The Other Version

Despite Sophie’s voracious appetite for once upon a times and happily there afters, she abandoned storybooks in the second grade. The change was sudden, faster than overnight. The trouble started with the first big assignment of the school year, to interview a family member and write a report on an interesting part of their life. Sophie had known just who to interview. It had to be grandpa. He told the best stories.

They sat at the breakfast nook in grandpa’s house, him with his pipe and Sophie with her special black notebook, the repository of all her favorite thoughts.

“That’s a hard one, little pumpkin. You only want one interesting story? How am I supposed to choose just one?”

“Which one do you like the best?”

“Nonsense. Life is full of wonderful moments, each better than the next. It’s like when we go for ice cream. Why would anyone get just a single flavor when you could have a triple decker deluxe with sprinkles? It’s impossible to say which part of the ice cream is the best one, let alone which part of your life. When you’re as old as I am, you’ll know what I mean.”

Sophie considered this. It seemed true enough that grandpa would have a hard time picking. He had a new story to tell every time she came over. Last week, he had gone on about how he and great grandfather had run the family shipping business with the help of some enterprising elephants who had lost their previous jobs when the circus downsized. Sophie suspected that grandpa was probably exaggerating, that his workforce of elephants had likely been ordinary trucks, but she didn’t care. His version was better.

“I’ve got it! How about the story you started last week? That was good. Is there more to it?”

“Now that’s an idea. The day to day of the business was fine and well, but how we first got the money to get there is even better. Good thinking, pumpkin. Are you going to take notes?”

Sophie opened her notebook to the next blank page and nodded.

“It was a warm autumn night and I was laying in the field, waiting. Folks were saying that we’d be treated to a lunar eclipse that night, and conditions were perfect. Not a cloud in the sky, just a big full moon that was about to disappear. Right as the leading edge of shadow emerged, a shooting star bounced off the moon and knocked something off course that fell howling down to the earth. I saw it with my own eyes falling, falling, until it landed, CRASH, right in your great grandfather’s pumpkin patch. Of course I had to go investigate. And wouldn’t you know, it was the biggest mess you ever saw. Smashed rock and bits of pumpkin everywhere, and a smoking hole in the ground as big as the house. The season’s harvest was absolutely ruined. Your great grandfather, my daddy, he wasn’t gonna be very happy about that. Just as I was about to run and get him, I heard whimpering from the hole. Something was hurt! Now this hole was so deep you couldn’t possibly see the end, but I had to go help it. I was scared to do it, but it had to be done. I got myself a good strong rope and I climbed down that rope hand by hand all the way to the bottom. And what do you think I found?”

“What, grandpa?”

“It was a moon-eating hound! You know the ones, heaven’s guard dogs, they go and nip at the moon when they get frisky and cause our eclipses.”

Sophie shook her head. They hadn’t gotten to that part of astronomy in science class yet.

“What they teach you in those schools nowadays, I just don’t know. Well that’s what I found in the bottom of that hole. Poor thing was hurt bad, the shooting star must have swiped it out of the sky while the dog was busy snacking on the moon. Still breathing though, that much was clear. I sat with that dog all night in the hole, making sure it was as comfortable as it could be. In the morning, just as the sun was coming up, the dog starts heaving real hard, I thought for sure that this would be the end. With one great hurl, the dog spit up a shining ball of light right into my lap. It was a piece of the moon! The dog got on its legs and pranced about happy as can be, like nothing ever happened at all. I was a strong farm boy back then, so I put the moon in my pocket, slung the dog over my shoulder, and got us up the rope and out of the hole. The dog ran right off, or I’d have liked for it to stay. Don’t know if it ever made it back home into the sky or not.”

Grandpa paused to knock ash from his pipe as Sophie caught up with her note taking.

“Well I took that bit of moon down to the museum and they gave me $20,000 for it, in cash. Still a lot now, but that was a sum almost unheard of back in my day. There I was, just a scrap of a young fellow, and a fortune had crash landed on me from the sky. I took that pile of money and went straight home. My daddy and I made big plans, and the rest, as they say, is history.”

Grandpa sat back with a satisfied look and crossed his arms contentedly, as was his custom after a tale well told. Sophie got right to work. It was one of grandpa’s best stories yet, and she couldn’t wait to see what her new teacher would say about it. She spent all weekend writing her report and turned it in first thing on Monday morning. She got her work back at the end of the week, on a Friday that seemed ages in coming, and eagerly flipped the page to see the teacher’s comments. Mrs. Cooper must think that Sophie was the most interesting student she had ever had.

Silly and fun, but this was not the assignment. You were supposed to write a factual report, not make up wild untruths.

Her grade followed in spiky handwriting, circled in red: D.

D?!

The rest, as they indeed say, was history. Sophie didn’t know to stand up for herself. Her mind raced past denial, never even paused at indignation, and sunk into shame. How could she have been so simple? She should have recognized grandpa’s stories for what they were, tall tales that no one would take seriously. No one but fools like her. Her embarrassment was so complete that she never told a soul. Her family wondered what was wrong of course, especially her grandpa. She no longer sat with him in the breakfast nook, no longer eagerly combed familiar shelves at the library, no longer even wanted a triple decker deluxe at the ice cream shop. From then on, she would be nothing but sensible, do sensible things, and write sensible reports. By the end of the school year, Mrs. Cooper was delighted with Sophie’s progress. Her comments on Sophie’s final report card hummed with praise.

Sophie has shown incredible growth this year. I find such maturity at her young age to be very promising. Keep up the good work!

Over time, Sophie’s family accepted this new narrative, that their once imaginative little girl was simply fiercely determined to grow up. And grow up she did, trading her notebook filled with marvels and musings for textbooks and increasingly serious tomes of facts and findings. Mrs. Cooper was right about one thing. Sophie was a very promising child, who quickly became an even more promising youth, and eventually an exceptionally promising new lawyer. So promising in fact, that within five years, a notable firm offered her a position with a $20,000 signing bonus. She took it, naturally, and the money came through to her account by direct deposit. There, she thought, that’s how fortune arrives. Not by falling from the sky, and especially not in cash. Even after all those mollifying years of sensible success, she had never forgotten the stinging failure that started it all. Perhaps now, finally, no one would ever find her silly again.

And yet, though Sophie thought she had conquered sudden twists of fate, fate was not done with her. Even her best laid plans could not outrun the desolation wrought by global upheaval in the great end time of 2020. All too mercilessly, Sophie’s department was cut for redundancy. Forward advancement blocked at every turn, she found herself tumbling backwards instead, dashing upon the doorstep of her childhood home, battered and desperate for safe harbor. During her required isolation upon arrival, Sophie haunted her confines like an ancient ghost trapped within the boundaries of its own footsteps. It was in this state, suspended in time that seemed at once frozen and molten, real and imagined, that she began to feel a most intriguing lightness settle in. The yoke of expectation, the drowning weight of judgement, nods to propriety, all appeared lately as fantastical as grandpa’s beasts in the stories of her distant past. How reliable was certainty anyway, now as fragile as spider silk? Why not allow for a whimsy that could conjure a fleet of elephants where there were once merely trucks?

Sophie knew exactly where her little black notebook was. After that fateful day, she had banished it to the bottom of her dresser and encouraged the detritus of passing years to bury it from sight. She unearthed it now, and opened its pages for the first time in a long, long time. She skipped to the last entry detailing grandpa’s story and read it deeply, sensing without fully knowing that she was testing the cornerstone of her exhausted façade. Perhaps it was the particular moment in time, or the crack in her resolve, or even just a trick of the light, Sophie’s fresh eyes saw a prescient parable where before she had seen only nonsense.

Grandpa had told of disaster striking at a time when all seemed well, of the bravery he summoned to examine the root of the problem, and the unexpected bounty he gained by staying true and steadfast through the end. Sophie realized with a start that he had unwittingly forewarned her of what had come to pass, and what she was facing yet again. She pored over the record of her innocent daydreams, humbled by the joyful sense of adventure written in her own hand. Where had that part of her gone? Had she really willed away such delight and wild abandon in her haste to shed any evidence of immaturity? The cost of that young moment of weakness had been much too steep. And now, facing harsher trials and another dark night, was she brave enough this time to defy all odds and win back her little bit of moon? Sophie searched her depths before she admitted to her reluctant answer. She didn’t know. The road ahead was covered in bramble, the footing unsure. Her future had no form, and there were no markers for her to follow. It would take diligent, arduous work to forge a sturdy path of her own choosing, one that she had never before sought, but fickle reality had revealed to be imperative. She owed it to herself. She would do it. Sophie decided it then, and knew that she would. Slowly this time, with care not to lose the brightest part of herself in the process. But in the meantime...

In the meantime the world stood still. There was no rush, and nowhere to rush toward besides. Sophie turned to a fresh page in her notebook, caught the frayed ends of her long neglected fancies with a sharpened pencil, and began to write.