Johnnaboe’s Journey

By Meredith, 7^th grade

            Johnnaboe marched down to the pond. It took him hours to get there every morning to get water and crumbs. Unlike most of his kind, he traveled alone, not talking to anyone or anything. His life was something like a mime’s life, except he wasn’t silenced to entertain people, he was silenced because he thought speech could be expressed in a way without words, and he didn’t have anyone to talk to in the first place.

            Anyway, Johnnaboe marched down to a huge wooden platform, and crawled up to the top, breathing heavily when he got to the flat plateau-like wooden surface. Then something hit him, right on his butt. He howled with pain and spun around and around, before a booming voice asked gently, “are you okay little fellow?”

            Johnnaboe looked up to see a 12-year-old boy. “YES IM OKAY! JUST BECAUSE YOU’RE TWO BILLION TIMES BIGGER THAN ME, IM STILL STRONG!” He had never talked once in his lifetime, and he wasn’t sure if any of his kind had either.

            The boy looked down on Johnnaboe and put his ear on the table. “Can you repeat that please?” Johnnaboe cursed and shouted his words again. “Well that wasn’t very nice; I didn’t mean to hit you with that fork.”

            Johnnaboe looked down at the silver rod next to him; he peered around the corner, and saw that it was connected to a bigger rod, which was attached to three more rods the same size as the one next to him. So this is what a fork was… thought Johnnaboe. The boy looked down at Johnnaboe and picked him up.

            “Do all ants talk?” asked the boy. Johnnaboe turned around and around, as if looking for something behind him.

            “Ant? I don’t see an ant… wait what’s an ant?” Johnnaboe asked.

            “You’re an ant, silly! A red ant actually.” replied the boy with a grin on his face. “And I’m sorry if I hurt you, maybe I can help. You look hungry, well actually you don’t look like your hungry or full, but you probably are hungry.” Johnnaboe eyed him suspiciously.

            “Well I am, and I would have gotten that crumb if you hadn’t rudely hit me and brushed the crumb away.” The boy went inside his house and got a small piece of paper.

            “Step on this and I can take you to my room.” Johnnaboe stepped over to the paper and walked around it a few times, before stepping reluctantly onto the paper. He was lifted into the air, and fell towards the center of the page.

            “Aaaaah! Help me!” But the boy’s ear was far away from Johnnaboe, so he did not hear Johnnaboe’s quiet remarks and curses, as he was flung around on the paper.

            When Johnnaboe and the boy got up to the room, Johnnaboe was set carefully on a desk away from direct light. “Here,” said the boy, “eat this, and I will go fill this bottle cap with water for you to drink.”

            Johnnaboe looked wide-eyed at the hotdog bun in front of him. “Y-y-you mean this is all mine?” The boy nodded and Johnnaboe dug into his building-sized feast.

            The next few days went by quickly, and Johnnaboe was full and happy at the end of each day. But one day, while the boy was off to what they called “school”; Johnnaboe was left near a lamp, while the boy’s evil brother faked being sick and stayed home.

            About three hours into the day, the boy’s brother walked into the room with a small container, completely clear. He also brought a magnifying glass and taped it to the window. After a little while, Johnnaboe was in the container, the light barely touching the edge of it.

            After an hour of waiting in the container, it began to get hot. The sun was coming through the window, and through the magnifying glass, and onto the container. A few minutes later, Johnnaboe lay dead, burned alive in the plastic container. But the little brother never returned.

            When the boy came home from school, he found Johnnaboe still lying at the bottom of the plastic container, dead. The boy was furious; he knew his little brother had done this. He trudged upstairs to where his brother was, in the third floor loft.

            “Why did you kill him?” the boy questioned his little brother.

            “Why did I do what?” the little brother replied innocently.

            “WHY DID YOU KILL JOHNNABOE???” the boy roared. The little brother sheepishly backed away from the raging boy.

            “He was just an ant.” Said the little brother finally, shrugging his shoulders. Then he walked out of the room and down the stairs.

            The next morning the boy told his mother about his little brother killing his pet ant. His mother thought it ridiculous to have a pet ant; “they died so quickly and they were insects!” she had said after been told Johnnaboe’s story. But she felt sorry for her son so she told him they would have a funeral that evening.

            “This way he will know how much you cared about him, and how much you helped him those two days he lived with you.” The boy’s mother said as Johnnaboe was lowered into the two inch hole. The boy, his mother, and his father said wonderful and respectful words to Johnnaboe as dirt was piled above him. The boy’s brother was playing with toy cars during the whole ceremony.

The End