Lost&Found: Chapter 3: Decorations

I fixed it at last.

I decided instead of trying to introduce all the characters at once I'm going to span them out a bit, starting with Sofia's introduction. Again, a work in progress, but much better than the original chapter three.

Chapter 3: Decorations

Boughs of holly decorated our school with Christmas drawing near. We were given the afternoon, under the supervision of our home teacher, to decorate the classroom. Most of the boys sat around stapling paper loops or gluing their fingers together, or standing on chairs to reach high places. The girls were much more enthusiastic, and we were happy to admit that they were better at decorating than us.

Sofia scurried past us every two minutes with some clutter of things in her arms. She was a petite blonde girl, who had a French father, a Dutch mother, and an obsession with Japanese comics. She animated her class work in a way that made me laugh, and the covers of her notebooks where covered in crayoned pictures of manga heroes.

‘A little higher,’ Collin said when she jumped on a chair and tried to stick up a ‘Happy Christmas’ banner between the windows that looked out onto the front yard. She looked back, then lifted up onto her tiptoes.

‘Higher!’ Simon said. She lifted one foot onto the top of the chair so that she could go onto the tip of her other foot, leaning forward against the wall for balance.

Simon and Collin were as close to twins as unrelated people could be. They were both blonde, though Collin was a darker shade. Both were playful, immature, and careless of the world around them. Their differences made them click. Simon was the big brother of three girls, and though this made him better at handling responsibility, it also gave him much distain over a girls needs. Collin on the other hand was an only child, accustomed to attention, and more adept to throwing tantrums.

Collin was the younger sibling figure that Simon found familiar, without the girlish qualities. Simon was the big brother figure that Collin could cling to.

‘Hey Sofia, what kind of presents do elves make?’ Simon asked.

‘I don’t know. What kind of presents do elves make?’ She said without turning.

‘You don’t know? What have you been doing for the last year then?’

She twisted round and threw a chunk of blue tack across the room at them. I guess she was trying to aim at both, because it flew straight between them and hit me on the cheek.

‘Sorry Leon.’ She said.

‘That’s alright.’ I smiled and stood up. ‘Let me help you with that.’ She hadn’t been expecting that answer, and so barely acknowledged it until I took the banner and started tacking it up.

‘Are you doing anything during the Christmas Holidays?’

‘I’m spending time with family,’ I said. It wasn’t a lie.

‘Oh. I was wondering if you would go watch Iko no Kazo with me.’

‘What’s that?’

‘It’s a movie. They’re showing it in Buttons Theatre. I asked some of my friends, but they’re useless. They’ll watch it on the internet, but none of them ever actually go out anywhere.’

I laughed. Sofia was a real nerd, the kind that spends her pocket money on comic books and aspires to host her own convention one day, in her back garden, if her parents would allow.

‘Let me know when you want to go,’ I pulled a smile. ‘I’ll make some room in my schedule.’

‘Okay!’ She jumped down from the chair. ‘But Leon, don’t invite them.’ She nodded to Simon and Collin. I looked at them, and when I turned back she had gone off to the other side of the room to help Jaqueline, who was edging her way around the desks with a huge stack of books trembling in her arms.