The Cardboard Castle

Here is a story. As you read, ask what you would do.

Fiction, founded on truth. The people in this story are imagined; the choice they face is real.

Nora had worked on the castle every evening for a week. It started as two shoe boxes and a cereal box. By Thursday it had four walls, two towers made from paper towel tubes, and a drawbridge that went up and down on a piece of string. She had cut little square notches along the top of every wall, the way real castles have them.

The school fair was on Saturday. Her teacher had said the best projects would sit on the front table, where every family would see them.

On Thursday night Nora set the castle on the kitchen floor to glue the last flag on the tallest tower. Her little brother Sam was four. He had been asking all week to play with it, and all week she had said, “Not yet. After the fair.”

She went to the drawer for more glue. She was gone for about ten seconds.

When she turned around, Sam was on his knees beside the castle with his toy knight in his hand. He had tried to stand the knight on the wall. The whole front wall had folded flat. The drawbridge string had snapped. One tower lay on its side with a dent in the middle.

Sam looked up. “He wanted to be a guard,” he said in a small voice.

Nora felt it start in her stomach and climb straight up into her face. Her cheeks went hot. Her hands closed tight. A whole week of evenings lay flat on the kitchen floor. Words were already lined up in her mouth, loud ones, the kind that would make Sam cry.