The Pixie Game

The rain stopped just before the alarm went off, the ground was covered with worms and the earth was shaking with worms. Someone touches Gage's shoulder. She turns to see Dasha, her mouth turned to a private joke.

"We're playing a pixie game. Do you want to come?"

This is the third time that someone has spoken to her at this school and this is the first time she has been invited to do anything. He follows her, running slowly, to the fences around the playground.

Iver and Jack are already waiting in the greenest part of the fence. Gage has never spoken to the two of them, but he has seen that everyone laughs at Iver's jokes whether they are funny or not, which even fifth-graders back at him in the lunch line.

Iver shakes his head at Dasha and turns to Gage. She smiles. "Hey, new baby. Go first."

"All right." Gage approaches the fence, ready to extend his hand to the branches in a count of three. "Am I against you?"

"What? You never played? Show it to Jack."

Jack moves his face closer to the leaves and sticks out his tongue. Gage sees the rustling and lightning flashes, and then a small image clings to Jack's tongue before he backs away. Jack's cheeks explode. Her closed mouth formed a crooked line of disgust as her jaw moved up and down. Then he swallowed.

"Did you eat it?" In Gage's old school, the pixie game meant putting your fingers in a tree and waiting while the pixies bit and clung. When you could no longer hold it, you pulled out your hand. If you had more than your rival, you won. This method was not really a game. It was courage.

Gage hates seeing pixies, with their glass wings and tiny human limbs and the heads of scary insects with red eyes. But this is his fifth grade, and he knows the price of refusing courage. He turns his face to the fence and leans forward.

Even though he blinked his eyes, he could not see the pitchfork. He only feels small teeth piercing his tongue, cold challenges like pieces of ice. He swallows and swallows, forgetting to chew. The creature is a lump of limbs and wings fluttering in the back of its throat and Gage doubles, closing his mouth, trying to pull it out in some way. It can be good if he coughs. Everyone at least would have known that he tried.

Eventually, he gets up, coughing several times to clear his throat.

"Dang, you're done." Iver slaps him on the arm, and Gage knows he's in.

Dad prepares lamb and feta g�slime, Gage's favorite, for the third night in a row. A sharp pain pierces his stomach. It should be obvious that his pants are loose, that his dinner was not eaten much in the last two weeks despite his artistic reorganization.

Gage cuts the cake with a fork edge and feels a sharp pain again. You are probably hungry for food, but not really. Food makes it worse.

"You talked to your teacher today." Dad's voice is full of joy, the only way to hide anxiety. "You said you were doing well. You said you had made friends."

Gage nods. The day after swallowing the pixie, he sat down at Iver's lunch table. Dasha and Jack strive to be his partner in the gym class. Every day as he enjoys the respect he just wished for in some of his schools, yet loneliness holds his hand stronger than ever. It is strange to be lonely, because now he is not alone, even for a moment.

"You look unhappy though."

Gage tries to smile. He knows that the father feels guilty that he had to move each time he was promoted. She opens her mouth to tell her father that this is the best school right now where the pixie is happy again.

The librarian seemed bored when he asked how long pixies could live on a human stomach. The book he reviewed has no answers, but one episode bothers him:

Like elephants and wolves, pixies mourn their dead. Farmers often find pixie skeletons under a pile of sticks and leaves.

Dad rubs the last piece of g�slime and puts it in his mouth. "So what happened?"

"Nothing. I'm just tired." Let Gage get up in the dark as he walks straight down.

"It's not an unusual game for kids his age." The voice of Drs. Anand shifts between the strange and the unusual stress as he begs Gage's father to sit down. He put his hand on Gage's shoulder and squeezed. "It usually resolves itself. In this case, a simple operation will correct him."

He dims the lights to show them an X-ray of Gage's abdomen and points out small white marks, identifying them as pixie bones. “Here's a skull,” he adds, pressing a small white oval. "Gastric acid will have dissolved all the others, but pixie bones are known to last longer." Gage smiles. "Don't worry. There's no chance she's alive."

Gage shifts in the chair. A sharp itch in the abdomen intensifies, but he decides it is just a feeling. She has never had surgery before.

In the operating room, a new doctor tells him to count back to 100. His eyelids survived 95. When he wakes up, he is counting, and he sees Dad holding a bear.

The pain has subsided into a former ghost, but at the same time, a time-saving drum in his heart.

Drs. Anand enters, carrying a bag of small bones. "You can relax now. They're all gone. See?"

"Can I keep them?"

"I think so."

Gage stretched out a hand without a drip in the vein. He will return to the green fence at school and build a small row of sticks and leaves. He hopes it will suffice.