All his meanders rush through the hole he’s made in the story and pour in a torrent behind him, smacking into the bottom of the page and fracturing into fragments. 

sea-spray

Ah-Boom!    

 a sense of beginning     

hope   

this glorious pirating day        

Antarctica   

Pyew! Pyew! Pyew! ZING!!   

tricerabottoms

good ship Different  

whoops       

He zags. 

pizza from a tube

zooming away from the mothership   

elephant’s belly 

space barnacles 

thunders toward the edge of a cliff

They zag.   squints his one good eye

across the Atlantic               a   lion-strewn savanna near Kilimanjaro

Ah-Boom!   emergency landing       

camel caravan     

a muddy waterhole

herd hurtles    music and grog and a hearty ho-ho! 

Ah-Boom!      a stegosaur stampede 

iguana-lama-ding-dongs 

meander

butterfly

Davey

The chasers stop at the edge of that page from a few pages ago, holding on to each other so the stories don’t wash them over the edge.

Some sneak around to the sides of this page.

But wherever they are, everyone shakes their fingers at Davey, 

(including his parents, who had finally found him)

saying …

(well, by now, you probably know what they were saying.)

Davey stares at the broken heap of stories, feeling broken himself. 

Amid the chanting of the NOT SUPPOSED TO’s Davey hears his parents saying. 

“Shame on you so disappointed expected more not enough you knew what you were supposed to do but you ignored it.” 

Davey looks up and sees them there. Scowling.

“Davey,” his mother says. “What will we tell our friends?” 

“Davey,” his father says. “Tomorrow you’re doing double soccer, double math, and double violin.”

“You stay right there … ” his mother says. 

“… till you’re ready to stop all this meandering … ” his father says.

” … and carry the story you’re SUPPOSED TO. The one WE made for you,” they say together. 

Davey squinches his eyes shut and hugs himself to sleep. 

When he wakes up, the page is dark.