"My First-Grade Heist" by Reid Quirk

Photo by Anastasia Judt on Unsplash

I picked up an old, soggy, stick with green moss enveloping it like a blanket. Small ferns brushed my feet as I strolled through the woods on the way to our fort that was just off the edge of the soccer field. Holden was reinforcing the wall with mud, so I decided not to bother him. Instead, I walked up to Chris, who was tying a vine around the base of the makeshift walls. When he stood up and turned around, I had to crane my neck to look up at him. He was huge compared to me--I was only six and he was a 4th grader.

“Would this stick be okay to use?” I asked, holding out the moss-covered branch.

“Seriously?” He looked at me as if it were a joke. “Can I see it?”

“Sure…” I responded.

He tapped the stick against a tree which crumbled as the moss ripped apart. It was almost as if the moss were holding it together. Everything here in the Costa Rican cloud forest felt wet and soggy. “We need good materials,” he scolded. “Brandon just took our door!”

I hiked back into the woods, thinking about how Chris was normally so nice because, unlike the other big kids, he always involved me in things. In fact, when my family moved to Central America from Maine a few months ago, none of the older kids involved me in anything or even spoke to me in English. But on that day Chris seemed mad. No wonder! Brandon, the school bully who was three years older than I, had just taken our door. It was a big plank—we had found it back by the hollow ficus trees where Holden had accidentally gotten his pants pulled down on belay. It had been our best piece. How had Brandon stolen it?

The thing was, we took fort building seriously. It was a competitive game, a team of first through fourth graders, the “good guys” against a group of “trouble-making bad guys.” To be honest, they probably thought we were the bad guys, but that’s just how it was when we were little.

Walking through the forest, I stared at the light flowing through the leaves.. A trail of ants trekked up a woody vine, what the people in our mountaintop town called a liana when they were talking in English. A tree nearby caught my eye. It was slanted, perfect for climbing, and reached above the canopy. I knew I wasn't supposed to go too far into the jungley cloud forest, but it felt like my teachers wouldn't know. Our school was a hippie school where kids ran wild more often than in my old U.S. school, but there were limits. As I climbed, I couldn't stop thinking about Brandon Vega. My brother was constantly talking about him and clearly scared. I realized I wasn’t sure what he looked like. Had I even seen Brandon Vega before? But if Liam was scared, I was too. I always followed my brother’s lead.

Reaching for a limb, I accidentally grabbed an air plant and yanked my hand back. Was that an army ant? I still remembered the sting on my feet from when I had been bitten the week before. Everything that day felt scary.

Finally, I peeked my head out of the canopy. It was beautiful! I could see above the trees, and even back to the field where kids were playing soccer, but they looked as small as termites. A flock of green parrots fluttered over my head screeching. I wanted to tell my friends or a teacher about this spot, but I knew I’d get in trouble. Then something caught my eye. I saw a yellow rope, right in the middle of Brandon’s fort. Could that have been one of Brandon’s traps?

I stayed in my perch for a little while, until I saw the soccer players funnel into the school. Oh my god! I was gonna be late for Maricela’s Spanish class!

***

That afternoon, I ran across the driveway, up the steps, and swung open the door to our small yellow house, what taxi drivers referred to as the casa amarilla. “Mom! Dad!”

“Hey, Bud!” Dad said, a bit distracted.

My brother, Liam, was talking fast, his voice getting caught up as he spoke. “He keeps stealing pieces from our fort. He just stole our door! It’s not fair!”

My dad tried to calm Liam down, “Why don't you just steal it back?”

“He has guards, even traps!” Liam shouted.

I plopped down on the red couch next to my brother. He was right, we’d never get that door back. Then Mom walked into the room. “What's all this about?” she said as she folded my Costa Rican soccer jersey.

Dad turned around. “Brandon Vega,” he said in an exasperated voice.

Liam caught Mom up on all the things Brandon Vega had stolen from our fort, as I tried to contribute.

“You know what?” Mom said “Let's go tonight. Check out this fort.”

My heart started beating fast. Tonight?

***

Snap! A stick broke under my foot and Liam whipped around, his headlamp revealing the tiny dancing water particles in the air.

“Shhhhhh!” he whispered.

But I was already tip-toeing over to the enemy's base, careful to step on nothing but leaves and moss. I was almost certain we’d run into a school security guard. I had never been to school after dark, and I was pretty sure we were gonna get in trouble.

Inside Brandon’s base, I peeked around a tree and noticed a rock tied to a rope hung over a high branch. “Guys,” I whispered, my voice shaky, as I pointed at the trap.

Liam’s eyes went wide, and he took a few steps back. Coming up behind him, Mom reached up to the branch with the rope and pulled it off.

“Mom, what are you doing? That’s a trap!” Liam and I shout-whispered. My heart was beating so hard I could feel it in my throat. I was ready to bolt at any moment.

“What’s this?” she asked looking down at the yellow rope. She put it back on the branch, but it slowly slipped off and fell to the ground.

I cautiously approached the yellow rope, picked up a nearby branch, and poked it. For some reason, nothing happened. Trying to maintain my courage, I dropped the stick and reached for the yellow rope with my bare hands.

Liam grabbed my hand and looked me in the eye. “Be careful,” he whispered.

I snatched the rope, half expecting it to explode, but it just felt cold in my hand. In the glare of my headlamp, it looked bleached out and worn.

“So where’s the door?” Dad asked as he peeked around a tree.

The door! Where could it be? I snuck around a tree trunk into a neighboring clearing that was stomped out with fluffy moss on its perimeter. That was when I spotted the door, leaning against a tree.

“Guys!” I shouted and then shifted back into a whisper. “I found it!”

Overflowing with excitement, my brother and I carried the door back to its rightful place. Finally, justice had been served.

But the joy of our heist morphed as we walked back to the house. My mom and dad were laughing. “So that Brandon Vega guy is quite the terror,” Mom joked.

I felt kind of embarrassed.

“Mom you have no idea,” Liam said.

That night in bed I felt satisfied, thinking back on what had happened that day. I also felt less scared. The trap, the “fort”, none of it was looming over me anymore. Maybe Brandon Vega wasn’t all he’d been cracked up to be.

Reid Quirk is 13 years old; he lives in Orono, Maine and attends Orono Middle School. Some important facts about Reid are that he plays the drumset for his school jazz band, he participates in soccer, cross-country skiing and track for his school teams. When Reid was in first grade, he lived in Costa Rica, “up in the mountains where it rains 10 feet a year.”

Reid’s story is based on an actual “heist” he and his family pulled off when they lived in Costa Rica – one of his most memorable experiences of that year. If he traveled back now he would pay more attention to the birds, plants and towns, instead of his six-year old fascination with building forts.