The Mystery of the New Boy

The Mystery of the New Boy

The new term brought with it a new boy, a pale, quiet child named Arthur. Arthur was different from the other boys at Saint Ignatius. He rarely spoke, and when he did, his voice was a mere whisper. He was also an astonishingly brilliant artist. He could draw anything with a simple pencil, from a hyper-realistic portrait of the Headmaster to a breathtakingly detailed sketch of the school grounds. But his most peculiar habit was that he only drew from memory, never from life. He would sit by himself in the schoolyard during break time, eyes closed, a beatific smile on his face as he sketched.

The other boys found him strange, but to Tony and Gerard, he was the living embodiment of a mystery. “He’s not a boy,” Tony whispered to Gerard during an art lesson. “He’s an alien! He has a photographic memory that can see into other dimensions, and he’s drawing things that don’t exist in our world!”

Gerard, the taller and more cautious of the two, had a more grounded (though still fantastical) theory. “He’s a time traveler, Tony. He’s not drawing things from memory; he’s drawing things from the future! He’s sketching events that are about to happen at Saint Ignatius. We need to get a look at his notebook!”

Their plan, the “Artful Alliance,” was to befriend Arthur and get a look at his sketches. They spent a week trying, but Arthur, in his quiet way, kept his distance. They finally caught a glimpse of his notebook when he left it on a bench during break time. They crept up to it, their hearts pounding with a mix of fear and excitement.

Gerard slowly opened the notebook. Inside were drawings of incredible detail. A perfect drawing of the school library, but with a staircase where there wasn’t one. A flawless sketch of the Headmaster, but with a different tie on. And then, they found it. A perfect, detailed drawing of a magnificent, prize-winning marrow, a pair of oversized gloves next to it. They had seen this image before. It was Old Man Henderson’s marrow from the fete. But it was drawn with a precision that was almost supernatural.

Tony and Gerard were caught again. Arthur, the new boy, had been watching them from a distance. He walked over, a small, knowing smile on his face. He picked up his notebook and pointed to the drawings.

“The Headmaster is getting a new tie next week,” Arthur whispered, his voice a little stronger than usual. “And I’m drawing the new staircase that’s being built in the library during the holidays.” He then pointed to the drawing of the marrow. “I saw you and Gerard there, at the fete. You looked like you were on a great adventure, and I wanted to be a part of it.”

Tony and Gerard’s grand adventure had ended not with an alien or a time traveler, but with a boy who was simply an astonishingly talented artist who found their adventures so captivating he wanted to be a part of them. He wasn’t drawing the future; he was simply so good at observation that he could recall even the smallest details.

As the boys walked away, Tony turned to Gerard, a look of awe on his face. “He wasn’t an alien, Gerry. He was just a boy with a better imagination than we do.”

Gerard just smiled. “The magic isn’t in what they do, Tony. It’s in the way we see it. And if that’s the case,” he said, turning to Tony, “we’ll find magic in everything.”