Maple Syrup

Sean sat under the shade of a thinning oak tree in front of his school. He liked to dream like he liked to nibble the erasers off the ends of his pencils: absentmindedly, but with great vigor. He imagined himself a brilliant and famous novelist, and in this particular fantasy, his mother was in the audience crying of joy, watching him receive the Pulitzer Prize for literature. Dreaming sure was better than worrying, at least. Sean worried constantly about how he was going to pay for college. He worried about how his mother worked for so little pay, and how they couldn't afford real maple syrup. He worried that he would probably never write anything worthy of publishing, and that his dreams were a waste of time.

Sean's reverie broke when the alarm on his phone started to ring, "Beat It" by Michael Jackson. He turned off his alarm and his head snapped up to see that there were no more kids left waiting. His mom was late, again. Not that he could blame her. He felt guilty about blaming her— it wasn't her fault. Sean knew that she always meant the best for him, even if she didn't always show it. Janine was older than all of his friends' mothers, and her hair was speckled gray. She worked as a janitor in the local middle school. She was always smiling, but there were always circles under her eyes, and when she got home her back was always sore. She cleaned and mopped the whole school from top to bottom until it was so clean that the floors squeaked. When Sean was in middle school, he was so worried about passing her in the hallway that he would scamper quickly from class to class, never stopping for a chat. Now he imagined her running through the same halls with a mop, once again late to pick up her 15 year-old son.

BEERRRKNK!!!

Sean jolted at the sound, and saw his mom's 1995 gray Toyota Camry slide slowly into a spot at the end of the block. She usually never got a parking spot anywhere near the school, but today she was so late that she drove right up to 67th Avenue. She honked again, a smaller one this time.

"Yes, Mom! Ughhh." Sean rolled his eyes.

He got up, put on his backpack, and started walking toward the car. He was hungry, and couldn't wait until they got home so that he could have a snack. Chips and salsa, maybe? Or were the chips getting stale? He couldn't remember the last time they had been to the supermarket.

Suddenly, the tomato and corn chip dreams disappeared. Something black and reflective caught the corner of Sean's eye. On the floor... it was right under the blue postal box that said "U. S. Mail," and it didn't look like anyone was looking for it. He bent down to pick it up, looked around for a moment, and then shoved it in the big middle pocket of his pullover hoodie.

When they got home, he ran to his room, closed the door, and emptied the contents of his pocket as if they might burn him. Laying upon the desk was a small writing journal with a black cover, and inside it, a small, brown envelope. From inside the envelope, to his great surprise—a stack of $100 bills. He counted five. Five hundred dollars cash. He tried to keep from smiling, but found it difficult. This could help pay for college. This money could help his family! But it wasn’t enough. So he put the money away in the blue shoebox from the kicks that he got for his birthday, to hide it and hold it until he could make some more.

That night, after dinner, Sean found himself sitting in his room, trying to focus on his homework. But he kept glancing toward his shoebox, thinking about the money. He placed the little black notebook on his bed, trying not to think about that either. But he found it very hard to not to, and so he gave in and thought. He gently moved the notebook from his bed to his desk. He stared at it. It stared back at him. He opened it to check the contents again. Yep, still completely blank. The mystery of it consumed him, and his curiosity inspired him to write. He took out a half-eaten pencil from a cup on his desk, opened the first page of the notebook, and began to write. He was writing for so long and was so lost in his story that when he came to, he found that he had fallen asleep on the notebook, and some of his pages were smeared with ink, other pages wet with drool. He got up from his desk, and without brushing his teeth, got right into bed and fell asleep.

The next day, Sean had what could qualify as a "normal" day at school. Samantha and Brock had broken up— that was no surprise. And his teacher had given him a B-plus on his latest essay, which was fine. When it was the end of the school day and it was around time to be picked up again, Sean had a thought. What if someone had left something else under the mailbox? No, that would be absurd. No one is that lucky. But he had to check. His mom was due to pick him up at any minute, and so he walked in the direction of the post-box. His heart thudded in his chest as he got closer, eying the little brown envelope in the shadow of the post-box. He looked around again to make sure no one was watching, bent down to pick it up, and stood back up again, shielding the envelope from view. With a quick slide of his fingers, he opened it and counted again—1, 2, 3, 4...5!—five one-hundred dollar bills! Wide-eyed and giddy, he closed the envelope, and stuffed it in his pocket.

When Sean got home, he put the envelope with the other cash in his shoebox, and sat at his desk, both mystified and elated. He wasn't quite ready to tell his mom what he had found, so he kept it to himself. His aunt and uncle were over for dinner tonight, and the festivities lasted well into the night. He found himself too tired to write, and so he went promptly to bed.

The following morning, Sean awoke with excitement. He had a strong feeling that he would find an envelope of cash again underneath the postal-box. It was all he could do to not think about it through class, and daydream about what he could do with the money. His last class, calculus, seemed to go on and on, and when end-of-the-day bell rang, he zipped out of there and was the first student out the door. He wanted to make sure no one else found the envelope of cash, and so he ran over to the mailbox—

His heart dropped. It wasn't there. Why wasn't it there? Someone must have taken it. There could be no other reason.

He fretted about the missing envelope all night, hoping beyond hope that no one had found it, that it had just been a fluke. It would be there tomorrow, he thought. Otherwise, what would he do with just a thousand dollars? That was only enough for a couple textbooks.

Sean opened up the black notebook and wrote and wrote. He took his excess energy from worrying and channeled it into his story.

That next day, he was both eager and tentative to search the postal-box. He walked as quickly as he could from class while trying to remain casual. He reached the box. Lo and behold, his envelope was there! He quickly looked inside, saw the $100 bills, and pocketed it.

He needed to make sure that he was able to get the cash the next day, whatever the cost. He thought about all the possible reasons that he found the envelope today and not the day previous. He thought about all the things he did and did not do, the things that were different. Other than his aunt and uncle coming over, which was a fairly regular occurrence, the only thing he could think of was that he hadn't written that evening. A superstitious thought, to be sure, but one that bugged him all the same. He decided not to chance it, and wrote into the night.

The very next day, he looked under the postal box, and found an envelope. Yes! It must be the writing, he thought. He couldn't explain it any other way.

He wrote with purpose that night. Line after line, his story took form, and his mind dreamed up fortunes and mystery and fame.

His days continued like this, picking up and pocketing the envelope, writing in the little black book, going to bed. Starting it all over.

By now he was nearing the end of the first draft of his story. This was more than he had ever written before. He was actually proud of his work. Perhaps equally as proud as he was of his collection of cash—all $20,000 of it, he counted. This could be enough to pay for some of his college tuition, and help his family! He could hardly believe how much he had stored in that box; it was nearly overflowing.

That evening, after counting his discovered cash and storing it safely under his bed, Sean decided it was finally time to tell his mother. He didn't know what she would think of it, if she would be grateful, or tell him that it did not belong to him and that he should return it to the government or something. But his mother rarely turned down free things, and Sean cared about his family, and so he decided to risk it.

He was waiting, trying to figure out the right moment to tell his mom. His mother had made breakfast for dinner, something she only did on Friday evenings. She flipped on the TV. Sean picked at his pancakes, doused in artificial syrup. The weather channel gave way to some fast food commercials, and then the news was on. Sean was only half-listening, pushing the bacon around on his plate, when he noticed it. A reporter talking about a recent discovery. Two men, two criminals, had been arrested for laundering money, and hiding the cash in drop-off points throughout the city. Some ten or twenty-thousand, the reporter said. All tied to a drug operation that was still under investigation. And the FBI still hadn't found the cash.

Sean looked back down at his plate, and grinned.