The sun stretched its limbs in the east with shades of purple and pink, and then floated across the dazzling blue sky, dancing around tufts of lazy cotton-ball clouds, lifting itself higher and higher, like a runaway, forgotten balloon. But if there was anyone in the world who hadn’t forgotten about that balloon—that great, shining sun—it was Elias Thornwood.
It was springtime—Eli’s favorite time of year—when the entire world decided it would wake up again, shaking off the slumber of a drowsy winter, and stepping closer toward warmth and new memories. The fourth grade was nearly over, a massive relief for Eli, who, like most other kids, felt like he could finally breathe—like that first deep breath of oxygen after being submerged underwater for too long. He liked to learn; he was a good student. But the other kids seemed to torment him, for one reason or another, reasons that were beyond him, and that he wouldn’t understand until much later in life.
Because of this, Eli wanted to be outside, alone and with the smiling world of nature. He loved to listen to the birds’ chorus, early in the morning, and he would sit by the birdfeeder in his backyard, and watch the robins and sparrows and cardinals fluttering around the feeder, taking turns, always so neatly and orderly, as if they had a whole system devised, and were clocking in and out for different shifts. Sometimes a hummingbird would visit, too, and this was most exciting, because they did not always make themselves known. And then, when he grew tired of watching the birds, he would run to the garage and grab the giant bag of peanuts, and he would feed the squirrels, tossing the peanuts to them—sometimes breaking open the shell, but sometimes not. The squirrels were funny in that way. They didn’t seem to care. They would run off and stash away their nuts like mad hoarders, as if they never expected to find another nut again, but then they would contradict themselves, and return the very next moment, expecting to be fed another nut. The cycle continued. And that was Eli’s favorite way to kill an afternoon.
But it was morning now, and it was Saturday, and it was spring, which meant that new creatures would be crawling back to life, unleashing their revitalized presence on the world, and it meant that the day was still full of endless possibilities. New life is good, Eli thought. New life is happy.
Eli had seen enough of the birds and the squirrels, which never fully went away, even in the wintertime. No, Eli had his sights set on something else. Today, Eli would search for insects, whatever types he could find, under rocks and in the trees, as big or as small as God had intended for them to be. A plan had come to him the night before: he would get two jars from the kitchen that were secure and had tight lids, and then he would collect the insects, and separate them into two categories, one that he deemed Good and one that he deemed Bad. He wasn’t quite sure how he would decipher a difference between the two, but he knew that once he was holding the insect in his hand, his gut would tell him. Good or Bad. Good or Bad.
He dutifully informed his mother where he would be and set off just after breakfast. He was going to the park, the one just behind the school, which had a pocket of trees and bushes and foliage that was so rich and vivacious it sprung from the brown, muddy earth like a little forest heaven. It was one of Eli’s favorite places to be alone. As he walked, the two empty jars clanked noisily together in his backpack.
He wore long sleeves and pants to avoid poison ivy’s burning touch, then carefully climbed into the brush, scanning meticulously for insects. His first hour in the wooded playland was fruitful. He lifted up hefty rocks and found a treasure trove of miniature life. Beetles and worms and ants crawling all about—a bustling city of active wonder.
Then came the categorization. He pulled the two glass jars out of his backpack. Beetles were Good, compact and harmless and sometimes even colorful. Ants were Good too—organized and communal, working together. But worms were Bad, slimy and nondescript and faceless. He did not like worms.
He put each insect into their respective jar and continued on his search. The ground was becoming repetitive, and so he shifted his gaze higher, toward the branches in the trees. There were flying insects buzzing about—bees and flies and mosquitoes and such—but those were difficult to get into a jar, and he did not like the idea of getting stung or bitten.
Before long, he stumbled across the intricate tangle of a spider’s web, and there, dead in the middle, was the eight-legged creature. An intense panic rose up within him, clutching the deepest part of his soul; he had never seen a spider so large or felt a fear so vivid. But he knew that he had to have it.
He got the Bad jar out of his backpack and slowly attempted to usher the spider inside of it. Adrenaline pumped through him like rushing floodwater, and his senses heightened and then washed away, and everything else in the world disappeared. In one swift movement, he placed the opening of the jar around the spider and snapped the lid shut, trapping it inside. He wiped away the webbing that had wrapped itself around the outside of the jar and then looked inside to observe his trophies.
The worm had a new roommate.
Eli ventured deeper. He tried to settle himself after his encounter with the spider, but his heart thudded like a heavy hammer against a gavel, pounding from his chest to his ears. The rhythmic pumping was disrupted by a noise—a sudden rustling of leaves. His gaze whipped to the right, toward the direction of the sound, but there was nothing. He was about ready to call out, to ask if anyone was there, but he was sure that he was alone. Nobody from school ever came this far into the woods.
He quickly forgot about the sound he had heard because, just before him, on a dangling droopy leaf, was a little red dot, speckled with black polka dots. He smiled. A blind, radiant joy permeated through him—first in his chest, then spreading slowly, like a dense rolling fog. It had been a long time since he had last seen a ladybug, and he was surprised to have found one here, nestled in these green depths, alone and so far away from everything else.
“I’m a lot like you,” he said to the ladybug, pulling the Good jar from his bag, and gently placing the ladybug inside.
Eli was satisfied with his haul. The ladybug was the crowned jewel of his collection, a prize he’d love to keep by his side. And he didn’t dare open the Bad jar again until he got home—for fear of the spider escaping. That settled it. He ought to head home for lunch.
As he started tracking his way back the way he had come, his mind considered all the ways he hoped to observe the insects. They were such curious beings, so rarely talked about. All the books at the school library focused on the big animals—the lions and tigers and giraffes and rhinos—the undeniable heavyweights of the wild. But Eli knew they only made up a small portion of the animal kingdom, and there were never many books about the smallest animals. He wondered why nobody seemed to care about the small creatures; he wondered why they were forgotten.
He was nearing the exit when one final surprise emerged from the green. Eli’s jaw dropped. On a low branch sat a praying mantis, with its triangular head and faithful, hooked arms. It looked like a leaf, or maybe an emerald stick, and Eli got close to the creature, as close as he could, and he felt like the mantis was trying to tell him something, like it was really praying to him, as if Eli had become a deity, and the mantis was a dutiful little priest.
Eli was about ready to pull the Good jar from his bag, when he heard another rustling in the leaves—closer this time. A mounting worry swept through him, and he suddenly felt as if he might not be alone, and that someone or something might be following him. He looked once more at the mantis, and then cut his losses, leaving the mantis behind, and rushed toward the exit of the woods. The rustling noise followed him, springing forward with breakneck speed, growing louder. Eli frantically shoved branches and leaves out of his way, hustling to escape the wooded area before his pursuer caught him. He broke through the final edge of the woods and continued running onto the school playground—when he tripped and stumbled, falling hard on the bed of splintered wood chips below the monkey bars.
From behind him, emerging from the woods, was Victor Rourke.
Victor was the type of boy who kicked anthills and swatted flies, proving to the world that he, too, was a type of god—and that he, too, could choose when things lived and when things died. While Eli spent his afternoons feeding squirrels, he sometimes saw Victor shooting pebbles from a slingshot at them. And Victor would boast, at school, on the playground, that his father would soon get him a BB gun, and then he would easily be able to shoot the squirrels dead.
He was a large, doughy boy with bright reddish hair and freckles that emerged generously in the summertime. He loomed over Eli, standing a full foot taller, and was often mistaken for an adult or a grown teen. He was thick-bodied—soft but solid—and he always wore a dumb, devious smile across his face. But it was his eyes, his beady brown eyes, that scared Eli most of all. Life was a game for a boy like Victor.
Eli quickly scrambled to his feet, but Victor shoved him back to the ground.
“What’s in your bag?” Victor sneered.
Eli didn’t answer and tried to find his footing again.
Victor ripped the backpack clean off Eli’s back and unzipped it, stuffing his colossal hand into the opening. He pulled the two jars out and examined them with violent, evil delight.
“Collecting bugs?” Victor asked.
Eli remained silent, paralyzed under Victor’s menacing presence, but he swore he saw it—a flicker of fear darting across Victor’s face as he tracked the spider. For the first time, Victor’s mask slipped.
“You caught a spider, huh?” Victor smiled. Then he twisted the lid off the Bad jar and emptied the spider and the worm onto Eli’s chest.
Eli squealed in terror, and a wicked laugh erupted from the back of Victor’s throat.
“Awww, is wittle Eli afwaid of spiduhs?” Victor asked in a high falsetto.
But as Victor leered with twisted pleasure, Eli searched Victor’s sinister eyes, and he could sense, based on the distance he kept, that Victor was afraid of spiders too.
A certain power overcame Eli, and the spider, which had remained perfectly still on his chest, became a sort of potent weapon. Eli picked it up carefully, cupping it in his hands, then lunged toward Victor, who let out a yelp and jumped backward.
Victor started hurling insults at Eli—bad, horrible words, heavy with cruelty. Some, Eli didn’t even understand, but he felt their ugliness all the same. And all the while, Victor kept laughing like a mad devil, toying with Eli like a wild dog.
Eli chased after Victor, leading with the spider in his cupped hands, and Victor ran off toward his bike, which he had left at the entrance of the path up ahead.
When Victor had ridden off and was out of sight, Eli opened his hands to see the spider gently resting inside. It sat there, right in his palm, so perfectly still and so perfectly content that Eli wondered if the spider could move at all. But maybe it was not content; maybe it was terrified. Maybe it was paralyzed with the type of fear that cannot be overcome.
And in that moment, Eli wished that he could talk to the spider and tell it that it shouldn’t be scared, that it had acted like a true hero, and that he would take good care of it. But since he could not speak those words to the spider, he did the one thing he could. He found the two jars sitting on the ground, threw the empty Bad jar into his backpack—the lid for the Bad jar had been badly damaged—and put the spider in the Good jar.
“I was wrong about you,” Eli said to the spider. “You belong in the Good jar.”
He then surveyed the area, and found the worm, and decided that the worm was not Bad either. But the worm had died, so he dug a small hole in the ground and buried it inside.
He examined both jars—the Bad jar completely empty, and the Good jar full of life.
Eli walked the rest of the way home with his head hanging low. A friendly breeze swept through the neighborhood, and the sun was still smiling, but the day no longer felt like spring to Eli.
He walked into the house, tracking dirt in from his worn-out sneakers, and sat at the kitchen table.
His mother appeared from the living room. “Hey, bud, how’d it go?” she asked.
“Good,” he replied, and he pulled the Good jar out of his bag. “Look.”
She grabbed the jar and examined it, then let out a shriek. “Oh my God—is that a spider?”
Eli suddenly felt as if he had done something wrong. “Don’t worry, I’ll let it out outside,” he quickly explained.
Eli’s mother shuddered. “Yes, please. Don’t open that in the house.”
“Okay,” he agreed. He pulled the Bad jar from his bag and handed it to his mother. “Sorry about the lid,” he added.
But his mother didn’t seem to care or notice that the lid was damaged and instead just placed the jar in the sink.
“I saw that boy again riding around the neighborhood,” Eli’s mother started. “I think his name is Victor. The tall one with the red hair—you know who I’m talking about. He’s such a nice kid. He always says hello to me when he rides by. He even offered to help me bring the grocery bags in earlier. You wouldn’t think he’s your age. You two should get together sometime. He’s really very nice, Eli. I think you two would get along just great.”
Eli remained silent. He stared at the insects in his Good jar.
“You gotta put yourself out there sometimes, bud. I know it’s not easy making friends, but you gotta at least try. Why don’t you talk to him next time he comes around? If I see him, I’ll let you know, and you can talk to him. He’s really such a nice, good kid,” Eli’s mother said.
Eli hoped that what his mother said was true, and he tried to imagine a world in which the Bad jar was always empty.
“He’s really such a nice, good kid,” his mother said again, smiling at him.
And Eli tried to smile back.
For those curious, this short story was inspired by three things: