Flash Fiction 7: Roly Poly Recess

We are staying busy right down to the bitter end.  Can't wait to touch base at home soon!

Here's the 7th Flash Fiction I wrote for my online class.  You should read it if you want to. 

Roly Poly Recess

Lee Heffernan

 

            Kids were supposed to stay away from the creek at recess, but Gracie didn't care.  The supervisors were busy talking and watching the fourth grade soccer game, so Gracie sneaked around the sycamore tree.  No one could see her except Anna the new kid on top of the spider climber. She hoped Anna would come over to play, but Gracie was shy to ask. Turning over rocks, Gracie found a huddle of roly polies.  She picked up the largest and dropped it on to a sycamore leaf laying on the grass.  "I'll name you Connie," she told the balled up roly poly, as she lifted the leaf and walked a few steps to the creek bed.  She could hear Anna yelling something, but Gracie couldn't stop now. She settled the leaf onto the water and whispered, "Goodbye, Connie. Have a fun adventure."

            "What are you doing?" screamed Anna, standing over her.

            "I made a bug boat for Connie. Roly polies love adventure," smiled Gracie.  She waved at Connie floating downstream.

            Anna screamed, "Pill bugs are crustaceans.  And they do not swim."  She took off running. Gracie followed.

 

            Connie, terrified, juddered out of her conglobation.  She spread her 14 legs, balancing as best she could on the sycamore leaf.  Spinning blurs and blobs of light and dark rolled past as the leaf boat bobbed up and down and in and out like a roiling river raft trip. This was not the first time that kids at Wells School had disturbed her day time rest, but this stunt went beyond the pale. "These kids don't have the sense they were born with," she muttered. "I swear if I don't drown today, I'm moving as far away from this school as I can get."  Splashes of water dripped toward her on the leaf.  Connie knew there was a fine line with water.  Too little and she dried up dead as a tumbleweed.  Too much and she... Well she didn't want to think about that.  

 

            Anna ran a zigzag along the creek's curves, past the tetherball pole, past the monkey bars, past the foursquare game. She kept her eyes on the leaf floating down the middle of the creek. She had hoped to be friends with Gracie, but right now she hated her guts.  She ran faster, determined to rescue Connie, or whatever her name was.  When the leaf lodged against a fallen tree, Anna got down on all fours and crawled out to it.  She plucked up the pill bug and crept backward to the grassy bank. Gracie stood there crying.  "Do you have Connie?" she sniffed. Anna nodded and showed her the conglobated crustacean.  The recess supervisor blew her whistle.  Time to line up.  The girls ran back to the sycamore tree where they helped Connie rejoin her huddle of roly poly friends. 

            "Thank you Anna," said Gracie.

            "You should apologize.  She could have drowned," said Anna.

            "Sorry, Connie," smiled Gracie as she gently repositioned the creek rock over the roly polies.  

            Anna walked to line with Gracie, sharing information from her pill bug research report that she wrote in second grade at her old school.