The beginning of my morning was a blur. A Crimson Blur. I got up and got ready almost mechanically, as if nothing really mattered… I think. All I remember is that after the events of last night, I fell back asleep in the car as my mama drove me to school. I woke up as the car stopped in the carpool lane and groggily got out of the car, stepping through the gate into the playground surrounding the kindergarten building.
"Have fun at school!" my mama said before driving away, leaving me with a bewildered expression on my face. I took a few uncertain steps forward, and wasn't quite sure what to do next. I heard an engine rumbling behind me and saw another car pull up. The person who got out was Jacques. His unblinking eyes slightly bloodshot, he strode quickly past me on his long legs without as much as an acknowledgment for me. Clearly, this man was on a mission. Jacques flung open the door to the building and disappeared inside, and it was almost as if he had never been there.
Now that I was free to advance through the playground, I took a few more uncertain steps forward and saw Kiki standing near the slide.
"Sup, Maddie," she said.
"Not much," I replied, yawning. "Just got here a second ago."
"Yeah," she replied, yawning. "I got here right before you."
I yawned. "You seem pretty tired," I commented.
"Yeah, I had a pretty weird dream last night. But then I had a bagel for breakfast so it's all good."
"I had a pretty weird dream too," I added, a little surprised at the coincidence.
"Oh word? Was I in it? You know, if you're in somebody else's dream, it means they're also dreaming about you."
My brain started thinking really, really hard. Kiki must have noticed my expression because she also looked like she was thinking. "Hold up..." she said, scratching her head. "I think I got that backwards."
"It's okay," I said. "I get what you mean. But no, I don't think you were in my dream."
"That's a bummer," she said, looking at her bare wrist like she was wearing a watch. "Well, school is gonna start soon, so I gotta jet. We should chill during centers or something." She peaced out.
"Darn," I thought to myself. "She's really a cool cat." She was right though, school was going to be starting soon, and I could see Julia getting out of her car before I walked into the building. As I walked through the vestibulum, I noticed that the door to the left classroom was still sealed shut. I wondered how different my life would have been had the Lucky Penny sent me to that classroom instead. Oh well, my mama says that I shouldn't worry about things that's happened in the past. I shrugged and entered the classroom on the right, where Mr. Pony and my classmates awaited.
I joined the rest of the class in the center of the rug, as we waited for the usual lagbehinds to show up. The last two people to arrive were Rachel and Eli, but once everyone was here, Mr. Pony was able to begin.
"Good morning, everybody!" Mr. Pony seemed in an unusually good mood today. I could tell that they had been drinking a lot of coffee. My mama says that I'm not allowed to drink coffee until I'm older because it's a grown-up drink. I watched, awestruck with fascination.
"As promised, we're going to begin our day with centers yet again! Isn't that exciting?"
Everyone else seemed to be excited, but I was still a little nervous. Though I had interacted with many people yesterday, I had only hung out with two or three during actual centers. There were still so many people that I needed to get to know, and not enough time! There were even a few people whose names I didn't even know! My head started swimming like a sea full of fish. AS people started splitting up to go interact with each other, I procured the Lucky Penny and began flipping. After an intense series of flips, there were only two students remaining: Kiki, and a boy with a gray-brown bowl cut, graphic tee that read "ECKE℞D", and cherry-red lips. As I flipped the Lucky Penny, I kinda hoped that it would land on whatever side I decided would mean that I would hang out with Kiki. Alas, it landed on heads, so I decided that meant I would go introduce myself to the other boy instead.
"Howdy," I said, closing my eyes and raising my hand in a form of greeting. "I'm Maddie, and uh… I like my cat, Blossoms." I added on the last part as I remembered the rules of centers at the last second. "My fun fact is that, um, I'm new to this school."
"I'm William," said the boy, his red lips parting into a smile. "I really like Subway. My fun fact is that I play a lot of video games."
"Subway?" I asked. "Like, the restaurant?"
"Yeah," said William. "I just think the whole place is so cool. You get to design your own sandwich with whatever you want, and they make it right in front of you! They always taste so good, too."
I put one of my fingers on my chin and looked upwards and to the left. "I never really thought about it that way," I remarked.
"Yeah, I've always wanted to be able to make my own sandwich there," added William, before tilting his eyebrows outward, closing his eyes, and sweating a little. "But they've never let me do it, for 'liability reasons', whatever that means."
"Oh. Well, maybe they'll let you get a job there when you're older," I said.
"That'd be like a dream come true," said William, imagining lots of tasty sandwiches in his head. That gave me a scrumptious idea.
"Hold on just a second," I said, reaching into my pocket. "Do you want this, by any chance?" I pulled out the Butter Sandwich that Chuck had given me yesterday.
William's eyes widened and his jaw dropped. He pointed at the Ziploc bag in my hand containing one (1) butter sandwich. "Wh-what is that?!" he asked, his voice a shocked whisper.
"Oh, it's just a butter sandwich," I replied, shaking the bag slightly. The corneas of William's eyes followed the movement pattern of the sandwich as it swung back and forth.
"H-how did you get this?" he stuttered. "Can I please have it?"
"Sure," I replied. "And as for how I got it, you'll need to talk to the first grader Chuck during lunch. He taught me how to make them." William reached out his hands to accept the butter sandwich from my generous grasp, when all of a sudden…
"Hold it!" Mr. Pony sprung up between us, an irritated expression on their face and their arms raised in the air like they just didn't care. "It's against the rules to give another student food in class, unless you have enough to share with everyone!" The sudden revelation of this inconvenient rule disheartened both me and William for a second, until another voice interjected, accompanied by the snap of a black glove. "If I may interject..."
It was Rachel, who had stunningly broken her silence to influence the outcome of the current situation.
"Hm? What's this?" asked Mr. Pony, lilting their head to one side and putting a hand to their chin.
"Maddie is not giving him food," began Rachel, closing her eyes and folding her hands in front of her.
"I'm not?" I asked, obviously confused.
"She's not?" echoed Mr. Pony. "Please, do explain."
"No, she is not giving the butter sandwich to William," continued Rachel. Suddenly, she turned to one side and put her hand to her chin. "She is giving the Ziploc bag to him. The sandwich only happens to be inside of the bag and comes as an extra add on." She then turned to face us, holding out her right hand as if she was palming a large ball in front of herself. "Therefore, the object that Maddie is giving William is not the butter sandwich, but rather the bag that contains it!" Rachel returned to closing her eyes and folding her hands in front of her. "And unless anyone would venture to argue that a Ziploc bag qualifies as food, that means no rules have been violated here."
Mr. Pony made a shocked expression. I felt like my whole world had just been shattered. William just looked kinda spaced out.
"Ho ho ho!" chortled Mr. Pony, sounding a bit like Santa Claus. "That's the kind of critical thinking I like to see. They sure don't teach that in schools anymore. Very well, I'll let it slide, just this once." And with that, Mr. Pony skedaddled, likely to check up on other students.
I handed William the but- I mean, the Ziploc bag. "Wow, thanks," he said, his eyes sparkling. "Who was the guy you said could make these again?"
"Chuck," I reminded him. "He's a pretty big guy, wears a white shirt and cargo shorts. He's Jordan's pen-pal." I thought of Jordan.
"Awesome," replied William. "I'll definitely ask him for some sandwich making tips at lunch."
With that settled, I turned around to thank Rachel for helping me out, but she had retreated to the quiet coloring table, choosing to sit by herself rather than interact with the rest of us. She was such a peculiar girl. However, I did notice that with her sitting out, there was one other person that did not have someone else to interact with. It was a girl wearing a purple hoodie and long brown hair that was tied back in a reverse-widow's peak ponytail. She didn't appear to be doing anything at the moment, so I approached her cautiously.
"Howdy," I said, closing my eyes and raising my hand as a form of greeting.
"Goooood morning," the other girl said, putting extra emphasis on the 'oo' in good for some reason. "What are you up to today?"
I wasn't sure how to answer that question. "Well, I don't know about later, but I think we're going to eat lunch eventually. But for now I'm just doing centers with other people. I'm Maddie by the way, what's your name."
"Kristy," she replied, extending a gloved hand for a handshake. Not wanting to appear like Tim, I shook her gloved hand. I realized that if she and Rachel were to shake hands, their hands would never touch, because they were both wearing gloves. That seemed like an important detail, so I made sure to make a mental note of it for later. For some reason, I suddenly forgot why I was shaking her hand. I frowned and let go for a second.
"Is everything okay?" asked Kristy, noticing my aburpt withdrawal from our social contract.
"Yeah, sorry," I replied, a little self consciously. "I just… forgot why I was shaking your hand for a second."
"Oh, that's okay," replied Kristy, with a slim smile. "I forget things all the time. I guess you could say that's my fun fact!"
"That's pretty cool," I said. "My fun fact is that I'm bad at coming up with things on the spot, so it's hard for me to think of fun facts about myself. That's why the thing I like is centers, but I don't like the fun fact part of it." I raised the fingers on my hand to variable heights and closed my eyes. I wondered why I was doing that.
"What I like the most is ghostbusting, y'know, like, busting ghosts. Like they do in that one movie, Ghostbusters!" Kristy's voice was bouncy and energetic, just like a bouncy ball.
"Huh?" I asked, furrowing my brow and putting my hand to my chin. "Is that an actual thing? I always thought it was just made up."
"Of course it's a real thing!" insisted Kristy, pointing a finger angrily and shifting all of her weight to one foot. "Ghostbusting is as real as real ghosts are! I practice my ghostbusting skills at home all the time!"
"How do you practice ghostbusting?" I asked, confused but genuinely curious. "Is your house haunted? Do you use real ghosts?"
"Yeah," replied Kristy. "There's a bunch of ol' dusty abandoned haunted rooms that are full of ghosts, so my parents let me suck them up with the vacuum cleaner!"
"I see," I said, but what I was really thinking was that that just sounded like a convenient way of tricking her into cleaning the house. "Can you actually see these ghosts? Are you sure that they even exist?"
"Of course not!" replied Kristy. I almost fell on my face melodramatically. "They're ghosts, so nobody can see them unless they have special goggles." the way she said 'goggles' made it sound like she was saying 'gya-ggles'. "But just because you can't see something, doesn't mean that it's not real."
She was right about that at least, I guess. My mama says that no one's seen Jesus in thousands of years, but that doesn't mean that he's not real. I guess that's why they call him the Holy Ghost.
"Well, either way," continued Kristy, "if your house ever becomes haunted, you know who to call!" she gave me a thumbs up with her gloved hand.
"Totally," I agreed. Kristy seemed a bit eccentric, but I didn't think she was a bad person. I didn't really have the heart to tell her that I didn't think her house was actually haunted, since she seemed to be super into the whole ghostbusting thing.
Suddenly, Mr. Pony rang their handbell. "Attention! Centers are now over! Please report to your assigned seats for a group activity!"
Well, that brought an end to the second day of centers. There were still a few people that I didn't know, but I was happy enough to have made a few new friends in the meantime. Now it was time to see what kind of group activity Mr. Pony had planned for us. I gulped, shivering as I strode towards my assigned seat.