SQN - Sine Qua Non - Issue Two - Journal - Page 109
“Kill it! Kill it!” yells my sixth-grade teacher Mrs. Spahr.
A small, translucent thread of spider silk hangs down from the white ceiling squares.
The spider still clings to its rope.
As I look around the classroom, I notice a series of reactions that I do not quite understand.
A couple of my classmates are gasping as they notice the small bug. They move away from the
quads of desks that are spread about the room and towards the wall of brown lockers.
I am NOT gonna kill it, I think as I roll my eyes.
I grab a piece of paper from my desk and fold it “hamburger style.” Then, with a quick scoop,
I capture the six-legged creature within the fold of the paper, and I crease the sides of the
sheet, creating a mock envelope. With a small smirk, I hold up my origami cage to the class.
“Mrs. Spahr,” I say as I walk towards her desk.
“Don't bring it closer to me! Get rid of it,” she says, backing away from me.
Not so tough now… hmmm.
Just last week you proudly accused my mother of writing an essay for me because it had “big words”
that couldn’t possibly be my own.
I turn away from my teacher, who is cowering from a bug the size of a toddler’s fingernail, and
I step outside the classroom. Turning a corner, I reach the back door of the elementary school
building, and I open the doors that face the playground.
I unfold the paper and shake the spider off, losing sight of the bug as it blurs into the blacktop.
——
“DOMINIC! ALEX!” I yell, with the corpse gently placed on the bed of my woven fingers.
I run out from under the tree cover and into the bright sun, and I race up the cement steps
of the back porch. My pair of cousins—respectively six and four years my senior—sit on a
shaded couch on the patio.
They raise their dark haired heads from their game of Skip-Bo—the bright cobalt box sits next
to the white cards splayed out on the glass table—and their brown-eyed gazes immediately
lock onto the limp form in my hands.
——
“Okay, all the girls have their first outfit picked out,” my grandmother says, gesturing to the
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