Hector

Ok, ok I'll admit it. I haven't even thought of posting. I've checked to see if there were any new comments and gleefully smiling at the fact that simple math kept away the stupids--I was getting about 20 spam comments an hour and my husband fixed it! :-D So here is what I have been working on it's a dream that I had that I thought I could make into a (very) short story. And I did! Only...I haven't finished it and currently I'm stuck. I know how it ends and some other moments, but filling in the in between stuff is what's got me in a block. My high school teachers were always telling me that my essays needed more details.... So in completely scraping the motif I've worked so hard to keep, here is the story thus far:
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Hector was a small child. He was meek and often overlooked. He cared less about his grades and more regarding a secret project of his--a computer, small and round like a ball. They weren't supposed to have computers (especially not ones that were tended to instead of focusing on the lesson). Time with such devices was considered unnatural, but necessary and therefore was to be limited. His classroom composed of connected desks and chairs was held on the side of a hill under the protection of an oak tree. His teacher, Ms. Peregrine was a tall slender woman with a pinched face and a constant look of disapproval about her. She kept her hair swept up in a tight bun with never a strand out of place. One could often find her peering down at her class over half-moon glasses looking as though each child were a separate, but equally nasty taste in her mouth that she couldn't wait to spit out. Most of the other students weren't bothered by Ms. Peregrine. Except for them completing the assignments given to them by her, you would think they didn't even know that she existed. Hector was terrified of her. He held his breath as she walked by his desk continuing to march between the rows.
“Class,” Ms. Peregrine said. “Be quiet and pay attention! This next assignment will be worth twenty-five percent of your entire grade. You will need to work diligently as there will be no credit given for late or incomplete work.”
Hector sat forward and gulped. He couldn't mess this one up. If he did he'd have to repeat the entire year again. He hurriedly wrote down everything Ms. Peregrine said regarding the assignment not once glancing around to see if the other children were as panicked as he. They were to write a paper regarding the science of everything around them and provide visual support. From the blades of grass that brushed their feet to the sun that lit their classroom. The enormity of the task was daunting to Hector; his hands automatically reaching for his small computer and a screwdriver that he kept hidden in his desk. As he nervously took it apart and rearranged the pieces yet again he looked around the classroom to see if others had responded with the same fear to the assignment. Everyone else seemed perfectly unaffected by the news. Lily, a girl sitting two desks ahead of him in the row to his left, was lazily drawing spirals on her paper and Petrel, a boy one desk behind him on the row to his right, was watching an ant marching on his desk and occasionally altered its course. Hector sighed. Why couldn't he be like the others?
Just then his computer sparked and went dead in his hand. Hector desperately hoped no one had noticed. He slid his hands out from under the lid of his desk and pretended to have been preoccupied with staring at a brown, dried-up flower instead of doing something that could possibly make any noise. Realizing that none of them had heard, Hector lifted the lid of his desk again and resumed tinkering with his tiny computer. “Now let's see,” he thought. “The sun makes the grass grow as it does me. Without the sun I will whither and die. Each blade of grass would be a mighty tree, except for my stomping feet which halt every try.” Wasn't that what Ms. Peregrine had told them? Yes. He remembered the shame that he felt upon learning that he was the reason the grass couldn't reach it's full potential. He had worked hard for the remainder of the week to step on rocks only, but Ms. Peregrine had scolded him for walking “in such an appalling manner” and it had cost him two demerits. Since then he worked harder to be invisible and so far it had worked.

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So I hope you don't think it's terrible. It occurred in dream world so of course not everything is right--especially the tech stuff, but my mind isn't completely tech savvy so I couldn't get that part right even if I had been conscious! If I get past this block and finish then I will do a new post with the entire story. :-)