Libellus! (Little Book)

Once upon a time, there was a little girl. She was perfectly normal, perfectly healthy, and perfectly smart, just like you!

Except for just one thing.

On the end of her left hand was a giant, pink, shiny PEARL.

She carried the pearl everywhere.

She had found it when she was young. It was lying on the sidewalk in ALL its pearly glory. The little girl liked it so much, she picked it up and carried it with her all that day.

She liked it so much, she carried it with her all the next day too.

She liked it SO much, the little girl carried it with her, in her left hand, that whole week!

She slept with the pearl (under her pillow),
When she took a bath, the pearl took a bath WITH her.
When she went to school, the pearl sat on her desk with her. The little girl’s teacher said “Why do you have that pearl on your desk?”
“Because it’s so BEAUTIFUL!” shouted the little girl so the whole class could hear.

So she and the pearl became the BEST of FRIENDS.

The little girl so loved that pink pearl, she asked her mom to buy her pink pillows and pink blankets.
She painted her walls pink.
She bought all new dresses, and can you guess what color they were?
…
PINK!

She painted her walls pink.
She wrote all her schoolwork in pink pen.
For Christmas, her family adopted a puppy, and can you guess what they named her?
……
PEARLY!

The little girl never did anything without holding onto her pearl.
After a while, something new began to happen.
One day, when she tried to set the pearl down to was her hands, she found that she couldn’t let go of that pretty pink pearl. It was STUCK to her HAND!

But the little girl wasn’t scared.
In fact, she thought it was pretty cool, because now it meant she would never be apart from the pearl.

The pearl clung to her hand during the little girl’s entire day.

The little girl didn’t mind that she couldn’t really USE her left hand, because now her pearl was with her ALWAYS.

She didn’t mind that she could only pick things up with one hand.
She didn’t mind that she could only wash one of her hands.
She didn’t mind that she couldn’t play BASKETBALL, BASEBALL, or DODGEBALL.
She didn’t mind that she couldn’t clap her hands, or ride a bike, or do a cartwheel.
Because she and the pearl were together!

I am sitting at a table with Josh Thomas and Tyler Woods. The room is very big and bright, and I am very small. Ms. Lowry’s hair is a shade of reddish orange that particularly matches the carpet in the playcourt. We are at our desk. There are four desks total in our little corner of the room, all pushed together two by two to make a kind of big fake plastic table. We are either reading silently or doing math problems, I can’t really remember, and are all very absorbed in our work. I decide, completely on a whim, or maybe because I needed excitement that day, to shove my knee up into the bottom of the desk, so the desk does a little jump and makes a clunking sound. “Stop it, Tyler!” I say to the small dark-haired boy reading across from me. Josh, who sits next to me, casts a glare in Tyler’s general direction.
“What? I’m not doing anything?” says Tyler in indignation.

“Yeah you are! You just moved the desk!” I say emphatically.
“Nuh uh,” Tyler replies, settling back into his work. I decide to let it go for the moment. I bide my time.
Two minutes go by. The desk, propelled by my knee, jumps up again, making an even louder clunk.
“Tyler, seriously, stop it, it’s not funny,” I growl.
“What?! I didn’t do it! It’s not me!” Tyler yelps, eyes wide, leaning back in the yellow chair and throwing his hands in the air.
“Tyler, that’s really annoying, stop!” adds Josh.
“You did too do it. Stop lying.” I say seriously.
When I kneed the desk, I took advantage of my unusually long eight-year-old legs to make the actual area of the disturbance quite far away from where I was sitting. No one could possibly blame me for it, since the problem was clearly on Tyler’s side of the table.
Tyler’s protests gradually taper down to dejected silence. He angrily scribbles on his page and shoots Josh and I suspicious glances, knowing he’s being framed by one of us. Neither of them are aware of who’s really causing the trouble, and I delight in the confusion. I decide to give it one last go. Kneeing the desk as hard as I can this time, it jumps into the air, upsetting several of Josh’s papers and knocking Tyler’s pencil out of his hand. The desk lands back on the floor with the loudest clunk yet, drawing the attention of Ms. Lowry, who is helping a student across the room. Instantly, Josh shouts “Tyler!” and Tyler, eyebrows raised and bordering on tears, repeatedly squeals “I didn’t do it! I didn’t do it!”
“What going on over here, you guys?” says Ms Lowry, arriving at the table, her kindly red face temporarily contorted with irritation.
“Tyler keeps bumping the desk and he won’t stop and he says he didn’t do—“
“I DIDN’T DO IT! I DIDN’T DO ANYTHING! MS. LOWRY –“
“All right, Tyler, that’s enough,” says Ms. Lowry, who is God Herself as far as we are concerned. “I think you need a time-out. It’s not okay to bother Josh and Blythe. They’re sitting here trying to do their work, and you’re disturbing them. Go out into the hall and I’ll tell you when you can come in again. I want you to think about what you did.”
Tyler, who looks as though his whole face is about to explode, gets up from the desk and storms out of the room, having lost his faith in the entire human race. I feel a wave of a something I’ve never felt before sweep through me for a few seconds, and then I return peacefully to reading my book.