Fractious Read Free

"What happened to you? You just up and disappeared from work."
    "I got fired," I said, not ready to get up and admit defeat in not finding my
leprechaun.
    "Why?"
    "I was in a coma."
    She lifted an eyebrow and said, "Oh. Well."
    I took one last look at the elm tree before me and made good use of it to get to my feet.
Then I turned to Crista. "What are you doing here?"
    She raised both eyebrows. "I told you, babysitting my neighbor's kid. That one. Over
there." She pointed and this time I followed her finger to where a small boy sat in the sand
tossing said sand into the air. The other parents weren't saying anything, which made me think
they weren't as annoyed as they appeared. "I hate that kid." Crista snorted in disgust. "In fact, I
hate kids in general."
    "Then why babysit?"
    "I need the extra money," she said. "Part time doesn't cut it nowadays."
    I couldn't resist looking back at the mysterious tree that had somehow swallowed a
leprechaun and left no trace whatsoever. Just in case he'd decided to show his face again.
    "So." She drew out the word until it sounded like it had fifteen o's attached to it. "I better
get back to that kid. Eventually I have to stop him from throwing sand or else the cops will show
up again. I guess that means you can get back to your tree."
    "It ate a leprechaun," I found myself saying.
    Crista gave me an incredulous look before saying, "Yeah, trees'll do that."
    I realized that she was making a joke at my expense. "Not funny," I said to myself. Then
I went back to watching the tree.
----

chapter 2
    That tree and I became really good friends. I sat and watched it for another week before
things got really weird. I didn't see anything else strange, at least nothing that caught my eye. I
was there twenty four seven, so I couldn't have missed anything.
    I was eating leaves and begging water off passers by so I was able to live, but still, I was
skinnier at the end of that week than I had been before my two week seclusion from the world. I
began to think that the leprechaun knew I was watching his tree and wouldn't come out again.
So, on a Friday, I went back to my bench and stopped watching the tree.
    But the tree continued to watch me. Much to my dismay, Crista was also watching
me.
    Now Crista is a pretty girl. She's a few inches shorter than me and has long blonde hair
that she ties back in a pony tail. She's slim but not too slim, with a little meat on her, that gives
her some nice curves. Pretty but not my type, although I don't really have a type so maybe she
was my type, after all. I liked her because she seemed to be a somewhat nice girl, but as far as
going any farther, I doubted she saw me that way.
    I was annoyed by the fact that she saw me making friends with an elm tree on a daily
basis. I wasn't ready to give up my leprechaun quest, and she obviously wasn't about to just let
me go insane without an intervention.
    "Look, Guy," she said, as she sat down next to me on the park bench that day. "I think
you've lost it."
    "Lost what?" I said, looking at her with curiosity.
    "Your mind?" she said with a hint of sarcasm. "That ball of muscle inside your
skull."
    "Yeah," I muttered, "I think the leprechaun might be responsible for part of that."
    "What's all this about leprechauns?" she said. "I've heard of obsessions, but man."
    "I'm serious." I had no clue as to why I was even talking to her when my feet and legs
worked well enough to get me the hell out of there without too much embarrassment. Instead, I
was still talking and well on the way to mortification. "I saw a leprechaun. He walked past me,
flipped me off and went into that tree right over there."
    Crista raised one eyebrow and looked over at the tree. I was beginning to think that her
eyebrow was actually stuck there and I had never noticed that before. Then it happened. Not her
eyebrow raising or even lowering for that matter, but the tree.
    Out of the side of the elm, the little man emerged. He came right over to me, jumped up
on