Tic-Tac Death

by Sam Kavich (9)

By the time I was in fifth grade, I had gone all ten years of my life without breaking a single bone. Not a fracture, not even a sprain. After watching over the years as my friends, my fellow classmates, came in one day to school either on crutches or with a splint around their pinky finger after closing it in the car door (a preschool memory), I had even harvested the slightest bit of pride at the fact that I had managed to go so long with such good luck, and with enough grace that I had yet to injure myself in such a way (at least those seven years of ballet lessons that I hated paid off for something). I should have known; nothing lasts forever.

Maybe it never would have happened if Connor hadn’t left me alone. Connor was one of my close friends in fifth grade, and we would spend recesses wandering the field while the other children would run around us playing tag football or pretending they were ponies or having funeral services for dead bees –– true story; I attended one. Rest in peace, Bob the Bee. Neither Connor nor I were very into sports or socialization, so we would just wander. Talking about life. Death. The Universe. Usually our other friend Maya would join us, but she happened to be out sick this particular day.

I wonder, had Maya come to school that day, if I would have been spared from the events that followed. But now I realize years later, that there isn’t any sense in wondering that now. What happened . . . happened. Around a half hour into lunch, Connor announced that he had to go to the bathroom. And so he left me alone, in the middle of a warzone of thirdthrough-fifth graders, completely unsure of what to do with myself while I waited those long, treacherous minutes. Then, as I stood there, it all happened at once. A blur around me of girls running past, their luxurious long locks of hair blowing in the wind behind them (I’d always wanted nice long princess hair, but nevertheless I’ve ended up stuck with a frizzy mess that can’t seem to grow past a bit down my shoulders).

I watched the deemed “popular” girls chase each other in what looked like aimless circles, at least from where I was standing, for another long moment. That’s when one of the girls ran over to me, and placed something in my hands, the gleam in her eye as dead serious as Dumbledore’s when he asked Harry if he’d put his name in the goblet of fire in the fourth Harry Potter movie (Potterheads will understand). The item she had placed in my hands: A box of Wintergreen Mint Tic-Tacs. The single word she whispered to me as though we were in an action movie, and she’d just entrusted me with stolen government non-disclosed information: “Run.”

And so I ran. I ran as though somebody had told me if I ran hard and fast enough I’d get to meet J.K. Rowling herself. Did I know why there was a box of Tic-Tacs in my hand? No. Did I know what I was running from? Nope. Did I know why these girls had trusted me with this job, or whatever it was? Nada. But I continued running anyway, my legs moving so fast it was as if they had a mind of their own. Too fast. As I reached the bottom of a hill, my legs tangled, and I went flying through the air, but I still held onto those Tic-Tacs like a lifeline. My only savior was my one little bony hand, thrown out in front of me to cushion my fall as I hit the rocky blacktop ground. Everything happened in slow motion for an instant and then sped up again as I made contact, like in movies. My poor tiny hand hit first, and I heard a quiet snap, followed by me skidding to a stop on my knees. The girl who had given the TicTacs to me stooped down next to me, and reached for my hand. I almost thought she was about to help me up, but instead she just grabbed the Tic-Tacs and ran back to her friends, laughing

by Austin Farhoudi

as they continued to chase each other and make grabs for the Tic-Tac box.

I got up, brushed myself off, and calmly continued on my way. It did occur to me that I should do something about my scraped knees before the scarlet blood soaked through my white leggings, and so I went and asked the teacher on the playground for recess duty if I could please have a couple band-aids, and she distributed them to me accordingly. After going to the bathroom to clean off my tattered knees so they wouldn’t get infected from the layer of dust that covered the blacktop I had scraped them on, I applied the bandages and headed back to class as the bell rang.

We had a math lesson afterwards. This was when I began to realize that the wrist I had fallen on really hurt when I moved it. So, instead of doing what any normal child would do in my situation and letting the teacher know, I did the exact opposite. I honestly didn’t want to bother the teacher in the middle of her lesson. So what I did was fashion a splint out of a clean metal spoon from my lunchbox and my blue stretchy headband, placing the spoon against the length of my wrist and tying it in place with the elastic band. It worked like a charm. For the rest of the day my wrist was immobilized, and it didn’t hurt at all. Even when we played tag during P.E. nobody questioned my “bracelet.” I never had a doubt in my mind that I was fine. It was no biggie.

After I explained to my mom what had happened and why I had a spoon tied around my wrist when she picked me up, she worriedly took me to the doctor. As it turned out, I had fractured my left wrist when I fell. I had to wear a real cast for the next two months (at least it was hot pink, my favorite color at the time). And despite everything, the girl who had graced me with the box of Tic-Tacs that fateful afternoon never gave me an explanation for her actions. And even today, almost five years later, my endless questions over the tragedy of the Wintergreen Tic-Tacs haunt me.