Milo was still rubbing the sleep from his eyes as he walked from his house to the bus stop at the end of his street. The air tasted crisp and Milo’s breath frosted slightly in the still morning air as he walked. When he reached the bus stop he found Zack, Melissa and Amanda, along with the usual crowd, Bradley, Chad and Mort, waiting for the school bus to arrive. Milo gave a Chad and Mort a friendly wave. “Hi guys,” he said genially. “Have a good summer?”
“Hi Milo,” said Chad. “I heard a rumour that you were replaced by an alien doppelgänger this summer.”
Milo chuckled. “Sorry, Chad,” he said, “but my summer wasn’t quite that interesting.”
From somewhere behind him, Milo heard Melissa say,”Oh for the love of-Chad, what have I told you about believing random conspiracy blogs on the internet?”
Chad looked as though he were asked to remember a very difficult math equation. “To, not?” he asked at last.
“Right,” said Melissa, a slight edge of sarcasm creeping into her voice. Chad was harmless enough, but he had a tendency to accept more or less anything related to the supernatural as being completely true, especially where Milo was concerned. That wasn’t to say that Chad wasn’t close to the truth sometimes, but his outlandish theorizing was wrong a lot more often than it was right.
“So what about you,” asked Milo turning to Mort. “How was your summer?” Milo had always liked Mort and the two boys tended get along well. He thought that Mort had grown a couple of inches over the summer, or maybe that was himself, Milo reflected.
“Oh, I didn’t get up to much,” said Mort with a casual shrug of his broad shoulders. “I had a blockage in my fifth chakra. Took a fair bit of meditation to work it out. I also saw you on the astral plane,” continued Mort. “I didn’t know you meditate.”
Milo was slightly confused. “Well, actually I don’t,” he began, but before he could continue, his train of thought was interrupted by the smell of burning rubber and the squeal of breaks. Everyone turned at the sudden sound to see a large highway truck swing heavily on to the road. It took the corner too fast and tipped up onto its outside wheels. Its load of hot asphalt began to shift and the long cylindrical tank that the truck was towing behind it over balanced and rolled over. At the same moment, the truck jackknifed and the tank of asphalt rolled down the street toward the gaggle of kids waiting for the school bus. It rolled to a stop about fifty feet away from where Milo and the other kids were standing. Hot asphalt leaked onto the road and Milo’s nose wrinkled at the acrid smell.
“Looks like we’re walking to school,” he said with a shrug.
Jefferson County Middle School was a large building constructed of tan coloured brick and located on the edge of Milo’s neighbourhood. Milo and his friends arrived at the crosswalk approximately fifteen minutes after leaving the bus stop at the end of Milo’s street. They were met by the usual sight of a tall, thin figure with a long mane of slightly unkept auburn hair, a bright orange safety vest and a hand held stop sign.
“Morning, Elliot,” said Milo, with a friendly wave.
Elliot Decker cast a suspicious glance in Milo’s direction from behind his sunglasses. Elliot was the volunteer crossing guard for Milo’s school. A chance meeting with Milo’s father, Martin, and his sister, Sara, at the circus, around the time that Elliot was six had left him with a lifelong pathological obsession with safety. Elliot threw out a hand to stop Milo from crossing the street. “Stay back,” he said. “I’ve already counted eighteen safety violations this morning.”
Somebody snorted and Milo could tell without looking that it was Bradley. “Are we going through this on the first day of school?” he sighed.
“Yeah, c’mon, Elliot,” enjoined Zack. He looked at his watch. “It’s almost first bell.”
Elliot surveyed the growing crowd of kids gathering at his crosswalk. “Alright, fine,” he said at last, “but don’t say I didn’t warn you. This is a very unsafe crosswalk.” He walked out into the middle of street, stop sign held aloft and beckoned for the gaggle of kids to follow him. They trooped across the street to the school parking lot and proceeded up the steps into the school.
“See, Elliot,” said Melissa, as the four teenagers stepped up onto the curb on the opposite side of the road, “nothing happened. Everything is perfectly safe.”
Elliot looked as though he was about to say something, but no sooner had Melissa spoken than the ground gave way and Elliot sank up to his waist.
“Melissa, I think maybe you spoke too soon,” said Milo.
When the foursome got inside, the corridors were packed with students and teachers. Milo pulled his schedule from his pocket and consulted it. “According to this, we have Mrs. Camillichec for home room this year,” he said.
“That’s not too bad,” said Zack. “She tends to let you get away with stuff.”
“Her classroom is up on the third floor, all the way at the other end of the building,” put in Melissa. “And we need to find our lockers. We should get going,”
The four teenagers ducked out of the throng of kids, parents and teachers clogging the main corridor on the first floor and made their way up stairs, where they quickly found their lockers. Zack’s was half way down the hall from Mrs. Camillichec’s class room. Milo’s was next to the entrance to the boy’s bathroom and Melissa’s and Amanda’s were all the way at the other end over looking the football field. Milo’s lock broke as soon as he tried to enter the combination. His locker door swung open and he deposited his lunch on the shelf inside. Milo rummaged in his backpack and produced the spare change of clothes that he routinely hung in his locker. Next he pulled out his wallet, took out a five dollar bill and put it in the pocket of the pair of shorts that he had just hung up in his locker. He shut the door, shoved the shank of the broken lock back through the hole and walked back down the hall toward Mrs. Camillichec’s classroom. A sign on the door said, “Welcome to the 8th grade.” He pushed open the door and went inside.
Bright September sunshine streamed into the classroom through the large windows which over looked the courtyard and the school parking lot. The bulletin boards on the walls were covered with pictures of famous mathematicians, the multiplication tables, the steps of long division, algebraic formulas, geometrical shapes and various bits of mathematical trivia. Milo sat in his usual seat, next to Zack in the second row. Amanda and Melissa were already at their desks in the row immediately behind to the two boys.
No sooner had Milo taken his seat, than the door opened and Mrs. Camillichec entered the classroom. Mrs. Camillichec was a tall, thin woman with a long mane of black hair, high cheeks and a long pointed nose. After standing for the national anthem and the Pledge of Allegiance, and taking attendance, Mrs. Camillichec gave her class a short pep talk. Milo had never really understood the point of pep talks. They had never made him feel particularly peppy. She surveyed her class. “Good morning,” she said.
“Good morning, Mrs. Camillichec,” replied the class.
“Good morning,” she said again. “I look forward to spending the year with you. This year is an important one in your lives. You’ll be finishing be finishing your elementary school education and moving on to high school. Its important that you work extra hard this year to prepare for next year. As your teacher, I hope you will tell me if you have any problems or concerns.”
The bell rang and the classroom echoed with the scraping of chairs of the linoleum floor, the stamp of feet and babble of voices. Milo shouldered his backpack and maneuvered his way through the crush of bodies to the door. Zack, Melissa and Amanda were waiting in the hall. Their first class of the day was English with Mrs. White. Before passing out their copies of The Hobbit, she gave them a pep talk. So did Mr. Draco at the start of their American History class. Mr. Draco spoke with a slightly clipped east European accent. He was tall and thin, with a widow’s peak and slightly pallid complexion. More than a few of the kids in Milo’s class were of the opinion that Mr. Draco was a vampire.
“Good morning children,” he said. “I hope you all had a delightful summer. I have a wonderful surprise for you. This year you will be divided into pairs and you will be asked to research the history of Danville and present your report at the end of the school year.” He proceed to pair them off. As luck would have it, or maybe Murphy’s Law working in his favour for once, Milo was paired with Amanda, while Zack was paired off with Melissa, much to the apparent annoyance of Bradley. Bradley had always had a bit off a soft spot for Melissa, but Melissa had never really found him all that interesting. Following Mr. Draco’s American History class, they had a fifteen minute break, after which they trooped back upstairs to Mrs. Camillichec’s classroom for their first math lesson. She wasted no time no time in setting them to work on a page of algebra problems, the remainder of which was to be handed in at the start of class on Wednesday. In science class, Mrs. Murawski, spent most of their lesson rhapsodizing about her desk. As a result they got nothing done, which was fine with Milo. He felt as though he was already sagging under the weight of his homework and he had tape up his left ankle after he had badly twisted it going down stairs to the cafeteria for lunch. He also had to swing by his locker between classes for his spare change of clothes after a drinking fountain exploded and left him drenched. By the time he returned to Mrs. Camillichec’s classroom at the end of the day, Milo was left feeling slightly wrung out.
The next day Milo and Amanda met in the library over lunch time to start working on their history project. Jefferson County Middle School had a large and well appointed library. Tall oak bookcases bordered a large central space with tables in neat rows. The library was lit by large windows, which looked out on the gymnasium and the football stadium. Large chandeliers hung from the ceiling. The floor of the expansive space was covered in two tone blue tiles. Students were milling around looking for books and sitting down finishing their homework.
Milo walked causally up and the rows of the history section, pulling books on local history of off the shelves at random before returning to the large open space in the middle of the library to find Amanda. He found her walking out of the biography section with an armload of books. Unlike his pile, which had been gathered somewhat haphazardly, Amanda had returned from the stacks with a pile of books organized by subject and time period. Amanda took Milo’s pile of books and compared to her own. She scanned through the titles. The History of Danville. Danville of Yesteryear. Famous Danvillians. The Fishmonger Riots. The Haymaker Fire: Danville Before and After. Danville’s Lost Neighbourhoods.
Amanda nodded approvingly. “This is a good start, Milo,” she said.
“Uhhhh, thanks,” said Milo. “So did you have any thoughts about how we should approach our history project?” asked Milo. Amanda surveyed the large pile of books in front of them. Milo glanced at a few of the titles. Abigail Chase: Clockmaker of Danville. Danville through its Architecture. A History of Danville City Council. “I was thinking that we could design an illustrated time of the history of Danville.”
“That sounds like a good idea,” said Milo enthusiastically. He checked his watch. Their lunch break was almost over. He gathered up the books he had taken off of the shelf. “We should check these out. That way we can work on this at home.” Milo walked over to the check out desk and dumped his load of books on to the table. The librarian quickly sorted through them and stamped them out with a methodical thud-thud-thud! Milo picked them up and put them in his backpack. The bell rang and Milo and Amanda left the library and headed for their computer science class.