By Lennex A. Maley
“How bad is it?”
Mrs. Holden did not reply, but instead kept her level-gaze glued to the computer. He stood on his tiptoes craning to see, but could only make out his name and his unsmiling face on the screen, before Mrs. Holden pointedly turned the computer away from his prying eyes. Even the slight peak he had snagged was useless, since Jazz didn’t understand the academic jargon plastered across the school district’s bizarre systems interface.
“Bad,” she spoke plainly.
It was too late in the year to do anything meaningful; the difference of volunteer hours was too ginormous a chasm to cross in such little time. Jazz had spent so much time playing around, enjoying his final year, that it had not even occurred to him that he might not walk the stage next month because of his own foolishness.
“Zero hours.”
Jazz opened his mouth to protest, racking his brain for a refute, then closed it. The truth of the matter was, like all the other activities Jazz had deemed volunteering too ‘adult’ to do – it was too close to a job for his liking.
“Listen, George,” she began.
“Jazz,” he corrected. He fully expected to be reprimanded. He deserved to be reprimanded. But poor Mrs. Holden was in the middle of a melancholia spell, and nobody knew why.
“Jazz, I think I have something for you to do.” Mrs. Holden stared wistfully at the paper affixed to the corkboard, before tearing it off and handing it to him. Jazz thought he might have misread the advert. Under a crude drawing of a dragon the following words were printed:
LUCRATIVE OPPORTUNITY: DRAGONSLAYER
Inquire about cash $3,000
(or applicable as volunteer hours – 200+)
on Saturday, May 30th, 2015. 1479 Baseline Rd, Hamilton. Fifty Point Conservation.
Jazz scoffed, knowing for certain that this would eat up the majority of the afternoon. Why couldn’t anyone from The Department do it, Jazz thought miserably, slackers! He crumpled the flyer and shoved it into the pocket of his jeans. Just as he was set to leave, Mrs. Holden intercepted him, extracting from his mouth a solemn vow that he would, in fact, attend. Her words were delivered with a gravity that cut through his thick shield of indifference. Without this, he would not graduate on time.
“You aren’t a bad kid, Jazz.”
“What am I, then?”
“An unmotivated one,” which by the sounds of it was even worse.
“Oh please,” Jazz feigned laughter. “Motivation is my middle name!”
Much later in the afternoon, Jazz arrived at the familiar grounds with nothing but a water bottle and his phone. He was unsure of what to bring. As far as weapons went, Jazz’s parents were city people through and through. He was no different. He had not spent a lot of time thinking about this. The more he thought, the more he was inevitably going to stress about it.
Thankfully, he was not totally inept. He had known several volunteers, rumors of those who had opted for the easy route; fighting bloody battles against mothmen in Toronto, Sasquatches in Ottawa, Banshees at Tobermory — veritably, Jazz was a little disappointed when he arrived at the beach. He had expected something different; he had pictured dismembered appendages littering the shoreline, yellow caution tape warding Hamiltonians from the lake. What he found instead was the same grassy knolls, the same turbid brown water, the same scorching silt and pebbles in place of actual sand.
Hamilton Verse 