The Elastic Band

A Story by SLOVA

In a beautiful village, simple in design but explosive with color, five children played together in the rickety schoolhouse near the river.

Sweetheart was an anxious child, prone to terrible headaches now and then, but was no less active in her playtime with the others. Dogheart, her brother, had the patience of a lit match and the fury to pair. His callous nature was the reason for Sweetheart’s nervousness, their friends thought.

“Go draw a circle!” he barked at his sister, pointing to the blacktop on the school playground.

Sweetheart was in such a fit about it, but she obeyed.

“It sort of looks like a circle, I guess,” said Beloved, a melancholic child sitting with his legs cross in the grass. “If you close your eyes and pretend someone else drew it.

“I’m sorry,” stammered Sweetheart, looking on in discontent. “I can try again.”

“Don’t bother,” snarled Dogheart. “It isn’t going to look much better the second time.”

“I think it looks just fine,” said Loveless, an animated child with a smile littered by silver tracks.

Sweetheart sat aside and watched as the fifth child, the honest and calm Stareye put five sticks at even points of the drawn circle, propping them up by cracks in the concrete. She took an elastic band out of her long hair and stretched it across the sticks.

“Teacher says it’ll snap when the sun tires it out,” said Stareye, swinging her arms back and forth now that she was done. “Should we wait for it?”

“Don’t be stupid,” huffed Dogheart. “It isn’t going to snap in a few minutes. It needs time. Just leave it there.”

Loveless looked up at the sky. “It’s getting dark. We should go home soon. Auntie’s making stew!”

Stareye moved forward and hugged each of her friends, happy to try out this science project together with them. “I’ll see you all tomorrow! No one forget to check on the band!”

The kids said their farewells, then left back home.

Days passed. Construction began in the small village as the weather began to change. New buildings, only standing on stilts at the moment, took away some of the green trees. It became noisier. Sweetheart didn’t like it. When she met with the other after school, her head pounded like log was bashing repeatedly against the inside of her skull.

Dogheart had grown some sort of repugnant acne on his face near his mouth and eyes. It put him in a bad mood. Nobody wanted to hug him but Stareye, but Dogheart hardly wanted to hug her at all.

“It hasn’t snapped yet,” commented Beloved dully, inspecting the elastic band from five feet away. “This isn’t fun anymore,” he said, pocketing his hands. “I’m going to the comic book store.”

Stareye had wanted them to play together regardless. “We can all go together.”

“I don’t think . . . we can walk that far,” said Sweetheart, her eyes squinted tightly.

“Not like we ought to follow him anyway,” scoffed Dogheart. “Let him leave if he wants to leave.”

“I was going to,” Beloved said, distraught and impatient with his friend’s temperament lately.

“Shut up, I didn’t ask you to come.”

“Well, I wasn’t going to.”

“Forget it, I’ll just see you later,” said Beloved with a heavy sigh. Loveless followed along with a snicker. “I’ll go with him and make sure he’s safe, stop by the candy shop, too.”

Stareye watched as the two of them left, waving. She sat down on the blacktop, gently stroking the band to check its enduring texture.

Sweetheart wrung her scratched hands, approaching Stareye and whispering to her, “Dog doesn’t like the experiment anymore either. We should just leave it alone. We got a new ball yesterday. We can play with that instead maybe.”

Stareye smiled a little, and though she wasn’t much for sports and her hand-eye-coordination was poor, she agreed. That afternoon they played catch together, just the three of them.

Time passed. The new buildings set their village in greyscale and the weather didn’t seem to matter to anyone but Stareye who sat by herself on the blacktop, staring at the broken rubber band. She wondered how it broke. She didn’t know if the others knew, but she had been the only one to check on it for a while. She hadn’t been there when it had. It felt older, and worn, but not like she expected it would have. She rubbed it in between her parched, red hands and pocketed it after she stood up, her hands warm in her cozy coat.

It broke, that was what mattered. She didn’t think it was fun either, she decided.