edmunds in class any more, and he didn't sing or play her music. He drew. He drew pictures of a beautiful kingdom, of a King and a Queen, of a noble fortress, of a villain swathed in black. He drew the monsters, the heroes, he drew everyone and everything - and though only pencil markings were visible on the page, it was magic that sparkled from the end of his colours. Magic and memories, happiness and pain. He drew to forget, and he drew to remember.
The magic wasn't lost, not as Jesse's pencils spun a plan for a royal bridge, a crown, a new age for Terabithia. Because Leslie hadn't abandoned him without the magic. That had been her gift to him, and she would never take it back. He just had to work out how to use it again. And in the end, Leslie had still fixed everything. She was the fairy godmother as well as the Princess and the Queen, because she'd made Jesse's father love him again. Even though he couldn't see her any more, she was still looking out for him.
As another of Miss Edmund's songs echoed dimly in his ears, Jesse smiled. It was not a smile worthy of any great note, but Leslie would have liked to see it there nonetheless. And as he added a few final strokes to the design for May Belle's crown, he rather thought that he could see her smile too.