by Zahra Axinn

For three months now, it had been three months because he had counted, for three months he had been “James.” James had decided that he was, as a second grader, ready to be James, not Jamie. It was an on-going process but now, at least in class, he was “James.” He was sitting in room 217, which was his very own second grade classroom, at his desk. James wasn’t really sure what he was supposed to be learning today. In fact he wasn’t really learning anything. At this point, he was concentrating fully on organizing his collection of erasers.

        James was known in the classroom as the boy who had the most erasers and the best erasers. He was generous too, and would let you borrow one, especially for a piece of fruit roll-up at recess. He was generous, at least, with all but one of his erasers. That one, he guarded. It was a simple pink eraser, which had once had writing on it and which once had held a uniform shape. Now it was a lump of oddly graying pink. It would look perfectly average to most, but to James it was fantastically unique. It was his favorite. Currently, he held it in his left hand. With the right, he sorted the others by size, shape, color and wear. As James placed the erasers in order, he was startled to hear a noise from behind him.

“Jamie!” Violet whispered. (She still refused to call him “James.”)

James continued to move the eraser shaped like a monkey over to where the banana eraser lay, only somewhat aware that his attention was wanted elsewhere.  He focused on his erasers and wondered to himself, Maybe those two should go togeth…

His thought was interrupted.

“Jay-MEE!” Violet hissed. “Pay attention!”

James looked around. He saw that the boy who sat in front of him, Tyrone, was speaking. Ty wasn’t just speaking. He was answering a question. It had something to do with the numbers that were on the board too! James did what came naturally to him, he glanced back at Violet with a panicked look on his face. Violet shrugged her shoulders but gave him a smile.

Violet was James’ best friend. They complimented each other. Where James was absentminded and forgetful, Violet was on task and mindful. Where Violet was shy and reserved, James was outgoing and sociable.

Although Violet’s smile had made him feel better, James still was the next person to be called on by Mr. Cabral. He sighed and attempted  to look at the board. Unfortunately, it was all too soon before the teacher was looking directly at him.

“Alright, its your turn James. Can you tell me what you wrote down for the answer to ‘twenty plus three’?” Mr. Cabral seemed like he really wanted James to say the right thing.

James looked down at his desk. Sure enough, under all of his erasers, was a worksheet with all of the problems that had been written on the board. He winced, as not a single answer was filled in on his page. He had no idea how to answer the question. He had completely ignored the lesson!

***

Later on it was recess. James was sitting under a tree alone in the playground. He had in his pocket his favorite eraser and that comforted him a little. Normally he might have joined in on the game of tag or gone climbing with Violet on the structure, but today he just didn’t feel like it. He was sad because he felt that he was not doing so well in class. James hadn’t understood the math problem. He had messed up.
        He pulled out the eraser from his pocket and turned it over in his hand. What he liked about erasers was that they could make your mistakes go away. But there were no erasers that could erase anything other than something you wrote or drew.

He saw Violet walking towards him. She waved a small wave and he called out to her, “Hello Violet!”

Even when he was feeling down, James couldn’t help but be eager to see his best friend. She sat down next to him on the grass, which circled around the tree.

“I feel like I don’t know anything now,” James admitted.

“Oh,” said Violet. “I’m sure you would understand it.”

“Really? Because I just felt so confused and I couldn’t figure the problem out,” James explained.

Violet didn’t say anything for a while. James was used to her being quiet and didn’t mind. He tossed the eraser and caught it a couple of times. Violet picked grass leaves one by one. She took one particularly flat and wide blade of grass and held it between her thumbs. She lifted her two hands to her mouth and blew through her thumbs and the piece of grass. Squeeeeeeek!

“Hey! How’d you do that?” James was impressed.

For the rest of recess, they sat there beneath the tree and Violet taught James how to make the grass instrument. At first James was only able to make a thppbb sound, like a raspberry. Later on, he was sounding just as good as Violet. This lifted his spirits.

While Violet was showing him how to whistle with grass, she said something that James thought was really helpful.

“Jamie, I think that you could be really good at math. I mean, adding and subtracting is kind of the same thing you do when you count and sort your erasers, if you think about it.”

“I’ve never really thought of that.” That was all that James could think of to say.

        The teachers called them back into class, and James thought about what Violet had suggested. He did know how many erasers he had in his desk. There were twenty-seven. And he could easily count and separate the numbers of red ones or round ones or funny ones from the bigger group.

        They didn’t do any more math problems that day in class, but during free time, James looked at the worksheet instead of his erasers. He saw one of the problems:

                                      27

-       6

He thought about it and considered that if he just pictured twenty-seven erasers instead of the number, it might be easier. James did just that and he even had fun thinking of which six he would eliminate. He chose the cupcake, the penguin, the basketball, the sombrero, the glow-in-the-dark ghost and, of course, his favorite one. After that, he figured out that the number of leftover erasers would be twenty-one. He was so excited that he yelled out “Twenty-one!” in the middle of class.

        Mr. Cabral looked over at James from his desk.
        “Did you figure one out!?”  He said.

        “I did!” James replied proudly.

        From where she sat behind James, Violet said nothing.  She just smiled. When James turned around to tell her, she grinned and said, “Good job James.”

        For the rest of second grade, James tried his best to follow along in class. Still, some days he would have trouble. Those times, he would turn to his best friend Violet and his trusty erasers to find a solution.