Pencilympics

Chapter One

It was a beautiful, sunny day, and Pencilmate was enjoying the warm air as he strolled through the park. Whistling to himself, he saw kids roller-skating, a woman chasing a butterfly with a net, and a family buying ice-cream cones from a stand.

It was the perfect day. His thoughts immediately turned to what sort of mischief he could conjure up.

As he scanned the area, there wasn’t anything too tempting at the moment. But he was sure he’d figure something out. Mischief was, after all, what he was best at. As he continued his walk, something caught his eye: a series of signs hanging on a fence at the far side of the park. They were illustrated in bright, colorful pictures, and though he couldn’t read them from this distance, Pencilmate had to know what they said.

Scurrying across the park toward the signs, Pencilmate leaped over a girl drawing in sidewalk chalk, somersaulted around an elderly couple sitting on a park bench, and dove behind a group of teenagers playing ultimate Frisbee. Soon, he reached his destination. His eyes grew wide as he gazed at the massive series of signs.

“Coming soon! The Pencilympics!” read the first sign. The rest were a sequence of posters advertising the events of the exciting athletic competition. Basketball! Karate! Thumb wrestling! Skateboarding! And the final event was a triathlon—swimming, biking, and running!

Pencilmate rubbed his chin as he read the different events. He felt his excitement grow within him. He knew he could do most of those sports, and the ones he hadn’t learned before, he would be able to master quickly. He closed his eyes and imagined himself competing in each event.

In his mind, Pencilmate saw himself scoring a game-winning three-pointer in the basketball game, breaking a stack of boards with a karate chop, dominating an opponent in a thumb-wrestling contest, flipping a wild trick on his skateboard, and crossing the finish line in the triathlon. The first step to victory, Pencilmate knew, was to envision it.

Only one challenge remained: figuring out how to sign up for the Pencilympics.

Just then, Pencilmate heard a voice speaking over a staticky loudspeaker elsewhere in the park.

“HEAR YE, HEAR YE! Don’t miss your chan to compete with the greaest athletes in our wor in the Pencilympics! Sign-ups begin today here in the p! Don’t miss your chance to win the quadrillion doll prize!” the voice said through static.

Pencilmate’s eyes widened.

“A quadrillion dollars?!” he said to himself. “That’s more money than I’ll ever see in about ten lifetimes! I have to win this competition.”

His eyes suddenly fixed themselves on the man speaking into the loudspeaker at a far corner of the park. He was standing on a large podium next to a table with a sign reading “Pencilympics Sign-Ups.” A line was already beginning to form.

Pencilmate sprinted across the park. Before he could really build up speed, the tip of his shoe fell into a crack in the sidewalk. He rolled head over heels about five times before stopping on a patch of grass. Standing back up, he saw the Pencilympics sign-up line continuing to grow.

I have to get there fast! he thought.

Suddenly, he saw a boy on a scooter coming up behind him. That would work!

To his left, Pencilmate saw a group of girls playing hopscotch. He casually walked over to their game and, hoping they wouldn’t notice, picked up their hopscotch pebble. With a flick of his sure-to-be-thumb-wrestling-champion thumb, he tossed the pebble directly in front of the scooter’s path.

The rider didn’t see the pebble until it was too late. The front wheel of his scooter ran into the pebble like it was a massive speed bump, sending the scooter and rider soaring through the air. As the boy landed on a pile of leaves, his scooter crashed directly in front of Pencilmate. Pencilmate lifted the scooter and rapidly rode his way toward the line.

The journey to the Pencilympics line was without further incident. Pencilmate reached the back of the very long line and tossed the scooter away. Standing at the back of the line, he quickly grew impatient. “This will take forever! If all these people sign up, my chances of winning that quadrillion-dollar prize are gone!” he said. He had to act fast!

Looking around, he noticed a piece of cloth nearby, blowing in the breeze. Wrapping that cloth around a fallen tree limb he found on the ground, Pencilmate pretended it was a fussing baby. “Awww there, there!” he cooed.

As he made crying sounds, several kindhearted people allowed Pencilmate and his “baby” to move ahead of them in line. He was getting closer, but not close enough.

A new scheme popped into his head. Tossing the fake baby away, Pencilmate got down on the ground and slithered his way like a snake around and through the feet and legs of several more people ahead of him in line. Having cut in front of more than a dozen waiting potential Pencilympians, he popped up, standing in the line as though he’d been there the entire time. Still, there was a ways to go before he would reach the registration table.

Growing more impatient, Pencilmate came up with another scheme to get ahead in the line even faster. Using a broken clipboard he spotted in a nearby garbage can, he posed as a Pencilympics official, asking a series of questions to each of the competitors ahead of him in line. This was a very effective plan until one of the other athletes noticed Pencilmate didn’t have any paper on his clipboard.

Throwing away the clipboard, he raced ahead a few more people and slid into the line, hiding his face from the others to prevent being discovered.

From his new place in line, Pencilmate surveyed his surroundings. This was a time for desperate action. Without thinking, he scurried up the back of the person in front of him and, with great flair, run-jumped from the shoulders and heads of several people. It was a display of pencil-parkour unlike any the world had ever seen. Within seconds, he reached the head of the line. Only he was moving so swiftly across the top of the queue that he didn’t notice it was time to stop running. He leaped ahead as though there were another person in the line in front of him.

He soared through the air, arms and legs flailing as he flew. In a matter of seconds that felt like hours, Pencilmate descended from his lofty heights, crashing into the registration table and causing it to explode into shards and slivers. Undaunted, he stood up and filled out the registration paperwork to compete for the quadrillion-dollar Pencilympics prize.

After he signed his name at the bottom of the form and left it on the broken table, he turned back to see everyone he’d encountered along his way furiously looking at him. The hopscotch girls were growling, the scooter boy gritted his teeth, and the rest of the line seemed as though they were ready to tear him limb from limb.

Pencilmate grinned and dashed away before the angry mob could catch him and exact their revenge. Glad to escape, Pencilmate laughed as he ran. There was a lot of training Pencilmate had to do if he was going to win the prestigious competition and unimaginable prize!