Work Text:
RIIIIIIING!
“Alright, start putting everything away!”
One kid started crying, one kid sitting very close to George. George and Harold were seated at a low round table - the art table - with a few of their other kindergarten classmates. Construction paper, scrap paper and pens had been strewn about along with crayola crayons and markers. And the second other kids obediently dropped pens and crayons into their respective boxes, and some in their pockets, Harold had started crying over a drawing he started on during freetime.
“What’s wrong?” George asked.
“This pen,” Harold said, lifting up the turquoise marker lying infront of his paper, “I don’t have this kind of color back at my house and I didn’t get to use it enough.”
George leaned in and whispered. “Just take it like the other students,” He said.
“Oh,” Harold did what George suggested, and then cried more. He wiped at his tears with embarrassment. “I’m not done, I’m not done with this picture,”
“I can help you finish it!” George said. “Can I help you finish it?”
Harold sniffled and wiped more at his face. “Yeah…”
George stared contemplatively at Harold’s scenic drawing of a giant blue jay flying over the head of Dogman on the street of an NY-esque city. George felt he himself wasn’t a very good drawer, but as soon as he spotted one man in the image, a citizen looking on in shock among other citizens, he knew how to cheer Harold up. He plucked the black marker from the table and added an afro, he kept adding onto it until it towered like billowing whipped cream.
Harold was already chuckling. “What are you doing??”
“Hold on,” George said, grabbing the red marker next and scribbling something ontop of the man’s hair. To George’s delight, Harold laughed harder. He triumphantly watched as his best friend had a smile now instead of a frown, and no longer had any tears to wipe away.
“He’s got a cherry on his head!!” Harold remarked. Laughing, he took a deeper blue marker and added a defined butt to the once menacing bluejay looming over the heads of the rest of the characters. They continued to add onto the picture like this until their kindergarten teacher, Ms. Construde, snuck up from behind and ripped the pens from their hands.
“Nobody leaves until this mess is cleaned up!” Said Ms. Construde. Harold blushed, and George remained unaffected by the scolding. Ms. Construde dropped the pens back onto the table and went to sit at her desk, watching over the rest of the class like a hawk where she sat. Well, George said she looked more like a snapping turtle. But he agreed when Harold said that stare was as intense as a bald eagle’s. The funny thing was, she watched, but she only got up to reprimand when a kid wasn’t doing what she asked. You could punch Jack and yank Jill’s pigtails all you wanted, but sit and stare at the wall during work time and you’re gonna get a serious talking to, mister! Not that Harold and George liked harassing other students. They would just rather stare at a wall than do math. At least staring at a wall made you think. About Dogman…
The rest of the students sat on the rug infront of the chalkboard, watching with frustration as Harold and George went to putting the rest of the pens and paper away themselves.
“What a great way to end the school year!” One of the students complained.
Harold blushed more, trying to grab more pens and crayons in his hands. Ms. Construde impatiently tapped her foot.
“I can have us wait here all day!” Her foot said otherwise.
“If Tommy was still here atleast he’d be up here helping us put everything away…” Harold said quietly. He looked like he was going to cry again.
“Let’s see how long she’ll make us wait,” George said just loud enough for his friend to hear. Harold snickered, looking like he felt better. George folded up the paper they drew on and slipped it into his shirt pocket. Harold went through the pen and crayon boxes to sort them by color. George made sure there weren’t any scraps lying in the containers the construction and scrap paper belonged, and then flipped through to make sure only unused papers were in the stacks, making sure to throw away the used ones. Once Harold was done sorting through the pen and crayon boxes, he set them all down onto the table, then he and George started looking around on the floor for any trash, crayons and pens laying around.
“COME ON, GUYS!!!” Cried Jill Jackson.
Ms. Construde craned her neck in the direction of the outcry. “Jill, inside voice!”
“Can we just go, Ms. Construde?” Asked Jack Jilligan.
“I don’t know, Harold? George? Are you two done cleaning yet?” Said Ms. Construde.
Harold and George wrestled with a fit of giggles. “No!” George responded.
Ms. Construde let out a defeated sigh. “Alright, have a good Summer.”
“YEAH!!!!” Cried the children as they rocketed to their feet and for the door.
“IN A LINE PLEASE! YOU’RE STILL IN SCHOOL!!” She chased after them, hoping to block the door before any of her students could escape so she could correct them all, but she couldn’t beat them. They all swarmed the door and filed out to their parents like the spread of a free flying cough. George and Harold, however, being the thoughtful boys they were, made sure to leave with George infront and Harold behind in their own miniature single-filed line. But only after they had pushed in all of the chairs.
“Have a good Summer, Ms. Construde!” Said George at the door. She stared at them at the side of the doorway, shaking her head at them.
“You boys are the rudest pair of children I’ve taught in all my days of being a kindergarten teacher!”
George and Harold, still standing in line, looked around themselves. Of course, the room was empty, there was only one pair of children she could have been talking about. “Us?” George asked.
“I hope you two are ashamed of yourselves and think about what you’ve done today! Or all year! You’ve been nothing but trouble, out of the class, now!”
“Trouble,” Harold repeated.
George stepped out of line and got a fistful of Harold’s shirt to softly tug him along. “Come on, Harold.” They walked out the door.
“Hands to yourself!” Ms. Construde snapped.
“SCHOOL’S OVER!” George shouted back.
“She’s gonna get us now!” Harold said, picking up his pace and bumping into George to get him to go faster as well. “Why’d you have to yell at her like that?!”
“She can’t get us, our parents are here!” George said, motioning to their parents who waited patiently for them outside their classroom like the other parents had. And they looked mad.
“Then they’re gonna get us!” Harold corrected himself.
“George, it’s not polite to yell at your teacher!” Mr. Beard scolded on cue.
“Go and apologize to her!” Said Mrs. Beard.
“But, but-- All she’s done the whole year is boss everybody around and do nothing when a kid’s actually being a jerk! Plus, she’s not our teacher anymore.” Said George.
“George, that's her job,”
“No wait listen! Harold started cryin’ at the end of the day because he wasn’t done with his drawing!” George said, ignoring Harold’s embarrassed scowl and pulling the folded up drawing out of his pocket for his parents and Harold’s mom to see. “I helped him finish it, and Ms. Construde held everybody back from leavin’ because there was still a mess. So we cleaned it all up ourselves!” Their caretaker’s faces were skeptical.
“We were really thorough because we wanted to see how long Ms. Construde would hold everybody back.” Harold added, getting an elbow in the stomach from George.
“That sounds more like it,” Mrs. Beard said to Mr. Beard and Ms. Hutchins.
“And then, when we were almost done, she finally let everybody go and you saw how everybody left, right? Well, she tried to tell them to get in line and they didn’t, so we made our own line when we were done cleanin’. And then she told us we were rude!” Said George.
“... You get how doing something just to see how long your teacher would inconvenience the rest of your classmates is rude though, right?” Asked Mr. Beard.
“Oh,” said Harold.
“It was just for a couple minutes, and Summer’s like half the year. We were all gonna get to it sometime.” Said George.
“Oh.” Said Harold.
“Huh, I hadn’t thought about it like that before,” said Mr. Beard.
“No don’t listen to him he’s six!!” Cried Mrs. Beard. “I’m going in there to apologize.”
After Mrs. Beard marched off into George’s and Harold’s ex-kindergarten classroom, George said: “I’m almost seven.”
“That you are, buddy! Hi-five!” Mr. Beard held out his hand and George excitedly slapped it.
---
"How'd it go?" Asked Mr. Beard as his wife joined the rest of them in their car and climbed into the passenger's seat.
"She confirmed everything that happened, and I apologized, but... Something about that woman didn't sit right with me." Said Mrs. Beard.
"Oh?"
"Well, she told me the story a second time, and I had time to think... Why didn't she ask the other kids to help George and Harold clean up?"
"Huh, yeah. Elementary school teachers are pretty funky. But what can you do, huh?" Said Mr. Beard as he started up the car and pulled out of their parking spot. "I mean, they work with kids all the time. The old ones must be fed up with all the noise and energy but need the money."
"I don't like that, Teddy," Said Mrs. Beard.
In the backseats, Ms. Hutchins was socializing with the two little boys sitting on her left. “You weren’t crying about the picture, were you honey?” Ms. Hutchins asked her son.
“I was! I wanted to finish it and we don’t have any of those markers at home and I needed those markers!” Harold said.
“We can get you those markers at the store, what are they, crayola markers?”
“Wait,” George started, looking away from the window and at Harold, “you said you didn’t have the turquoise one at your house! And then you didn’t even use it, you just put it in your pocket.”
“You stole something from school?” Asked Ms. Hutchins.
“Did I say he put it in his pocket? I meant to say the box. The box that the pens go in. He said he needed it and then he just put it right back.” George said. “Why were you lying, Harold?”
Harold wordlessly pulled the marker out of his pocket and held it up in his mother’s face instead of answering George's question. “I stole it. Call the police.”
“I told him to take it call the police on me instead!”
“Put that back in your pocket, neither of you are in trouble for stealing a marker from school.” Ms. Hutchins said, pushing Harold’s pen-wielding hand away. “George, your mom and dad agreed to help us pack.”
“Pack? For what? Are we going on a trip?” George asked.
Harold gulped. “No…”
Now Ms. Hutchins seemed upset. “Honey, you didn’t tell him!?”
“No!” Harold covered his face and started crying again. George wrapped his arms around Harold, Harold leaned into George and cried more. Ms. Hutchins reached over and pet Harold’s hair.
“What is it? Harold, you can tell me,” said George.
Harold stubbornly shook his head.
“Are you guys moving?” George asked, looking up at Ms. Hutchins.
"We are, yes.” Said Ms. Hutchins.
Now George felt like he wanted to cry.
---
George and Harold acted like everything was normal, staying mostly in their treehouse and at the Beard’s as much as they could. But, when they were in the Hutchins house, they saw how it grew more and more empty as the days went by.
“So when are you guys leaving?” George asked, slipping the page of empty Dogman comic panels to Harold so he could fill them in. Then he saw the first page he gave to Harold wasn’t finished, and that Harold wasn’t even moving his pencil. He quietly set the pencil down.
“Yeah…” Said Harold. George knew that meant ‘Tomorrow.’
George felt his stomach turn, and he swallowed hard. “You wanna do somethin’ else?” George asked.
“... Yeah.”
“Yeah, that’s okay, w-w-we can work on Dogman later,”
Harold wanted to say, "There won't be a later." But instead, he didn’t say anything.
“Harold?”
Harold looked up at George.
“I’m gonna miss you,” said George.
“I miss my dad, and now I have to miss you too,”
George got up and hugged Harold. “Harold, listen to me, you make me so proud. I never wanted any close friends until I met you, and I’m so happy I met you.” Harold squeezed his friend. “I, I got you something, as a parting gift,”
Harold looked up from George’s shoulder to stare him in the eyes. “You did?”
“Yeah! It’s nothing new, lemme go get it,”
George let go of Harold and rushed to their little work table, he grabbed a bright yellow mechanical pencil, and pulled a finished comic out from underneath the mess of unused papers. First he handed Harold the pencil. “Your favorite pencil?? No, no I couldn’t take that from you!” It wasn't George's favorite just because yellow was his favorite color, but the rubber grippy thingy it came with had an exquisite texture that Harold would frequently see George softly running his fingernails over.
Harold tried to hand it back, George closed Harold’s hand around it and pushed it back. “No, I’m serious, you can have it, so you can draw with it and stuff! And I want you to have this.” George handed Harold the comic, the boy gasped at the art on the cover.
“It’s our first Dogman comic!”
“Yeah,” George said, “it’s the original,”
“You held onto that all this time...” Harold looked back down at the cover and looked it over before smiling at George. “George Beard and Harol Hutchins.” He giggled.
“You didn’t correct me.”
Harold laughed uncontrollably. “Who would name their kid Harol?!” George laughed with him, embarrassed.
“That’s what I was thinking!”’
“Let’s hide,” Harold said, “so our parents don’t find us.”
“I know just where we should go.”
The two boys rushed to the part of the treehouse where a stray branch poked in through the floor and exited through the roof. It wasn’t the thickest branch, but they were small and light enough to start climbing without any concerns. Once they were on the roof of their treehouse, they laid close to eachother and stared at the sky. A cold breeze rolled over the roof and rustled the leaves that surrounded them, encouraging the two best friends to huddle closer for warmth.
“I still can’t believe you let me shave your hair just so we could scare Kipper Krupp and his pals.” Harold said, breaking the silence.
“You did a great job," George commended, "maybe you should be a hair stylist, but make art your main job. Be a hair stylist on the side.”
They stared up at the night sky in silence for a few minutes.
Harold spoke again. “I can’t believe you’ve been wearing the same tie all year, you can’t have just one tie.”
“Don’t you like this one? Wha, you wear the same shirt all the time! And I know you have a bunch of shirts."
Harold breathed in deep, nuzzling George’s shoulder with the top of his head. “I hope my mom never finds me up here.”
George idly pet his friend's soft hair. “Me too.”