I CAN'T MAKE MIRACLES

CHAPTER 1

Author's Note. I don't own the people and places of Middle Earth. I only own the characters I made.


Jesse sat under his favorite tree, scrawling in his notebook, and wondered what it would be like to be someone else. He often daydreamed about life; it helped take away the pain from knowing that he had cancer.

A group of girls sat at a table nearby, laughing and gossiping. They kept glancing nervously at him. He was used to looks like those. People were still afraid of him, even though, when he first came to school, everyone was educated about his disease.

The lunch bell sounded and Jesse used the tree by him to pull himself up and groaned as he picked up his heavy backpack and swung it over his shoulder. He dragged himself down a few hallways before he heard the school nurse call him. Jesse stopped and waited for her to catch up to him. She handed him two paper cups, one had a pill and the other was filled with water. He mouthed the pill and then washed it down with the cool water. "You forgot to take your medication. That's the third time this week, Jesse. You are getting quite careless." He handed the two cups back to her and watcher as she crumpled them up and threw them in a nearby trash can. Then he continued down the hall.

Jesse sauntered through the door to his Biology class about a minute before it started. From the hallway he had heard many loud conversations, but as soon as he walked through the door everyone hushed to a whisper. Jesse made his way to his desk in the back corner of the room and dropped his backpack with a loud thud. Everyone turned to look at him, making him embarrassed so he sunk down in his chair.

He stared at the red notebook in his hand. Jesse laid it on top of his desk and flipped through the many pages filled with his thoughts and compositions. He stopped at a fresh page. The blank page sent Jesse deep into thought, so deep that he barely even lifted his head to look as the teacher walked through the door.

Mr. Duelette scanned the room and marked down people who were absent if he came across an empty desk. He would mark them late if they walked through the door right then. He sighed as he noticed the black baseball cap on Jesse's head. "Mr. Mathews, please remove your hat. You should know that there are no hats allowed in the classroom."

Jesse looked up, embarrassed, he removed his hat and sunk down in his chair when the class burst out laughing at his bald head. Mr. Duelette silenced the class. "Class, Cancer and chemotherapy are no laughing matter. I'm sorry Jesse. I forgot about our agreement. Thank you for listening to me anyway. You may put the hat back on if you wish." Jesse quickly put the hat back on, and picked up his pen and began to write down his thoughts in his notebook. Mr. Duelette headed him no more attention and began to talk about that Friday's lesson.

I wish I lived in a fantasy world. I wish that all my problems would just go away, Jesse wrote. He started all of his written thoughts this way, I was thinking today at lunch that I should love in live in a world like J.R.R Tolkien's Middle Earth. How wonderful it would be if I could live in the Shire with the Hobbits or in Mirkwood with the Elves. Of course if I could live there, I wouldn't have cancer. But...Whom am I fooling? I can't make miracles, nor can anyone else for that matter. Nevertheless, there is no harm in me hoping, no, wishing, no., praying that I could perhaps fit in and have friends.

A small tear fell onto the corner of his paper. This was his greatest desire and he would give anything to achieve it. Jesse wiped his eyes and closed the notebook, turning his attention to Mr. Duelette and his teachings.

* * * *


Jesse glanced up at the clock, 2:45, half an hour until school was over and Jesse could go home to a different kind of Hell. He was not looking forward to going back to his family, where everyone always fretted over him. They treated him like a prized possession that was about to be lost. To them, he was not a human at all, but a mere object.

Jesse glanced to the two cheerleaders sitting next to him. Study Hall, a time to pass notes and look cool, or do your homework and not. Jesse had one more assignment. It was for Biology, it had to do with the topic discussed that day, as always, but he had missed half the lecture so the paper puzzled him. He thought about it for a second and guessed on the questions he didn't know.

The cheerleaders giggled and one flicked her blonde hair over her shoulder. Jesse got a glance at the note they were passing and his eyes leapt to one word on the page: cancer. Jesse pulled his note book from under his homework and opened it to a blank page.

Oh great, he wrote, not only do I have to be laughed at, but also I get written about in notes. Can my life get any worse? I surely will get a D if not an F on this Biology assignment because I was too busy writing to pay attention in class so I had to guess on three-quarters of the questions. I only have 15 more minutes before my mother comes to pick me up. Then I just want to go home and sleep. I'm not hungry; I haven't been all day. I just want to sleep away my life. I just want to sleep away this living hell.

Jesse sighed and closed his notebook. He shoved everything back into his backpack and watched as the second hand on the clock went around in circles. Jesse's eyelids got heavy and they drooped. The classroom became a dark blur around him. The sound of the bell awoke him with a start.

Conversations roared to life. Kids started talking where their notes had left off, the teacher yelled to get everyone's attention. Of course that never works and everyone just leaves. Jesse draged his shaky body out of the classroom and down the hall to his locker. He heard his name being called and turns around to see his sister, Kate, running to catch up with him. Kate boyfriend, Derek was behind her. "Jesse, Mom called the office and said that she wasn't able to pick you up so Derek volunteered to give us both a ride home." Both Derek and Kate were seniors and Derek had his own car. He often drove Kate to and from school and rarely headed Jesse any attention. Of course Jesse didn't care how he got home, as long as he got home and was able to go to sleep.

The three of them walked into the student parking lot and Derek led them to his car. It was a simple red sports car. But Jesse liked the fact that he got to ride in it. It was better than his mom's Mini van. Derek popped the trunk and the three of them tossed their backpacks in before Derek closed it. Jesse climbed into the back seat. Kate rode shotgun and Derek of course drove.

The car ride was silent except for the radio. Jesse didn't mind about Derek's punk rock, because he was too busy thinking about Middle Earth. He thought so hard that Jesse could swear that he smelled the fresh air in Fangorn forest. Before Jesse knew it, Derek had stopped the car in front of his house. He wasn't tired anymore, but rather he was glad to be out of the car.

Jesse got out and grabbed his backpack and walked up the front walkway and waited for Kate to come unlock the door. He watched as his sister planted a kiss on Derek's cheek before grabbing her backpack and dashing to unlock the door.

Jesse made his way through the main hall into his room. He shut the door to his room and turned on his radio. No one had been in his room for 6 months but him. It was a deal he made with his family, if he wanted to get away he would go in his room. Since no one was going into his room he was able to do stuff he wasn't normally able to do.

Jesse stood in the center of his room and looked at his walls. Black sharpie had taken over the once completely white walls. His scraggly handwriting took over parts of the walls with an unfinished story he was writing. He looked at the sharpie on his dresser and picked it up and uncapped it. He found the end of his writing and placed the sharpie to the wall and continued his story of an Elf named Jesse who lived in middle earth.

The boy headed no attention to his alarm clock that glowed in the corner of his room until his body was getting weary. He looks and sees that it is after one in the morning. He recapped the sharpie and lied down in his bed. His eyes closed and he drifted into a dreamless sleep.