Searching for Azalea

Max was walking through the forest. He was barefoot, and could feel the cold dirt underneath his toes. He looked up as a gust of wind rustled the leaves far above him. He had been walking for days, surviving on berries and the water droplets that twinkled on the grass in the early morning; but he was finally there, fairy mountain!

As if to offer proof, suddenly one of the fairies leapt onto the path in front of him. Her hair was long, slightly past her waist, and so blond it was almost white. Her eyes were the deep blue of the ocean. She wore the traditional clothing of the forest dwellers, loose fitting pants and a long cape that concealed her beautiful wings. Max knew that if she opened them, they would easily spread across the entire path, simmering like a prism in the morning light. She raised her hand in greeting.

“Max.”

He smiled, impressed that the fairy queen, Azalea, already knew who he was. She must have heard of his mission. Max nodded and reached into his backpack. 

“Max!”

He blinked and the forest disappeared, replaced by the dull yellow walls of his third grade classroom. Mrs. Noble was staring at him again, an annoyed expression on her face. 

“Max, are you listening?”

Max had been listening. But then he had gotten distracted by a tree outside the window and the way his teacher’s long hair seemed to move on its own. And then suddenly he was on a quest in the forest, on his way to offer the fairy queen the solution to all of her problems. The forest was dying and he was the only one who knew how to fix it.

“Max!”

He sighed. Mrs. Noble had clearly just asked him a question. “I'm sorry,” Max said. “I didn’t hear you.”

She repeated it, something about tadpoles (maybe THEY were magical too!) and Max tried to remember the answer. The class had been learning about tadpoles all week, he knew that. They turned into frogs eventually. Max thought that part was cool. He wished he could turn into something else when he got older, to grow a tail or another set of legs or something really cool like wings. 

Max had always thought flying was the best superpower.

Mrs. Noble gave up and called on Becca instead. Becca always had the right answers.

Max packed up quickly at the end of the day. It was Tuesday, and Tuesdays were mommy days. Max liked his babysitter Hannah fine, but mommy days were the best. They would get snacks at the store on the corner by his school and then walk to the playground, his mom’s tall boots making loud clicking sounds on the pavement as they went. 

His mom had long hair too, but hers was red like Ariel from the mermaid movie. Sometimes Max imagined his mom swimming underwater, her long mermaid tail splashing behind her. But mostly she was just his mom.

“Maxi! How was your day?”

Max told her all about the forest and the fairy queen Azalea, about how he was walking for days and days and once he almost ran out of water but then it rained and he made a cup out of a leaf to drink from. She listened carefully, smiling. Unlike Mrs. Noble, his mom seemed to like his stories. She said he had an incredible imagination and that maybe he would be a writer someday. Max thought that sounded like a lot a work. He would rather be a pirate.

When he was finished she gave him a hug. “That sounds wonderful Max. Did you learn anything new?”

Max frowned, thinking hard. ‘We learned about tadpoles,” he said, finally. “They turn into frogs!” He then launched into an excited explanation of how the tadpoles started like fish but eventually they grew legs (like Ariel!). “See?” he exclaimed breathlessly. “I WAS listening. Mrs. Noble never thinks I am because of the fairy stuff but I know ALL about tadpoles!”

His mom’s eyes got smaller like they did when she was worried. “Did Mrs. Noble say you weren’t listening?”

Max nodded, frustrated. “She always says that!”

His mom nodded, her mouth pressed into a thin line. She was silent for a bit, then her face lit back up again.

“Lets get some snacks!” she exclaimed, clapping her hands together. Max started talking about whether pretzels or Goldfish were better, his day at school all but forgotten. 

Later that evening, however, he heard his mom and dad talking in the living room. 

“I don’t think that teacher is right for Max,” his mom said. “She doesn’t get him at all.”

Max heard a creak as his dad shifted in his chair, the big brown one in the corner of the living room. 

“Well you know Max, he isn’t always great at sitting still and paying attention is he?”

His mom let out a big breath of air. “What 9 year old boy is? School is not supposed to just be about sitting quietly and listening to someone talk.”

Max agreed. He liked it when they got to touch things, like that time they made their own clay from salt and flour and water, and the time they put a potato in a bag and after a few weeks, little plants had started to grow. The plants had looked like worms and Max had imagined all of them deciding all at once to just pop out of their hiding place, like they had a meeting and one of them said “Lets do it, right now!” Mrs. Noble hadn’t really understood about the worms. 

Max also liked gym, especially when they got to run. He was very fast, probably the fastest kid in the whole third grade. And Mr. Jackson never frowned at him the way Mrs. Noble did. 

“Well there isn’t really anything we can do about it right? I mean she’s his teacher so he is just going to have to figure out how to pay attention more.”

Max wanted to tell his dad that he was trying but that Mrs. Noble really did look like a fairy queen and besides she was wrong, he remembered all about the tadpoles and their legs. But then he would have to admit that he had been spying on them from the kitchen when he was really supposed to be in bed. So he just quietly poured himself a glass of water, drank it quickly, and tiptoed back into his room.

The following week, they had a math test. Math was easy for Max so he finished quickly. Mrs. Noble said when they were done they could get a book off of the shelf and read quietly at their desk, and that was what Max was on his way to do when he was distracted by the tadpoles. Most of them were just swimming around lazily in the tank, but as he walked by, he swore that one of them looked right at him and swam closer to the glass. 

“We will be frogs soon. And then it will be time to return to the forest.”

Max nodded. It made sense that the tadpoles would be from the same place as the fairies. Maybe Azalea had brought them here!

“Max, can you please get a book and return to your seat”. Mrs. Noble was looking at him, a curious expression on her face. Max waved at the tank, grabbed two books off of the shelf (just in case he finished one; he was also a very fast reader!) and went back to his desk. His teacher’s gaze followed him for a second, before turning back to the rest of the class.

After school his mom said she wanted to show him something so they went to the coffee shop on the corner. His mom ordered a cappuccino and Max got a hot chocolate and a big cookie covered with pink frosting. He was worried.; usually his mom said no to sweets before dinner. He wondered if maybe Mrs. Noble had told her about the tadpole tank, even though he had only stopped there for a minute. You just never knew with teachers.

But his mom was smiling when they sat down so Max figured maybe he wasn’t in trouble. She pulled a colorful piece of paper out of her bag, unfolded it, and placed it on the table in front of him.

“Look Max” she said. “This is a different school.”

Max looked. The kids in the pictures were all smiling. There was one of a boy painting in a big art room, and another of two girls playing jump rope. Max could see a jungle gym and a swing set in the background.

“Does it have a playground?” he asked. His own school had a big yard where they could run and play ball. But nothing to climb on, and certainly no swings. 

“Yes it has a playground right outside. And a gym, and a science room, and an art studio.” She grinned at him. “And also smaller class sizes and two teachers in every room…stuff you probably don’t care about.”

Max wondered what it would be like to have two Mrs. Noble’s in one room.

“Are the teachers nice?”

His mom shrugged. “I don’t know,” she replied. “I thought we could go visit and find out. What do you think?”

Max thought having a playground right outside his school would be pretty cool. Also a science room meant there might be other animals; not just tadpoles, but maybe fish or even a hamster or a Guinea Pig. 

He nodded and his mom reached across the table to give him a hug,

“Don’t worry”, she said. “If you don’t like it, we will never go there again.”

Max wasn’t worried. He wondered how high he could swing. 

They visited the school (it was called the Beardsley School) on a Friday.  Max kept picturing a lady with a long beard, but of course he didn’t say that to the woman in the office. Instead he smiled politely and offered her his hand to shake like his parents had taught him to do when he met someone new. She looked impressed and Max felt proud of himself for remembering.

The school was awesome! The gym was twice the size of his current one, and had a basketball court with real nets instead of just the rims. The art room had paints of course, but also clay and tools to build things out of wood. Max asked if kids were allowed to use the tools or if they were just for teachers, and the man in the room had smiled at him. 

“Absolutely”, he replied. “In fact we even have smaller ones that would fit your hands perfectly.”

But Max’s favorite part was the science room, which not only had a large tank full of all kinds of multicolored fish, but another tank with an actual snake inside! The lady giving the tour (who did not look anything like a fairy queen) said it was a corn snake, which of course made Max think of eating corn on the cob in the summer, hot and dripping with butter. He was still reminiscing about summer barbecues when he realized that the woman had asked him a question.

Max felt his heart sink and waited for the lady to get annoyed with him for not paying attention. But to his surprise, she continued to smile at him, and calmly repeated the question.

“What do you like to do in school Max? What is your favorite subject?”

Max said he liked science best, but also math because it was easy for him, and gym because he was really fast and Mr. Jackson never got mad at him the way Mrs. Noble did. When he said that last part his mom looked upset. He supposed he wasn’t supposed to tell the new lady about Mrs. Noble. But once again she just smiled at him.

“We have a great gym here!” the lady said. 

Max told her that yes, he had seen it, and he really liked the basketball hoops, which made his mom look happier. Before he knew it, the lady was shaking his mom’s hand and they were getting up to leave. She offered Max a high five.

“Max, I hope to see you again soon.”

Max had no idea if he was going to see the lady again but he wondered if he would be allowed to hold the snake. That would be truly awesome!

On the bus ride home, his mom turned to him. She was biting her lip, just  like she did when she was concentrating on something really hard. 

“What did you think?” she asked. 

“About what?”

“About the school. Did you like it?”

Max nodded. “Yeah! Especially the snake! Snakes are much cooler than tadpoles.”

His mom then asked him something that surprised him.

“Would you like to go there?”

Max looked up at her, confused. ‘You mean like all the time? Like instead of  Mrs. Noble’s class, I would have a class there?”

She nodded.

Max thought for a moment and then grinned. “Yeah I would! I would like to go there!”

His mom said something about paperwork then, but Max had stopped listening. He was already imagining running around in the gym. Maybe he would get really good at basketball, like the guys he sometimes saw on TV. That would be pretty cool.

The following Monday, Max walked right up to Mrs. Noble first thing in the morning. 

“I’m going to a new school,” he announced. “They have a science room with a real live snake!”

Mrs. Noble smiled. 

“That’s awesome,” she replied. “Snakes are much cooler than tadpoles.”

Max was surprised. After all, she chose the tadpoles didn’t she? It was her classroom; he assumed she could have picked anything she wanted. 

Max hung his coat up in the closet and walked over to his desk. He wondered if his new classroom would have a closet. Also, he realized he probably should start cleaning out his desk. There was all kinds of junk in there.

“Max?”

He looked up and Mrs. Noble was staring right at him, a funny expression on her face.

“Don’t forget about us,” she said.

Max was pretty sure he would remember this classroom forever, and he was about to say as much when Mrs. Noble winked at him.

“The forest fairies will miss you,” she said. “Especially their queen.”

She then went back to quietly writing on the blackboard, leaving Max to wonder if he had imagined the whole thing.