Fiction: Bernardo’s Backpack

“Mom,” my son said that day. “When I bring my trombone to school this year, will you drive me? There’s not enough room in our seat on the bus for it.”

I raised my eyebrows at my son. My first-born. “I thought there were only two of you in the seat.”

“There are,” he said, so earnest I could have died. My kid’s loaded with charm-in-waiting. It needs to be properly unlocked and groomed. “But Bernardo’s backpack is so big, it’s like there’s three of us in the seat. Once we add my trombone and our winter coats, well, he already sticks out into the aisle.”

“Why’s his backpack so big?” I ask my son, giving him a sidelong look. After all, my son has brought home exactly one textbook so far this year. One.

My son shrugged.

“You don’t think he stuffed a dead body in it, do you?” I asked.

All that gorgeous robust color drained from his face. “I… don’t … think so.”

I leaned in to whisper, “Does it smell?”

“No!”

“Then there’s probably no dead body in there. But what else could be in there?”

What followed was a feast of the imagination. An inflatable raft. A fold-up bike. Rabbits, multiplying. But no books. No textbooks. Certainly no papers that had fallen to the bottom and jammed up the works; it was only the third day of school.

“A first-aid kit! Lunch! A little school bus that magically grows to the right size when it’s pulled out, just in case he misses the bus! A monster! A giant stomach that will eat the bus seat if it escapes! An operating table!”

On and on we went. I’m sure that no matter how hard we try, we’ll never figure it out.

“You know,” I drawled after awhile, when our ideas had started to run low. “We could ask Bernardo what he’s got in there.”

“Mom,” my super son said, “what’s the fun in that?”

Believe it or not, this really is fiction. Based on real life. Maybe. Perhaps. I’m not telling. At any rate, it’s a Three Word Wednesday piece, and I’ll hook it up for my Friday Flash as well as link it over at the Weekend Writer’s Retreat. It fits over at Sunday Scribblings, too! Be sure to stop in all those sites and check out more good fiction!