Jace had worked pretty hard on his diorama, and was rather happy to show it off to the class for the final presentation. His book had been The Little Prince, and his box—the same one that held his contemporary shoes nearly a year ago—was full of colorful rubber bounce-balls held up by fishing line against a starry background. The whole Lego mini-figure thing for the characters was a running theme, and his followed it; about half the class had used the little yellow guys in various ways. The size ratio just worked well.

           “So… after the Prince went to all these planets, filled with adults doing mundane but dumb things, he realized that adults lived in a different world,” Jace continued. “He arrived in a desert on Earth and met the narrator guy here,” he pointed to a goggle-wearing Lego pilot near his crashed airplane in the sand at the bottom of the box, “and, well, the ending is kind of sad but up for interpretation. The Prince disappears, and the narrator wonders if he’ll ever see him again. Um, so, yeah, the entire story is kind of an allegory—like, a metaphor?—about how kids see things differently than adults. It’s… actually something I’ve sort of been thinking about myself recently.”

           “Thank you, Jason,” Ms. Porter said as Jace returned to his desk. “That was very nice. And that wraps up our last assignment together…” She walked up in front of the chalkboard to speak to everyone. “Every year, for this project, I have whomever got assigned The Little Prince go last. Because, as Jason said, the book really is about exploring this unseen wall that seems to separate the worlds of adults and children. And you’re all on a train ride between those worlds right now. I know you don’t really understand the meaning of all that just yet, but you will, one day. All I ask of you is that you try to keep even just a small shred of the wonder in things that you have now.”

           Ms. Porter looked contemplative for a moment and zoned out. Following a few whispers throughout the class, she snapped out of it and composed herself.

           After looking up at the clock, she continued, “Well, we still have a few minutes left. I’d like to give Brian and Willa a chance to reveal another project that they’ve been working on for the last few weeks. I think you will all like what they’ve done.”

           There were more murmurs as Brian and Willa walked to the front, Brian holding a deck of cards. Everyone seemed to be assuming that this had something to do with all of the often-intrusive questions Willa had been asking them over the past weeks.

           “Hi, everyone,” Willa said, her cat ears still missing since recess. “Um, so… yeah, Brian came up with this neat idea a while back. But he was sorta worried about what everyone would think. He was all like, ‘oh, but what if they hate it and laugh at me?’, and, ‘I don’t think they’ll like it at all.’” She grinned at Brian, who blushed and looked away. “But I thought it was a great idea, so we partnered up to work on it! C’mon, Brian, just show ‘em. We don’t wanna make anyone late for their summer break.”

           Brian began to pass out the cards, starting with the rows farthest from Wessy and his crew, leaving them in suspense. But judging by the positive and entertained reactions of most of the receivers, they were something worth the small wait.

           “We mushed together all of the answers to the personality questions I’ve been asking,” Willa explained. “Brian turned you all into original video game people with full-color, um, ‘pixel art,’ he calls it. And I added the character traits!”

           “I g-got inspired when Park brought his s-sister’s heart cards in for Valentine’s,” Brian added and handed Jace his card. “I even printed them at his dad’s p-print shop. They have really high-quality stuff there that m-made them turn out great!”

           “You know it,” Park replied. “And I look pretty good as a ‘merchant-ninja’!”

           Jace stared at his close-to-professional level character sprite in his hands, which looked more like him than his yearbook photo. He was known as the “Hero Helper”, who was always there to back up his friends when they were in need on adventures. He looked brave and knowledgeable, and his blue jacket had been turned into a long, regal cloak. His traits included “All Around Good Guy” and “Problem Solver.”

           “Super Spy,” Millie read off her card. “Nice. Even my glasses look slick.”

           “Brian, these are great!” Wessy complimented and looked at his friends’ cards.

           “Thanks,” Brian replied and finished handing them out. “Um, I d-don’t know if everyone likes them, but… It would be nice if you kept them as a memento. Just saying.”

           Wessy was a hero guy akin to Link from Zelda, Jared was a pirate mercenary, Colin had been turned into a brawler since he was good at fighting games, and Sadie was an archer. Arthur and Ash’s cards were a little different, as they were duplicates and they appeared on both of them as the “Magical Teller Twins,” a pair of mages.

           Apparently, Tammy and Trudy had also been paired up, as Trudy asked Brian, “What do you mean we’re the ‘Inseparable Alchemists’? We’re totally separable!”

           “Do you not like them?” Brian fretted.

           “No, no. They’re great,” Tammy assured him. “Thanks, Brian. I’ll treasure it.”

           “O-oh, and…” Brian handed the last card to Ms. Porter, who smiled and showed it off, which had her as a wise sage. “Well, that’s all of them. Thanks for helping, Willa.”

           Brian watched as the cards became a hit, and the class took a few minutes to show them off to each other. Willa’s character could transform into a ferocious tiger, Spice kept the kingdom’s heroes in only the finest of fantastical clothing, Robby was a scholar in all things mystical, and December was the warrior princess—the sight of her alter-ego giving her a constant albeit subdued laughing fit. Gerald was an honorable Arthurian-styled knight, while Carson was a “magical musician” with a collection of enchanted instruments. Wright had become a cunning rogue with a pair of lucky dice, and Brian had turned himself into the king, which was fair given his hard work. Delilah’s video game-self was a friendly giant, a risky choice. Luckily for Brian, she liked it, just as much as Felicity enjoyed seeing herself as a pretty badass necromancer.

           “Not bad,” Felicity complimented. “Commanding skeletons could be fun.”

           “It’s a beautiful project, you two,” Ms. Porter said as Willa and Brian took their seats. “And, more importantly, you did it because you wanted to. I’m not obligated to give you a single point of extra credit for all that hard work! Heh… Ahem. Anyway.” She glanced up at the clock again and sighed. “Well, our time together is almost at an end. Of course, me being me, I have a few last things to say to all of you. Firstly…

           “You all graduate tonight. You get to do so under a visiting comet! And you’ve still got a full summer ahead, before the trials of middle school. Most of the students at DTE will go to Cookton, so you’ll be seeing more of each other. And, December…”

           She perked up and blushed a bit as everyone in the class turned to look at her.

           Ms. Porter tilted her head and smiled. “Good luck at Everette Academy. You’ll be representing our class there. Try your hardest, but don’t forget to take it easy, too.”

           December bit her lip for a second before replying, “T-thanks, Ms. Porter…”

           “Remember, everyone! Graduation is at 7:30 tonight, in our good old cafeteria! It’ll probably be the last time you’ll be inside the school… Though some of you have younger siblings who will graduate here as well, one day. So you may get to come back to, you know, see that. Um, what else…” She looked around at the kids raring to start summer break. “Oh! One final announcement. You’re going to want to pay attention.

           “An… anonymous donor is giving our class a big gift. Sort of a graduation party. You’re all getting free tickets to King Arcade, and we even have the park to ourselves for the first hour of opening time. Now, settle down,” she spoke over the excited chatter produced by her wide-eyed students, “this get-together won’t actually happen until July 3^rd. Save the date! I’m sure it’ll be a fun time for all of us, and it’ll give us one more chance to get together in the middle of summer! Oh, and to anyone who is friends with Zach Pentino, please tell him he’s invited, as well. I’m not sure why, but… he is.”

           “Because he’s just that cool,” Jared, who looked especially thrilled, exclaimed.

           “Uncle Wes…” Jace groaned and slid down in his seat. “You didn’t…”

           Millie overheard him and asked, “Did you know he was going to do this?”

           “No!” Jace whispered back. “And I’m sure it’s gonna mess with the timeline.”

           Ms. Porter looked up at the clock to see that there were only thirty seconds left. She gazed around at the hanging posters in the room, and the faces of her students, and had one last thing to say, “It was a lot of fun teaching you this year. You were a good class. But you’re not little children anymore, and… you’re all on the road to somewhere.”

           The bell rang, and everyone got up, gathered their things, and began to file out of the room they had shared together for a good long while. Jace remembered the last time that he had left his own fifth-grade classroom for good as he headed out. The designs and colors of the four walls and floor hadn’t changed much in twenty-five years.

           “See ya…” he said to the room, and waved to Ms. Porter, who waved back.

           He was surprised to hear Wessy also say “see ya” nearby as he left with the gang, but with a different inflection. He still sounded sad and worried about what came next.

           Fifth-graders from all classes gathered out front of the school, not far from the bus loop. About half the school’s fourth-graders merged with the older kids to form quite a large crowd—Lucy and Gemika among them and pretty close to Wessy and his crew. Zach was up on the main entrance stoop, waiting for the onrush of summer-bound kids to subside before making his big new Dump owner announcement.

           In the section of the crowd filled with Ms. Porter’s students, Brian’s cards were still a big topic, giving a boy unused to so much attention plenty of it. He had found himself surrounded by remarks about the artwork, and that it must’ve taken him a long time to make all the cards. Even a few kids who weren’t into video games that much, like Spice, Felicity, and Gerald, were complimenting him about the pixel art concept.

           “Y-yeah, it’s p-p-pretty neat what you c-can do with a b-bunch of squares, huh?” he said nervously, stuttering more than usual. “It’s c-cool you like them, but I d-d-dunno if they’ll appreciate it in Cookton’s art dep-p-partment. And who knows how much longer p-pixel art will even be made… Everything’s c-changing…”

           “Aw, what do you mean?” Spice asked. “This type of thing is so cute!”

           “Well, it’s g-gonna be all about p-polygons soon. You know, 3-D, like Toy Story? The Nintendo 64 is coming out next month in Japan, and not long after in America… It m-might mean the end of pixels. No one is gonna c-care about older video games.”

           “Eh, not true, Brian,” Arthur tried to assure him. “I’ve seen the screenshots. I mean, Mario 64 doesn’t look… that amazing. Uh, well it does, actually, but… Hey, a lot of people love the classics! And stuff comes back in style sometimes, too!”

           “Y-yeah… I guess…” Brian said with a sigh.

           Zach looked into the school hall to see if it was empty, then took center stoop and cleared his throat to quiet the big gathering and attract its attention.

           “Thanks for coming out, everyone. Though, I guess most of you would just be stuck on a hot bus waiting for it to move right now, anyway, so… Heh. Yeah.

           “We fifth-graders had an amazing year! And I hope you fourth-graders, did, too. We were in your shoes not long ago, waiting to see who would run the, ahem, secret place we were so happy to finally get into and keep safe. So, thank you for not running around there, tempting as it may have been, and getting caught. Which would just make that old codger even more suspicious. In a few months, you’ll actually get to hang out there!

           “Sad to say, tradition was broken for us last year, due to certain circumstances, and all but me alone didn’t get to publicly find out who our first owner was. But, that’s in the past. After a careful review, and interviews with some of you lower classmen, and my own two eyes—because I know cool when I see it—and a thorough look at the yearbook photos that showed me which kids were active, and making a name for themselves on campus… After doing all that, I made a decision.”

           Time was brief before the buses would start moving, so the crowd expected him to go ahead and make the announcement. Instead, Zach took a breath and removed his sunglasses, holding them by his side as if to respect a solemn event in school history.

           “Ever since kindergarten, I wanted to leave a mark on this school. Records for the earliest years of The Dump are a little murky, but I’m pretty sure I’m doing somethin’ new today. All right. Without further ado, your next club-runner. Lex Skyler.”

           Mumbling spread throughout the fourth-graders, but the older kids, unfamiliar with their names, looked around like curious birds to see who was walking towards the stoop. Zach stepped aside as someone with short auburn hair headed up the steps. They wore a bright yellow jacket, headphones on their neck, cargo shorts, and red High Tops.

           “Well, Lex is a cool name,” Jared said. “Wonder what he’s…”

           “Ugh, he picked Lex, seriously?” Gemika could be heard complaining. “Gross. I wasn’t planning to hang out at the trash club anyway, but now I def won’t.”

           Lex reached the top of the stairs and turned around. Lex was a girl. One with a unique new-age punk look. And she made her debut to the fifth-graders by crossing her arms and throwing them double peace signs. The reactions were immediate.