The shell passed from classroom hand to classroom hand; the bored, the interested, the polite.
The shell was of some historic or biological significance, maybe both.
“Caution,” the classroom guest said as Lyle Walker clumsily passed the shell to Leonard McGrath.
Leonard thought the man must have meant “Careful.”
Caution was something that came at the intersection of fear and care.
“There are only four of those shells intact that we know of.”
Leonard had no room for fear, and no patience for care.
He would have been one of the polite students, gazing at the shell as though he cared.
He was tempted to smash the shell on the ground, the man not using caution when passing the shell among a group of students he did not know.
Leonard knew people there were only one of who had been shattered. He had no patience for those who told him to exercise caution with a trinket, no matter how rare.
If he smashed the shell he’d get detention, and detention on a Friday meant no football.
He’d break some kid’s wrist tonight at the game, and call it even.
***
Finding more and more students like that. Sometimes they are bottled rage. Sometimes….
Damned succinct & cohesive.
Childhood lesson: everything breaks.