A Second Chance (standard:drama, 2575 words)
Author: Michael H. Silverman	Added: Nov 28 2000	Views/Reads: 4063/2536	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
A Christmas story. A young child gets a second chance, to do the right thing.

A Second Chance 

By Michael H. Silverman 

(c)2000 All Rights Reserved. 

It was Christmas eve, and the lumpy old wooden floor at the East Warwick
Home For Wayward Children creaked like an old set of bones as ten year 
old Jimmy Johnson walked back and forth shaking his head.  He paused to 
look in the tarnished mirror of the bedroom he shared with three other 
kids.  He smiled, the dark smooth skin of his cheeks offset by the 
clean white teeth that peeked out between his lips.  They'd been in bad 
shape, his teeth, but the orphanage had gotten him into a local dentist 
who'd filled his cavities and made his smile nearly perfect.  But it 
wasn't his good health that was making him smile.  He modeled his most 
precious possession with glee, adoring its image in the silvered glass. 
 His shiny black leather bomber jacket, a two hundred dollar item... 
that he got for nothing by taking it when the old merchant in the 
clothing store had been preoccupied.  He just grabbed it and ran.  The 
alarm went off as he passed through the scanner at the door, but that 
didn't stop him.  It was only noise.  Sure, the jacket was a little big 
on him, but it was cool.  He glanced sidelong at the three others who 
were sitting in a circle over on Mary's bed, talking like the little 
kids they were... about Santa Claus.  That made him wince. "Stupid 
little kids", he muttered under his breath.  He felt anger well up in 
his chest.  Why the hell didn't they know?  Couldn't they figure it 
out?  He clenched his fists and walked over. 

"Hi Jimmy!", Mary's bright little voice greeted him. 

She was just six years old, blonde haired, blue eyes sparkling in the
dull glow of the small light fixture overhead.  Sal Porter looked up 
from the Christmas card he was writing, glanced at Jimmy over his thick 
wire-rimmed glasses, sighed and shrugged. 

"Yeah... hi Jimmy.", he said in a mirthless monotone. 

Cameron said nothing, just shot a quick look at him, and returned his
downcast eyes to the trail of woven cloth on Mary's bedspread that he'd 
been tracing with his finger. 

"What are you gonna ask Santa for!", Mary's perky little voice glittered
at him. 

"Nothin'!!", Jimmy replied with an exasperated shaking of his head. 

"Ain't you figured it out yet?  The clown in the red pajamas with the
flying reindeer is a fairy tale!  It's just a load of bullshit!" 

Mary frowned at the naughty words Jimmy used quite frequently.  She knew
they were bad, and he never used them when the counselors were around. 
He liked to use them with her, just because it made her upset. She knew 
that too, but there was nothing she could do about it. 

"Is not!", she shouted back in annoyance. 

"Yes he is!  He's a big fat lie, made up by adults so they can fool us
into thinking there's something mystical and magical about the world.  
All they do is buy the crap themselves and stick it in boxes under a 
tree, and laugh at us when we think some fat fool came flying down the 
chimney to leave them there.  They think it's.... cute." 

"He did come!  I talked to him last year at the Christmas party, and he
gave me a present!", Mary's frown was on the verge of becoming angry 
tears. 

"Oh yeah?  Then tell me... what did you ask Santa for?", Jimmy responded
with a smug look. 

"I.. I asked him for a Jenny Jump-Rope doll.", she said, suddenly shy. 

"That's right.", Jimmy nodded. "That's the doll that can jump rope by
itself, and sings songs and does all kinds of neat bullshit. But what 
did you get?" 



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