Jesse and the Magic Backpack, Part II: Invisible Wizard

Once upon a time, a long time ago, there was a big boy named Jesse who never seemed to be able to remember everything he needed for school. One day, that all changed and as if by magic Jesse’s backpack began to pack itself. Jesse was at school one day when, along with his friends Enzo and Naomi, he discovered that any time he opened his backpack it would have whatever it was he needed in that moment as if by magic. Jesse’s friend Naomi, after questioning Jesse about his activities that morning, determined that the magic must have originated from Jesse having accidentally wished on an eyelash. 

Well, the magic did not end that day. For the rest of the week Jesse noticed that whenever there was something he needed, he had it ready in his backpack. When he couldn’t find his pen for writing practice, there was one waiting in his backpack. When he couldn’t find his sun hat for outside play, there was a stylish green fedora waiting for him in his backpack. When Jesse got a bloody nose during outside play, he found a lovely soft handkerchief in his backpack. There were things there for his friends, too. When Enzo forgot his shin guards for soccer practice, Jesse found a set of spares in his backpack. When Naomi had misplaced her library book and needed to return it, there it was in Jesse’s bag. 

It was actually a lovely week for Jesse’s teacher, Whaea Pippa, as well. Finally, she thought, all her hard work was paying off. Overnight it seemed that suddenly all of her students were arriving prepared. There was no scrambling to find an extra pen, no notes home over missing library books, and no trips to the office to call home for forgotten lunches. Things were going swimmingly. 

Not everything about the backpack was always easy. In addition to things he needed Jesse also found odd items, and lots of food scraps. One day as he was emptying his backpack to wash his lunch box after school, he pulled out mostly eaten lamb shank, a corn cob, and half of a yorkshire pudding. There were dirty napkins as well, and once the paper wrapper from some wooden chopsticks. Jesse’s backpack also often seemed oddly heavy, even when it was empty, and more than once the backpack had seemed to jerk and move as it was hanging on its hook at school. Once at home after Jesse had gone to bed the backpack had knocked itself down from the kitchen counter to the floor, and Jesse got in trouble because his mom thought he was out of bed! The backpack was really, really useful. But if we’re honest, it was also sometimes a liability. 

On the bus one day, Jesse was explaining to Enzo and Naomi about the odd behavior of the backpack when Enzo said, “Ouch!” and turned angrily to Jesse. “Why would you kick me when all I was doing was listening to you? That isn’t nice.”

“Kick you?!?” Jesse said defensively, “You must be dreaming. I didn’t touch you.”

Naomi, observant as always, said, “Guys, Jesse was just talking about how the backpack has been moving itself and it’s sitting on the floor right between you now. It’s probably the backpack that kicked Enzo. You guys are busy fighting over nothing when what we should really be doing is investigating.”

“You’re right,” said Enzo. “Sorry Jesse.”

“I’m sorry too,” Jesse said. “I know you never lie so I should have believed you that something happened. Thanks for putting us straight, Naomi.”

“Well now that’s settled,” Naomi said, “let’s get to work investigating.”

That week, the trio came up with a number of tests to help them understand what was going on with the backpack. 

First, they decided to test and see if the backpack weighed more than a normal backpack. To do this, they got a stick and balanced it over the tumble bar at the school playground, then hung Jesse’s backpack on one end and another backpack on the other side to see which was heavier. Jesse’s backpack was heavier than everyone’s except Patrick, and everyone knows that Patrick always carries around tons of library books. They decided for a definitive test they would have to empty both backpacks. Out of Patrick’s backpack they pulled two books on natural history, one on meat eating dinosaurs, one on the mesozoic era, one on geography, the latest edition of Dog Man, a large water bottle, a pen case and a leftover tootsie roll wrapper from Halloween. Out of Jesse’s they pulled: oddly all those same books, an additional book on the care of magical creatures, a bottle of water, a headlamp, a coffee flask, an ornate chalice, a a slightly bent traffic cone, a length of paracord, a pair of trick handcuffs, a handful of candy corn, a tiny pair of fur slippers, a ham bone, a whoopie cushion, several potato skins, a packet of soy sauce, a metal slinky and a fresh piping hot meat pie on an earthenware plate.

Upon comparing the freshly emptied backpacks, they determined that Jesse’s was still substantially heavier than Patrick’s. 

“Hmmmm,” said Naomi. “Curious. Very curious indeed.”

For their next experiment, they placed Jesse’s backpack on the art table on top of a large piece of butcher paper, and Enzo outlined around the backpack with a sharpie. 

“This way,” said Naomi, “if the backpack moves we’ll know.”

After circle time when they went back to check on the backpack it had shifted several inches outside of the outlined area. 

“WHAT?!?!?!?” said Jesse.

“Curious,” said Naomi. “Very curious indeed.”

For the next experiment, to see if there was anything living inside the backpack, Naomi suggested that they see what would happen if they put in a delicious treat. Ryan offered up his chocolate chip cookie for the experiment. They checked to see that the backpack was empty and then put the cookie in before it was time for math.

When they went back to the backpack after math time to see what had happened not only was the cookie gone, but they also found in the backpack a dirty glass with a few sips of milk left in it and some soggy cookie crumbs from someone dipping Ryan’s cookie into the milk.

“WHAT?!?!?!?!?” said Jesse.

“COOL!” said Enzo. 

“My COOKIE!” said Ryan. 

“Curious,” said Naomi. Very curious indeed.”

At lunch the friends sat together to discuss their findings and form a hypothesis about what might be in Jesse’s backpack. 

“We can’t see it but we know it has weight,” said Enzo, “so it must be invisible.”

“The backpack moves when it’s inside,” said Jesse, “so it must be able to move.”

“It’s something that eats,” said Ryan, “so it’s alive.”

“It likes books,” said Patrick, “so it must be able to read.”

“It can make things appear that weren’t there before,” said Naomi, “so it must be magical.”

They wrote down their observations, but still couldn’t form a clear idea of what it might be. That was when Naomi came up with an idea. “Last night, she said, I was making some birthday cards at home and I wanted to put glitter on them but my mom wouldn’t let me, She says glitter gets everywhere and sticks on everything. If there’s an invisible something living in Jesse’s backpack and we add glitter, then we should be able to see what it is by looking at the glitter that sticks to it.”

They all agreed to this idea, and during free play they went to the art station and got some purple glitter. They put it into Jesse’s backpack, closed it, shook it all about, and then opened it to reveal: a tiny, purple wizard about the size of a large squirrel. 

“Oh dear oh dear oh dear,” fretted the wizard, “And I’ve just had these robes dry cleaned. It will take me days to get all this glitter off!”

Ok Maked Up listeners, that’s all we have for this story today. Before we continue we want to hear from you - why do you think the invisible wizard decided to start living in Jesse’s backpack? And what does he want? Have your grown up send us your ideas to makedupstories@gmail.com so that we can find out what will happen next in the curious case of the invisible wizard in Jesse’s backpack. If you would like to hear your voice on the podcast you can have your grown up send an audio file. If not, they can just send an email.