Shining Star: A Pavel Chekov Fanfiction

Three

Pasha is five years old when he is sent to school for the first time. It isn't actually a primary school like the older kids go to—just a kindergarten to prepare him for real school next year—but it's more like a real school than the daycares his parents sent him to before, so he's excited anyway. He carries a blue backpack, his favorite color, filled with pencils and markers and paper and a matching blue lunchbox. His first real backpack, just like the older kids wear!

His parents take what seems like a million pictures of him in front of his new school. They are smiling and crying at the same time. He doesn't really understand why. But his teacher is really nice, and they start the day with coloring, which he enjoys.

And then the teacher gathers them around on the carpet for story time. "This story takes place on a planet called Mars," she says in her crisp, clear voice. "Can anyone tell me something about Mars?"

Pasha's hand shoots up. He knows all about Mars! The teacher lets some of the other kids go first, and they say things like "Mars is red" and "I have an uncle who lived there for a while." Then she calls on Pasha, and he begins to recite everything he knows about Mars—how it's the fourth planet from the Sun, how it has the tallest mountain and deepest canyon in the Solar System, how it looks red because of the iron on its surface reacting with oxygen.

The teacher never interrupts. She looks too shocked—no, not exactly shocked, awestruck—to interrupt. She waits for him to finish, and then nods a little weakly. "Very good, Pavel."

Pasha beams with pride. And then he hears it: a whispered word in the back of the room.

Freak.

He's never read that word before. But he has a sinking suspicion it doesn't mean something good.