The bazaar was in full swing, with kids running rampant on the playground and drivers with “Visualize World Peace” bumper stickers flipping each other off in the parking lot. “Dude, it is crammed in there,” said Scott. “And about four hundred degrees.” “Is anybody else here?” asked Zach. Scott, he knew, would understand this to mean any of their friends, since otherwise the question was profoundly stupid. “Everyone. Even Tally’ll be here in a while.” They made their way into the hallway, where Zach got jabbed with the stick end of a little girl’s ribbon wand. To the left, a teacher’s demonstration of wool felting was attracting a huge crowd. “Do you know who won the auctions yet?” Zach shouted over the noise. “No. They don’t start until four.” They squeezed into the multipurpose room. The fifth-grade teacher was guiding a group of enthralled children in making beeswax gnomes. Zach guessed they were kids from the larger community and not the school, since by the time he was seven he had made enough beeswax gnomes to populate Middle-earth.
