The great blue marble (students were writing this)

I sat at the same shady spot at the back of the school. The olive colored fence stood before me like the Great Wall of China and it stretched right out into the soccer field. I could hear the water flowing in the canal from the other side. This is where I like to be everyday during recess, alone and undisturbed. Searching my side pockets, I pulled out a blue marble. This was what remained of my belated grandfather. He was a master at the game of marbles and this particular blue one was his prized possession. I received it on my birthday, before he died a few weeks later. I’d learnt to isolate myself since. Build walls where no one could reach. It seemed safer that way. I stared into the glass marble. Getting lost in it is like being suspended in the ocean. It’s just you and the deep blue.

“Wuss!” Bob jumped out of nowhere and snatched the blue marble from my hands. Blindsided, I was completely taken aback by his sudden appearance. It was purely disgusting how someone as burly and annoying as Bob could maneuver sneakily like a docile cat. I struggled up to my feet but before I could, he pushed me back to the ground. “What do we have here…” he squeezed the marble between his thumb and his index finger and held it up to his eye, examining it as though it was a jewel. “Can I please have it back, fat ass? It belongs to my grandfather.” I hissed vehemently.

He turned his gaze at me and clenched the marble tightly in his fist. “You’re so stupid no wonder your parents left you and your grandfather died on you.” He snarled proudly. His smirk revealed all the evil that was brewing in his thick fat skull. Surging with anger, I had wanted to pounce on him, rip his guts out and let ravens feast on his soul. Suddenly, he raised his arm as though he had a javelin in his hands to throw and instantly, I cowered back. I shielded my face with my hands out of reflex and just when I’d thought that he would care more to bruise my face, he spun around unexpectedly and hurled the blue marble across the school fence.

I gasped. My eyes widened in disbelief as I witnessed my marble diminish into a blue dot as it flew over the fence. It glinted momentarily in the sun and disappeared to the other side of the world, where it clicked on the ground and plopped audibly into the waters of the canal. For a moment the air turned still, the raucous laughter in the school yard died and the birds just stopped chirping. I was paralyzed in time, lost like my blue marble and all I could hear was my own heart, beating, drumming wildly in my ears. I wanted to breathe but the stirring turmoil in my throat stopped me. Before I knew it, I was squirming on the ground confused and breathless from an asthma attack.

Asphyxiation, I thought.

This is how it feels when you’re drowning. And the world blacked out.

In my dream, I was on the pinnacle of a vast green hill lying on a blanket of soft grass. The sky was azure blue with white billowy clouds scattered in the horizon. I stroked the grass blades and breathed the summer breeze. There was a calming effect in the wind. I peered at the sun, it shone brightly but the light didn’t hurt my eyes. I was just soaking the rays of the sun when I noticed something glistening at the corner of my eye. I directed my gaze towards the distracting glimmer and saw my blue marble right next to me. I picked it up and put it over the sun and marveled at how the light danced and swirled in the vast blue. I would picture a diver looking up from underwater and gazing at the same spectacle.

The great blue marble, it felt divine like I had the world in my hands. “You do have the world in your hands.” A familiar voice whispered. I looked up and I saw my grandfather smiling down on me. A tear streamed down my cheek as I sat up facing him. How I’d missed him. “However difficult the world is, I’ll always be there to walk it through with you.” He pressed his hand onto my chest and I felt a ripple in my heart.

I woke up at that point.

“Oh thank god you’re alive! We thought we’d almost lost you.” Mrs Lee hugged me at the hint of my revival. “What happened?” I gasped. “It was just an asthma attack but you’re okay now, that’s all that matters” the school doctor continued. Apparently my short episode gathered an entire crusade of the school staff. “I’m okay…I just need some air” I staggered on my feet and took a deep breath, came to my senses and realized that I was clutching something in my hands. I peered down and loosened my fingers and to my astonishment, it was my blue marble. It was inexplicable but I never came to explore how it got there.

It took a cruel boy, a cruel deed and a near death experience to propel me into recovery from the bereavement of my late grandfather. The loss of my only family was a misfortune but it was not in complete lack of virtue. Although it was incredulous to believe that a dream could change the entire course of one’s life it happened to me. Ever since that incident, I’ve never looked back to regret my past and stopped fearing the future because I know, just like the blue marble lying in the grasp of my fingertips. I had the world in my hands.