Max returns to school as if nothing had happened. He finds it hard to focus in his first few classes, but as the day continues, he returns to his usual way of doing things. By recess time, Max finds himself thankful the day was half over.
After spending more than half a week surviving in the wilds and fighting for his life, school seems boring. Instead of going out to the playground with the other kids, Max excitedly heads to the library. Even for Max, this is an unusual choice, usually choosing to play with his friends rather than read.
Today, though, he is on a mission. He feels that he doesn’t know enough about… well, everything really useful once he had been left on his own. He has a list of questions and feels the best place to look is in the library. He figures that even his elementary school might have a few books he can read and check out that might help him if he ends up back in Rosalee’s world.
The library is quiet, and there are not many kids inside of it. Max sits at a small desk with a strange-looking computer used to locate books. He types in many different words and phrases, trying to find any book that even remotely can answer some of his questions.
Disappointment fills Max rather quickly as he notices how wrong he had been. The majority of the library is simply fiction and some histories. It takes him all of his recess to finally find several books that might actually help.
The Librarian looks up from her desk as Max clumsily drops a small stack of books onto her desk. “Only three books per person at a time. Her voice is mildly exasperated but mostly just sounds bored.
Max opens his mouth to argue, but quickly thinks better of it. He looks through the small stack of books before deciding on three of the more interesting titles. One is a true story about a young boy who got lost during a camping trip and ended up spending over a week in the wilds by himself. It is about what he did, how he survived, and made it back to his home. While it is set far in the past, it seems the most interesting of all the books.
Next is a Book about a forest habitat, its plants and animals, water, and the seasons. Out of the three different books about forests he had found, this one seems to have the most information and is the most varied. For the last book, he narrows his choice down to three different options. This is the hardest choice for Max.
While he is varying the topics so as not to grow bored, he truly does not know which, if any of these three, will be the most useful. Finally, he settles, just like the previous book, on the one that holds the broadest knowledge. It is a book about Karate, Tae Kwon Do, and Aikido featuring history, techniques, warm-up exercises, and safety tips.
The librarian looks at the books while checking them out to the strange boy. Honestly, I think this might be the strangest set of books I have ever seen a child check out yet. The boy takes the books from her and gladly leaves the library.
She sighs, standing up, picking up the stack of books Max had left behind. Might as well put these back. As she moves through the library, returning the books to their correct shelves, she can’t help but find the selection of books Max had found even stranger.
“Forest resources, Facts about Rainforests, a quiz and activity book (not to be written in) about building a campsite. These fit together but…these...”
She turns over the remaining five. Two are more martial arts books, one about Judo, while the other is for Karate and Ninjutsu. The next two are 100 facts you didn’t know about books focusing on Warriors and Samurai. The final book is a WWII survival guide. Shaking her head, she decides it is none of her business and puts the books away.
Max returns to classes after recess and focuses on his studies the best that he can. The only class he finds that he enjoys today is his physical education class, also known as P.E. While the other students, as he usually does, find it annoying having to go through the basic exercise and stretches today, he takes it extremely seriously.
He pushes himself as he never has before to try to do them both correctly and do as many of them as he can. While Rosalee, Elizabeth, and himself had been chased, attacked, and even had to climb off a ledge, they had all noticed themselves quite out of shape and barely able to do the minimum to survive. That is going to change.
Once the stretches and exercises come to an end, they split the kids up into groups to play some sports. Max has little interest in this, as usual, but winds up talking himself into it. While I really don’t care about sports, that doesn’t mean I can’t use this to help me train.
Taking the game far more seriously than he ever has before, he tries his best to fill his role, no matter how tough or tiring it is. Max is probably the only kid quite so tired, sore, or sweaty by the end of the lesson.
When the final class lets out, Max can’t help jumping up excitedly. When he woke up this morning and was on his way to school, he had thought up the idea of learning as much as he could that might help him in case he ended up lost again. Now he can finally start learning actual, useful things instead of the boring subjects he feels he will probably never need.
On the bus home, his friends talk to him and invite him over to play, but he politely declines, saying he has things he has to do. Running from the bus home, he passes his mom, waving to her as she waits for him, and beats her home. He goes immediately to his room, takes out the books he had checked out, and begins to read.
“Honey, what was that? Why did you run past me and not walk home together like normal?”
“Oh! Sorry mom. I just got really excited thinking about reading these books and wanted to get home to read.” Max smiles, looking up at his mom, the book open in front of him.
His mother glances at the book before asking the usual. “And what about homework? Don’t you have some of that you should be doing first?”
“But moooom!”
“No buts, Mr., homework first, then you can read about… martial arts?”
“Fiiine,” Max gives in, closing the book and brings out the textbooks and worksheets he had gotten throughout the day.
It takes him a couple of hours to work through all of the problems and questions. They have a short break to eat dinner halfway through. Once he is finished, his mom raises an eyebrow, watching him as he puts the homework away and finally starts digging into the book he had wanted to read earlier.
Usually, it's a fight to get him to finish it by himself, then he just wants to watch TV or play with his toys. Well, I can’t say it isn’t an improvement. Max spends the evening reading the book and practicing some of the simple exercises for kids that the book mentions. Soon, Max has to stop and shower before getting ready for bed so that he can repeat the same thing tomorrow.
The time passes by faster than anyone notices. Max finishes that semester of school much the same way he had that first day back from Rosalee’s world. He puts a lot of effort into exercising and reading, more than he ever has before.
He spends time with his friends, mostly on weekends now, though even then it is less than he had before. Even video games don’t hold his attention as much as they had prior, and he tries relentlessly to get his friends to go outside more and play, even if it is just sports, which he still doesn’t care for, but is better than sitting around doing nothing. Twice a month, he convinces his mom to walk him, around a mile, to the local public library.
The public library offers Max a far wider selection of books that fit what he is looking for. His mother, of course, finds his tastes dull and eccentric, sometimes even gloomy, since it mostly seems to focus on woods, survival, camping, and martial arts. He even manages to find some books on knights and sword fighting, but they are complicated and boring even to him.
By the holiday break that marks the end of the semester, even to Max, his routine grows a bit stale. He starts on more than one occasion wishing he could find himself back in the wilds, but he never hears Rosalee’s voice or finds himself in the middle of the woods as he had in the mall.
He even goes so far as asking his mom to take him back to the same mall and trying to find the path he had taken the first time, but to no avail. Seeing her son climb the walls and knowing his newfound interest in the outdoors. His mom talks her brother into taking Max and his two cousins camping.
It is late in the year and already cold with Christmas around the corner. They live in the Southern half of the United States, and even in the coldest months, it has only snowed once, and that was a decade ago. Max’s two cousins have been camping with their dad before, so it isn’t too unusual except for how late in the year that they are going.
While their dad never really enjoys camping or hunting, he feels it necessary to take the boys and teach them. They have always found it annoying and boring, usually complaining a lot and wishing they were home with their friends. This time is no different for them.
Max’s uncle finds that Max is nothing like his boys. While they complain and stay around the camp unless he drags them off into the woods to hunt something, Max is full of energy, and he finds himself looking for him regularly.
Max never wanders far from the campsite, in his own opinion at least. He can always make out the camp even if it is far away. His uncle thinks it strange that he seems almost fearless and unafraid of wild animals.
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Max even asks if he can shoot the gun at one point, but he tells Max that he was too young; it is something even his own boys have yet to do. By the end of the trip, his cousins are happy to be home, especially with how close Christmas is, while his uncle is also happy to be home but for completely different reasons.
It has been one of the most stressful trips he has ever taken, with the way Max kept wandering around and exploring every chance he got. Max even asked him more questions than he thinks his boys have ever asked him, and Max had also seemed to know a strange amount about local plant life.
Max returns home before Christmas and spends the holiday as he always has. They go to his uncle’s house for dinner on Christmas Eve. The only change from previous years is that Max relentlessly asks his uncle when they can go camping again.
His uncle makes vague excuses and just keeps saying maybe sometime when it warms up. Max takes it in stride, while he had very much enjoyed his first outing in the woods with his family, it is nothing compared to Rosalee’s world, which he aches for. Christmas day comes, and Max excitedly opens the toys and games that his mom and grandmother have bought him. His interest in such things isn’t what it had been, but he still enjoys them.
He finds a couple of packages from another one of his uncles that lives across the country from him. When his mother talked to him and told him some of the things Max had been interested in lately, he got the idea to share one of his interests with Max.
The few packages are awkwardly shaped. Max opens them, expecting clothes or more toys, but what is inside lights a new fire inside of him. His uncle has a fascination with and collects Native American artifacts. The ones that he has shipped to Max are not anything but cheap reproductions and decorations, but that doesn’t seem to bother Max at all.
He finds a Native American-style vest, a wooden tomahawk with a painted turquoise wooden head, a tent, dream catchers, a rain stick, and a few more things. His mom is surprised at how excited Max gets when opening them and watches as he plays with the tomahawk, rain stick, and other things. While he does, in fact, like the tomahawk, the rest simply help remind him of the history lessons he had before he ended up in Rosalee’s world.
In the lessons, the teachers described how savage the Native Americans had been and how they had roamed America before the settlers came from Europe. At the time, the lessons had seemed boring, and he had half paid attention to them at best.
The gift from his uncle brings these lessons forward and reminds Max that the only reason he had been able to navigate the other world at all was from these lessons and how the Native Americans used the way the sun rose and set to tell East and West.
If he hadn’t remembered that, he would probably have wandered in circles till he died by the near-endless needleleafs which were in the area of the forest he first arrived in. I hadn’t even thought about Native Americans! I looked up knights, samurai, and ninjas, but I didn’t even think to look up Native Americans! Max thought to himself as his mom put the vest and headband on him.
He plays around with the gifts and his toys for the rest of the day, but the thing Max is now excited about is returning to school and seeing if they have any books there about Native Americans. He knows that they will be sparse and not very good, so he also begins to plan a way to get his mom to take him back to the library again. He hasn’t asked her recently since he feels he has read most everything he can think of or find that might help him, but now he has a new, untouched subject.
Much like life prior to the holiday break, Max returns to school and his schedule. For three months, he reads everything he can about Native Americans in his free time. He actually finds most of the books more helpful than the ones about knights, samurai, ninjas, or other warriors he had looked up.
The books cover more about how the Native Americans had lived off the land, the way they used parts of the animals, and how they survived in a world more primitive than the others he had looked up. Some even talk about the ways that they used certain plants and things to treat wounds. Which, of course, leads him back to the botany section.
Most people might find these books boring, but Max is enthralled by them since they are far more like his own experience lost in the wild. Even the way it talks about some of the more brutal things it claims they did simply reminds Max of how he 'took care of' Sinclair's men.
As the school year nears its close, Max’s interest in books begins to decline. He has read just about everything he can find, and, while through no lack of looking, finds no way back to the world he had traveled to. Max begins spending more time with his friends as he did before, and takes a larger interest in video games again. He rarely even looks at or traces the fading ghostly scars on his arm anymore.
The only thing he sticks to is exercising and working out, which he does every morning and night, unless it is a school day, then just the morning workout and during P.E. class. His mother manages to convince her brother to take him camping again for his birthday, and her brother reluctantly agrees. This brightens Max’s spirit for a while before and after the trip, but it doesn’t last long.
This time, he hadn’t been as rambunctious, which made his uncle happy. His birthday comes and goes, and the new school year begins. Max thinks about Rosalee and her World less and less, focusing on the boring life he finds himself stuck in.
Everything stays the same until one day in late October. He and a schoolmate he has known for years are out playing in a small grass patch in his apartment complex. His friend, who is older than him and about to start middle school, is being more aggressive than normal, bordering on bullying him. His mom sits and watches the boys’ roughhousing. She notices that the older boy is starting to push her son around more than normal.
Getting frustrated, Max looks over at his mom sitting nearby. His mom notices him and nods before saying, almost playfully. “Go on, Max, show him not to pick on you.”
The other boy smiles at that and shoves Max to the ground. Anger begins to build in Max, and as he stands, the older boy tries to push him down again, but Max grabs his arm and flips him over, slamming him to the ground on the other side of where he stood. The boy seems bewildered but gets back up and tackles Max to the ground.
Pushing Max down, he holds him down and raises his arm to hit him. Max pushes his left arm against the boy's chest, trying to get him back a little. Max’s mother notices things getting out of hand and sighs, standing up. She is about to head over and pull the boys apart when Max surprises her.
His forearm pressing against the boy's chest, Max is sweating, and when the sun hits his eyes, he glances away, down at his arm. The ghostly scars seem darker and clearer. Max’s pupils suddenly dilate, where his friend once stood, now a dark ghostly image of a needleleaf now stands.
Max lets out a scream of anger and frustration the likes of which his mother and the other boy have never heard before. Max punches the other kid in the face, causing him to stand back up, moving away from Max, confused by his sudden outburst and change in temperament. Max wastes not a second, springing to his feet, tackling the larger boy to the ground. He punches the kid twice in the face before the kid can get his arms up to try to block the blows.
“What the hell!?”
The boy can’t say more before Max grabs his head with both hands and slams it to the ground. The boy struggles below Max, while the blow has hurt him, he is still okay. Not knowing why Max has suddenly gotten so aggressive, he tries his best to push and shove Max up and off of him.
Max’s hands never release the boy’s head as he slams it to the ground a second time and raises it to do it a third. Max’s mom reaches Max before he can finish the third blow and roughly jerks him off of the boy.
“Max, what the hell are you doing!? Are you trying to kill him?”
Only then do Max’s pupils begin to shrink. He looks confused at his mother, then down at his friend lying on the ground, crying, holding the back of his head. Michael? But where did the needleleaf go? Wasn’t there one just attacking me? What’s going on? Max’s mind races, and his mouth hangs open. He doesn't know what to say or do.
“Get inside now! You are so grounded, Mr.!” His mom orders as she helps Michael off the ground and checks to be sure he is going to be okay.
Max turns and starts walking home as his mother leads Michael back to his apartment. She is going to make sure he gets there okay and talk to his mother, letting her know what happened. When she finally comes back home, she asks her mother where Max is and then goes to see him in his room.
Max lies curled up on his pad, crying softly. His mother sighs before leaving the room without saying anything to Max. Under her breath, she couldn’t help saying, “What is wrong with that boy?”
? ? ?
Max gets ready for school, the same routine he has done for years. It is his first day of middle school, and he is more than a little nervous that he won’t be able to find all of his classes by himself. In elementary school, the teacher either changes rooms or leads the kids from one class to another.
Most times, they simply just keep the same teacher for several subjects. Now in middle school, it is different; after each class, they have fifteen minutes to get to the next class. They can also use some of this time to stop by their lockers, another thing brand new to Max, or use the restroom.
His anxiety never lessens, even on the bus ride to school. He gets to school earlier than he needs to, as he has always done. Stopping by the cafeteria, he gets a quick breakfast and sits down in the noisy room to eat.
Over the last few years, most of his friends have either moved away for one reason or another or have simply stopped hanging out with him in favor of spending time with other people who Max either doesn’t know or doesn’t want to know. So, he sits alone and finishes the little meal and drinks the small carton of chocolate milk it comes with.
Soon, the first bell rings, and Max joins the throng of kids heading out of the cafeteria and makes his way from one building to the next till he finds his locker. He has less trouble than he thought, but still struggles to get it open, putting his bag away and getting his things for the morning classes. He figures rather than try to get to the locker and get it open between every class, he will just split his load up between morning and afternoon classes, changing them out during his lunch break.
The classes are just as boring as they were in elementary school, and being the first day, each class is almost an exact duplicate of each other. Enter the class, sit down, wait for everyone to introduce themselves, including the teacher, hear what the class is and generally what they will be learning, then some small busy work before repeating it again in the next class.
There is only one class left before Max’s lunch period. This is the only class he actually looks forward to, just as he had in his last school; it is the P.E. period. Just like in every P.E. class he has ever had before, they change into their gym clothes and then start with stretches and simple exercises like pushups, sit-ups, jumping jacks, and the like.
Once the warm-up is over, the gym teacher informs them that, unlike before, where they all have to do the same activity each semester, they will be given three activities and that they have to choose between one of them, and that is what their P.E. will be comprised of. This semester is Volleyball, Basketball, or Weightlifting. Max is excited upon hearing this. He has always enjoyed the physical activity part of P.E. but disliked the sports aspect of it.
He quickly signs up to join weightlifting, beating the other kids to the sign-ups. They spend the period going around the small weight room and showing the kids who chose the same activity as Max all the stations and briefly how to use them. While they don’t have much time to actually use any of it before the period is over, Max is excited and actually can’t wait for school tomorrow. He feels that this small change might help him out of the rut he is in and take his mind off things.
When the bell rings, Max, having not gotten sweaty at all, skips the shower and changes back into his school clothes. Without wasting a long time, he hustles to his locker and tosses his things into it. He doesn’t get his afternoon books out just yet. Why carry them around when he is just going to eat? He will come back and get them after.
Max slams his locker and turns to head to the cafeteria. Max blinks several times in a row, flabbergasted. He turns back around, and his locker is gone; he stands facing a tree in the middle of a wooded area. “What the-”
