CALVIN'S EXPERIMENT

by Fr. Andrew Marr, OSB

As far as Calvin was concerned, everything went wrong that day. He didn’t know any of the words his English teacher put on his vocabulary test and a larger schoolmate bullied him into giving up a dollar. Playing goalkeeper in game of soccer, he juggled the ball into his own net just before the whistle blew to win the game for the other team. Once again, his older sister borrowed more of his CDs without asking. The only good thing was that his parents had stopped arguing every night, but that was because his father had moved out of the house.

Most of all, Calvin was worried about his science project. That is, he was worried about not having one. He didn't like mice or hamsters or turtles. He didn't want to risk blowing himself up by mixing chemicals. Stars and planets bored him to tears. Dinosaurs were for little kids. So what was there? The trouble with not doing a science project was that he would have to take seventh-grade science again next year and Ms. Hood would hold the science project over his head all over again. Calvin could just repeat seventh grade until he was sixteen and then quit school, but being four years older than his class mates wouldn’t be any fun and he didn’t think his parents would stand for it.

Calvin stared out of the window of his room. The view of the apartment building next door was so dull that he couldn’t think. His sister was playing CDs too loudly for him to think. Besides, he didn’t want to think about his project anyway. His cat, Pepper, was sprawled over the school books Calvin had dropped on his desk and so Calvin stroked the cat’s fur as an alternative to thinking. Then Calvin turned on his computer and played some games that kept him too busy to think.

When he got tired of playing computer games, Calvin clicked on the Internet. There were two e-mail letters for him. The first was from his class mate Mike:

Dear Cal: my ant farm is real cool. It’ll be the best science project in the school. What’s your project? Putting nails into coke bottles to see if soda is as bad as they say it is? mike.

Calvin was glad he had such good friends. He thought of answering with the message: “I just decided that my project is pounding nails into your face to see what happens,” but he thought better of it. The second e-mail letter was from his father. Calvin knew what the message would say but he read it anyway.

Dear Calvin,

I hate to have to say this, but it just won’t work out for me to take you out next Saturday. I’m behind in my work and I have to catch up before it’s too late. Besides, I hear you have a science project that needs doing. Get a good start on it this week and then next weekend we’ll have a great time because we won’t have to worry about the science project any more. Love, Dad

Calvin shrugged. He didn’t need to spend Saturday with his father. It was his sister who needed the time, and she was the one who usually got it.

“What should I do for my science project?” Calvin asked Pepper.

Pepper purred, showing that he was not worried about science projects. Calvin thought it must be nice to be a cat and not have to worry about teachers like Ms. Hood or parents like his parents.

Without thinking about what he was doing, Calvin clicked on one of the Search engines and keyed in “science projects.” It turned out that the search engine came up with more sites than there were hamburgers at all the fast-food joints in the world. Calvin closed his eyes and held the scroll button for a few seconds. Then he clicked on the link the cursor was pointing at.

For countless seconds, Calvin watched the screen, bemused as vague shapes of color filled in. Calvin’s first guess was that he was going to end up with a picture of a purple elephant. His second guess was that it would be a pirate ship on a purple ocean. What finally materialized was a picture of a dense forest, but with trees quite different from what Calvin had ever seen before, even in Internet sites with fantasy games. The slender tree trunks were dark purple with silver and red leaves on their branches.

“Come on computer, how am I going to do a science project with trees that don’t exist?” asked Calvin.

However, Calvin’s curiosity was piqued just enough that he scrolled up and down the screen, ever ready as he was to procrastinate over his science project one more time. After a little while, it seemed that there was nothing else on this site except for the trees. Calvin was just about to give up when he saw a man riding a black horse and wearing a coat of mail speed by. Off in the distance, he saw a city surrounded by white city walls. Inside the walls were buildings tall enough to belong in New York, except that they looked more like medieval castles. From one corner there arose a silver cloud of smoke that was flowing out of a lavender smokestack. The rider disappeared in among the trees. Then, three unicorns galloped after the rider in hot pursuit. The unicorns, in turn, were followed by a pack of silver wolves, howling a loud but sweet melody. Soon, the wolves, too, were gone, and there was nothing left on the screen except for the trees.

Calvin scrolled down the screen some more, hoping to see more action. At last, he spotted a small animal walking along a branch of one of the trees. It could have been a squirrel, but just then, the picture enlarged itself until it was apparent that it was a cat who was walking on the branch and not just any cat, either.

“Pepper!” Calvin cried out.

Calvin reached into the screen to retrieve his cat, and next thing he knew, he was precariously balancing himself on the slender branch. He reached up and closed his hand over a thin branch above him. It felt like velvet but it was firm enough to hold him. Pepper jumped up to the branch Calvin was holding on to and sniffed at the silver and red leaves.

“Do they smell good?” Calvin asked the cat.

Pepper took his time responding to Calvin’s question. Without even thinking, Calvin tore off a twig to look it over. The branch he was sitting on disappeared, and Calvin barely caught himself on the lower branch to keep himself from falling to the ground. Somewhat shaken, Calvin looked up. He could see no break in the tree, no sign that a branch had just broken off. Once he had collected his thoughts, Calvin broke the twig in his hand to see what the inside was like. For a second or two, he saw was a thread of golden light and then the twig disappeared, leaving him empty-handed.

Calvin tried to think about all this, but he could not think. One part of him wanted to just sit in the tree forever and enjoy its beauty, but another part of him nagged him with reminders that there were other things he had to do in life. Things like receiving e-mail letters from his father canceling Saturday outings and a other e-mails from so-called friends taunting him about his lack of a science project. Maybe staying in the tree wasn’t such a bad idea. Pepper was still exploring every inch of a branch above him as if he could spend the rest of his life up there. But then Calvin asked himself what would he eat for the rest of his life if he stayed in the tree? He wasn’t feeling hungry at the moment, but he knew he would in an hour or two. On the other hand, there was the strange city he saw while scrolling down the computer screen. Maybe he could get a job there and maybe the teachers in the schools there wouldn’t require science projects.

Calvin’s eyes followed Pepper as he sniffing the tree branch with greater intensity. Clearly something was up there. Calvin climbed back up to take a look for himself. What Calvin saw there were several round golden fruits. Calvin picked one of them. It felt like a ball of furry light in his hand. He put it to his mouth. Then a terrible thought made him jerk it away. What if the fruit was poison? Calvin smelled the fruit. It smelled like a blossom full of sunshine. But that did not prove he could trust it. Then he knew what to do. Perhaps it could even be his science project.

“Pepper!” Calvin called.

The cat never came when he was called, of course, but he was already close by. Calvin put the piece of fruit to Pepper’s nose.

“What do you think, Pepper?”

Calvin fell with a thud. His head swam for a moment before it cleared. He tried moving his aching arm. It felt okay. He finally realized that he was seated on the floor of his room, looking up at his computer desk and Pepper was asleep on top of his school books. Calvin scrambled to his feet. The computer wasn’t even on. He must have been dreaming. But the fruit was still in his hand and it was melting fast. Calvin clapped one hand over the other to save it, but it was gone in no time. Dejectedly, Calvin he opened his hand. It appeared to be empty, but then he realized that it wasn’t empty after all. Three seeds rested on the palm of his hand. In a flash of inspiration, Calvin knew he had his science project after all.

********

“What are these dirt-filled jars doing in your room?” asked Calvin’s mother.

“It’s my science project.”

“And what is your science project?”

“It’s top Secret.”

“Can’t you put the jars in the back yard?”

“No.”

“And why not?”

“Because my experiment won’t work if I put them in the back yard.”

Calvin’s mother looked at the jars dubiously.

“Well, as long as we have an understanding as to who will clean up any mess that occurs,” said mother, “I will try to live with it.”

The truth was that Calvin had not the slightest idea if his experiment would work if he kept the jars of dirt in his room or not, but he wanted them where he could keep a constant watch on them. So far, neither watering the seedlings nor keeping a constant watch had produced any results. Pepper helped every time he came into Calvin’s room by walking over to the jars and sniffing at them, but if he smelled anything interesting, he didn’t let Calvin know.

It didn’t help that there were no science books in the universe that would tell Calvin how long it should take any of the seeds to germinate. With these seeds taken from a fruit taken from a tree in a totally different world than his own, it was possible that the tree would spring up in a day or two or nothing would happen for over a year. When his impatience got the best of him, he dug into the dirt of one of the jars to see if the seed was germinating at all. Not only did he see nothing germinating, he couldn’t even find the seed.

“I know I planted the seed; I saw it with my own eyes and I felt it in the palm of my hand,” Calvin said to himself. So how could the seed have disappeared if I didn’t leave the jar in the back yard where a bird could have taken it?”

Discouraged, Calvin started to put the dirt back in its jar. As he was dropping the second or third scoop back into the jar, Calvin saw, or thought he saw, a silvery line that could have been a root. He cried out and dug for it, but couldn’t find it, neither could he find the seed. There was nothing he could do but fill the jar and get the vacuum cleaner to clean up the mess he’d made in his room. Even so, that glimpse of a root gave Calvin some hope that he would not have to resort to writing a report that explained how his science project failed to gain any results.

But right after Calvin returned to his room after putting the vacuum cleaner away, he saw Pepper floating in the air.

“What are you doing?” Calvin asked the cat in alarm.

In a sudden panic, Pepper hopped back down to the floor right next to the jars. Only then did Calvin realize that Pepper had been floating right above one of the jars. He dashed over to them but saw nothing and felt nothing.

“Have you learned how to fly?” Calvin asked Pepper, “or were you climbing on one of the baby trees I planted?”

Pepper twirled his tail and looked up at Calvin as if he thought the question was too far below his intelligence to be worth asking.

After dinner, when Calvin went up to his room to do his homework, a glittering light caught his eye, just before he turned on the light. Calvin wished he could have stopped himself from turning on the switch when the glittering stopped instantly. Hoping it was one of the baby trees but fearing it was his overwrought imagination, Calving sat down at his desk and tried to do his homework while Pepper napped on his bed. Understandably, Calvin had a hard time concentrating. Two or three times, a glitter caught the corner of his eye and jerked his head over in the direction of the jars. Each time he looked, he saw nothing. After that, Calvin resolved that he would not look at the jars again, no matter what. Calvin successfully ignored a thump on the floor; that was only the cat. But when a glittering light caught his eye once again, he changed his tactics and turned his head as slowly as possible. As his head turned, Calvin saw Pepper playing with a slender glittering thread dangling in the air.

“Ah!" Calvin cried out. “Caught you!”

But by the time those words were out and Calvin had his full face turned to the baby tree, there were no threads of glittering light anywhere and Pepper was staring at the jars, his tail swaying tensely, as if he were stalking his prey. Calvin went over to the jars and stuck his hand where he had seen the thread, but he felt nothing. All Calvin could do was plunge both fists into his mattress in frustration.

That night, Calvin tossed and turned in his bed, fretting over how he would be able to convince his science teacher that he really had tried to do a science project.

“You don’t have to succeed do you?” Calvin imagined himself asking Ms. Hood. “Isn’t a failed experiment still a project?”

But Calvin feared that three jars of dirt would not look like much of an effort.

Then, just as Calvin was starting to drift into sleep, a bright light yanked him up. The whole corner of his room was burning up!

“FIRE!” Calvin yelled.

Calvin scooped Pepper up in his arms and fled his room where he almost knocked his mother over in the hall.

“GET OUT OF THE HOUSE!” his mother ordered. “SARAH! ARE YOU UP? GET OUT OF THE HOUSE!”

Calvin was out on the front lawn in nothing flat, heedless of the cold and his having nothing on but his pajamas. He looked up to his window anxiously and saw, to his relief that neither fire nor smoke were coming out. Then it dawned on Calvin what that meant and he gulped. His suspicion was confirmed a few seconds later when he saw an angry-looking mother and an even angrier sister standing in the open doorway.

“Uh—Calvin, where is the fire?” asked his mother.

“I—I don’t know,” Calvin stuttered. “I thought saw a fire in my room.”

“Looks like you had better put your imagination back to sleep,” said Mother.

“Keep your nightmares to yourself next time,” said an even less sympathetic Sarah.

When a shaken Calvin returned to his room, he made a beeline to the jars in the corner where he saw the fire. As before, not a stem, not a branch, not a leaf was visible. With Pepper held against his chest with one arm, Calvin carefully moved his other hand slowly above and around each of the jars, but at no time did he feel anything but air, not even a tingle of an invisible substance. And yet the whole corner of the room had flared up with colors that matched the colors he saw on the trees in the strange land that he visited as a result of his Internet search.

“Do you see anything?” Calvin asked Pepper.

Pepper jumped out of Calvin’s arms and returned to the bed and made himself comfortable there.

The next day, a Saturday in the last weekend before the science project was due, all of Calvin’s attention was devoted to his experiment. Before going to the school in the morning, he moved the jars around in every position, every angle he could think of and varied the intensity of light by opening and closing the shades and the curtains, covering up the overhead light and uncovering the light, shining his tensor reading lamp on the jars and not shining the lamp. Calvin got Pepper in the act by placing him in front of the jars and demanding that he give evidence of seeing the trees. Each time Calvin tried that strategy, Pepper looked elsewhere for something interesting to do. Nothing made any of the trees visible, not even as much as a leaf.

His mother called Calvin down for lunch just as he had turned off the overhead light, closed the shades and curtains and turned on his night light. Calvin didn’t want to leave since his science project gave him no appetite. But his mother had a way of calling that made resistance impossible and so, with a hungry Pepper at his heels, he ran down to the kitchen to grab the sandwiches his mother had made and run back up again.

“Is your project this frantic that you can’t eat with us?” Mother asked.

Sarah, of course, was not exactly looking at Calvin in a way that suggested she was dying to have her brother sit at the same table with her.

“Yes,” said Calvin as he hit the stairs.

When Calvin reached the top of the stairs, he almost dropped his sandwiches. A purple branch filled with red and golden leaves stretched across the room! His experiment had worked against all odds! Immediately Calvin’s head filled with visions of how he would awe his class and then the whole school by making the trees suddenly appear out of nowhere by turning on his night light in a dark room. His picture would be in the paper and scientists from MIT would come to see him. But before he knew it, the vision was gone.

“Not again!” Calvin cried out.

Heedlessly dropping his sandwiches, Calvin ran over to the jars and, once again moved his hands through the air right in the space where he knew he had just seen the branch and the leaves. But, as so often before, he felt nothing but air.

“Pepper, did you see—Pepper!”

Far from looking at the invisible tree, Pepper was nibbling at one of Calvin’s sandwiches in that awkward way cats try to get their teeth into people’s food. Calvin’s non-existent appetite for lunch dropped even lower.

Calvin spent the whole afternoon the same way he spent the morning: moving the jars around, varying the light and inviting Pepper, once he had eaten Calvin’s lunch, to show signs that he saw something other people could not see. When nothing seemed to work, Calvin resorted to turning on the computer and doing another Internet search for “science projects.” None of the listings seemed to be remotely related to a parallel world or virtual reality world where purple trees grew and unicorns roamed through the forest.

Disgusted, Calvin clicked out of the Internet and called up his word processor to work on the presentation he would make about his experiment, failure or no failure. He spent some time trying to decide if he wanted to tell the truth and say that he found the seeds inside a fruit he picked from a tree from a parallel world or a world in virtual reality or hedge on the truth and have a better chance of being believed. Although there was a slight chance that working with seeds from a different world might get him some slack, he suspected that he would not be believed unless he could get at least a branch or a root to become visible. In the end, he started his report by making up a story about taking a hike with his father (an event less likely than stumbling into a different world, as experience had demonstrated) and picking a fruit from an odd-looking tree he had never seen before and which his father couldn’t identify either.

As he was typing away, Calvin saw movement out of the corner of his eye. He turned his head and saw Pepper playing with an invisible dangling toy the way he played with Christmas tree ornaments. Calvin slid the chair around with a squeak that made Pepper jump away. No matter how hard or how closely Calvin looked, he saw no branches, no fruits.

“What did you see?” Calvin asked Pepper desperately.

But all Pepper seemed to see was a comfortable lap to curl up in and so that is what he did.

********

When the fateful day came, Calvin made up his mind that his only chance was to give such a stirring presentation of his experiment that Ms. Hood and the class would be swept away by his eloquence. He could only hope that if he expressed a deep faith in the existence of the mostly invisible trees, then they just might become visible to at least a few kids in the class. Or, perhaps Pepper, at least, would show conclusively that he saw something humans could not. Since Pepper had become an important part of the experiment, Calvin managed to get permission to bring the cat to school.

True to his promise to himself, Calvin spoke to the class straight from the heart. At the last second, he threw out his script and, as an act of faith, he told the true, if unbelievable, story of how he got the seeds he planted. When some classmates rolled their eyes, Calvin relished the prospect of getting the last laugh. Ms. Hood eyed Calvin with increasing frostiness with each passing minute. Calvin could hardly wait to see the amazement and shock that would overcome her at the climactic moment. When Calvin began to do his tricks with the lights and the shades, several classmates covered their mouths to hide their laughter from Ms. Hood but not from Calvin.

“Now, just keep you eyes open for the surprise of your life!” Calvin proclaimed.

In one sweeping motion, Calvin turned off the overhead lights once again and turned on the nightlight. Nothing happened. Everybody in the class cracked up and Ms. Hood had to wrap on a desk to restore order.

“Please continue, Calvin,” said Ms. Hood in a voice fresh from the deep freezer.

All this time, Calvin looked at all the faces of his classmates, looking for signs that somebody had seen something. To his wild joy, Calvin was sure that he saw a startled reaction from Debra.

“Now these magical trees have proven to be visible only from time to time to only a few lucky people. Have any of you, at one time or another, been one of those lucky people?”

No response, save a few mocking smiles. Debra gave no indication she was about to stick her neck out for Calvin.

“Uh—Debra, did you see anything? Maybe a purple branch?”

Debra’s face turned a deep red.

“Of course not! What do you think I am! An idiot like you?”

“Calvin,” said Ms. Hood, “please finish your presentation without bringing other people into it.”

“Uh—yes—well—uh—now that you are convinced that the trees are not there because they are invisible to the human eye, I will demonstrate their visibility to the eyes of a cat,” said Calvin.

Calvin placed Pepper in front of his jars and held his breath. The laughter became so loud that Pepper turned around and stared back at the children.

“Come on, Pepper,” Calvin urged.

Pepper sniffed at one of the jars and then hopped off the table with withering indifference. He sniffed at the legs of a girl and the notebook of a boy, then strolled to the back of the room until he found a window sill to his liking and jumped up on that. Ms. Hood wrapped on her desk again to restore order in the class room.

“It seems to me that you have done a Fantasyland Project in place of the Science project which I thought I had asked of you,” said Ms. Hood with enough ice in her voice to freeze a forest fire.

“It is scientific!” Calvin cried. “The seeds I planted are like the quarks you told us about—the quarks in neutrons and protons! You can't see then, but they're there!”

Calvin knew he was putting himself out on a limb by saying that, since he hadn’t understood anything about quarks except for their invisibility, but he was desperate.

“However,” said Ms. Hood, “we infer the existence of quarks from their effects in the material world in the course of various experiments.”

Calvin's face fell and he wished he could fall through the floor. Rather than giving Calvin some benefit of the doubt, Ms. Hood borrowed a trowel from the maintenance department, dug out one jar, then filled it up again. Calvin could see from the gloating looks of his classmates that he would never hear the end of this non-project for the rest of his life.

*****

It was with a sinking heart that Calvin brought his mother to the school’s gymnasium, as late as he could manage it. For the first time, he was glad his father was too busy to share the disgrace, and that his sister had borrowed more CDs without permission and stayed home to listen to them. The place buzzed with parents and teachers admiring the ant farms, hamsters on wheels, flashing lights and multi-colored test tubes of their children’s science projects. Children bubbled over with their explanations of their work to their beaming elders. Almost every project had a ribbon on it declaring it either a prize or an “honorable mention.” One exhibit off in the corner, however, was not marked by any ribbon. On the table were three glass jars, each containing a different kind of soil. Mounted on a poster board, was a poorly typed explanation of the project. Parents who even noticed it shrugged their shoulders and their children snickered.

“Now am I finally going to find out your deep dark secret?” asked his mother.

“Yea,” said Calvin, trying to sound a little enthusiastic.

His only remaining hope was that the trees would make their presence known at the last minute. What a dramatic turn-around victory that would be! How sweet the sight of Ms. Hood standing before the purple trees with red and golden leaves, her mouth hanging open! But Calvin knew that such a hope was like expecting a baseball team to score ten runs in the ninth inning with two outs and nobody on base. Calvin’s sprits were hardly helped when Calvin saw his friend Mike standing at the refreshments table. Calvin tried to slip past unnoticed, but couldn’t, and he was subjected to the “shame, shame” signal that Mike made with his forefingers.

“What’s all that about?” Calvin’s mother asked.

“Nothing.”

“It’s a good thing that isn’t your project,” Calvin heard a father tell his son when he saw the forlorn project in the corner..

“It sure is,” the boy replied with a derisory smile.

“This is it?” Calvin's mother asked uncertainly.

“Yea.”

The truth was out. Only it wasn't the truth. Calvin had really seen the tree, climbed in it, picked a fruit and planted the seeds. How could he help it if the trees didn't know enough to follow scientific procedures?

“It didn't work, did it?” said Mother.

“Not really, but an experiment doesn't have to work to be a project.”

“But there's - nothing here,” said Mother.

“Mrs. Pringle?”

It was Ms. Hood.

“Yes,” said Mother.

“I'm afraid I should have a word with you.”

“I was afraid of that,” said Calvin’s mother.

Listening to his sad story all over again from so unsympathetic a teller was more than Calvin could bear. He started to run out of the gym, but he bumped into a boy, the wrong boy to run into.

“That will be two dollars tomorrow,” said the boy.

Calvin nodded numbly and made another rush for the door.

“Sally!” cried a woman.

Just as the woman cried out, Calvin ran into a man running the other way.

“Catch her, she'll fall!” cried another woman.

When the man rudely pushed Calvin to the side and ran to that corner of the gym, Calvin looked and saw the problem for himself. A little girl was floating in mid-air! At last! In the bottom of the ninth inning with two outs and two strikes on the hitter, his project had rallied. This would prove the truth of his science project to the whole world! Calvin dashed back to the table.

“I said catch her!” cried the girl's mother.

In a sudden panic, the girl started to fall.

“Grab the branch!” Calvin cried breathlessly.

She did and bounced in the air as if she really were dangling from a tree limb.

“Now all of you can see the truth of my experiment for yourselves!” Calvin proclaimed to a shocked audience. “The trees I planted are visible to some, some of the time. As you can see, the tree is visible to this girl here.”

“ARE YOU EXPERIMENTING ON MY GIRL?” yelled the man who Calvin took to be her father.

“GET HER DOWN!” insisted the girl’s mother.

“Are you comfy up there now?” Calvin asked the girl.

“Yea.”

The girl made the motion of picking something off the tree and eating it.

“Now you can see the tree I planted!” Calvin yelled out triumphantly. “I told you I planted it and it was hard to see but you can see it every once in a while! Look!”

“SALLY, COME DOWN RIGHT THIS MINUTE BEFORE YOU BREAK YOU NECK!” the girl's father cried.

“No!” Sally yelled

But as Sally’s father rushed to the table, Sally started to fall. Her father half-caught, half eased her down to the table as the jars and poster board crashed to the floor. Sally burst into tears while her mother collected her baby and smothered her with anguished concern. Sally’s father turned an irate face in Calvin’s direction.

“Next time you do a science project, you keep my daughter out of it, understand?”

Calvin nodded, holding back the tears of frustration that all but overwhelmed him.

“Sally!”

It was the girl’s mother again. She scooped her girl to keep her from running back to the wreckage of Calvin’s science project. 

“Looks like your project was to see how many little children you could kill,” one girl taunted Calvin.

“You almost succeeded,” said a self-righteous boy.

While driving him home, Calvin’s mother was mercifully silent. He found himself looking for velvet trees with silver and red leaves in the car’s headlights. Every pool of light in the shadows made him jump at the sight of a velvet bough or a silver leaf. But each time, he was fooled. Calvin wondered what kind of man that horse back rider wearing the coat of mail was. What if he had called out to him that day? Given the way his project turned out, maybe he should have stayed in the strange land and tried his luck there. It appeared that he would never get another chance to visit the forest or the city beyond it again. That night, Calvin dreamed of silver trees dancing in the streets and wrapping their branches around passing cars but eluding all who would chase them down.

*******

The next morning, Calvin came down to breakfast as late as possible. He gulped down a bowl of cereal and carried his half-buttered toast out the door with him. Once he was close enough to the school for his classmates to see him, Calvin pretended he was invisible and deaf to all taunts. In the classrooms, he acted as if the school did not exist and his teachers, for once, returned the compliment. Only in the crush of students on the way out the door did reality intrude on him in the form of a small white envelope thrust upon him.

“From my sister,” said a girl, making a face as if she were eating a castor oil souffle.

Outside, Calvin took a deep breath and opened the envelope, feeling grateful that Valentine's Day and its ordeal of insulting cards was over with for the year. Inside was a piece of paper with the words “thank you” scrawled kindergarten style, and signed “Sally.” Calvin smiled to himself and stuffed the note into his satchel.

That evening, Calvin was seated at his desk and Pepper was sprawled over Calvin’s book bag, purring over all the strokes his inconsolable master would give him. School work was the last thing Calvin wanted to think about, let alone do. He leaned back in his chair and started to daydream about the forest and the city he had lost forever. Pepper, disgruntled over not being the focus of attention, sniffed at the school bag. Then he stuck a paw inside and a golden fruit tumbled out into Calvin’s hands.