It was an orange pencil with an ascending swirly design, topped with a bulky eraser of that one orange dragon Pokémon all the boys in class thought was the coolest. And despite its importance, Jacob let Kiara borrow it.

Then she lost it.

“Oh my gosh, oh my gosh! He’s gonna kill me!” Kiara whined as she emptied out her My Little Pony backpack, scouring it ceaselessly.

“Calm down,” Zoey gestured her hands in a downward motion, “Don’t freak out! It’s just a dumb boy pencil.”

“It’s not just a dumb boy pencil,” Kiara snapped. But, then she realized her tone, and spoke her next words softer. “It’s important.”

“Why though? Pencils can’t be that important.”

“Jacob’s mom got it for his birthday last week.”

“She got him a… pencil?” Zoey raised a brow.

“No, ugh!” Kiara rolled her eyes dramatically and slumped onto her desk, flailing her arms across the wood. “She bought him a limited edition trading card pack or something, and the pencil was part of it.”

Zoey sat down on a seat next to her. “Okay, but, like, who cares?”

“I do!”

“Why though? Pencils are boring.”

“Can you just help me find it? Please? I’ll give you my Nutella sandwich,” Kiara pleaded with her hands clasped.

“…*And* your cheese strings?” Zoey grinned.

“Fine.”

They were lucky Jacob and the other boys spent their recess outside playing on their DS consoles, so they could search for the pencil uninterrupted. However, unluckily, it was a snack recess, not the lunch one. So they had a mere thirty minutes.

Then again, thirty minutes in ten-year-old child time is more like an hour anyways.

Kiara and Zoey checked the inside of their desks. And the inside of other people’s desks in case someone stole it. And the rack on top of the hangers people hang their coats on. And that chalkboard thing that holds chalk. But, alas, it was nowhere to be found.

The bell rang, and the students trickled into the classroom. Zoey watched as Kiara, dishevelled after the vigorous searching, dragged her feet back to her desk. Jacob sat next to her, as always.

Kiara felt like crying. She couldn’t bear to glance at him.

“Ki?” Jacob called her. No response. There was a pause before he spoke up again.

“I got you something,” He smiled gently.

Reluctantly, she looked up. And her jaw nearly dropped.

There, in Jacob’s hand, was his own pencil. But he had another pencil too. It was a pink pencil coated in glitter, topped with a bulky eraser of that one pink pony from My Little Pony all the girls thought was the cutest.

“Since you like my pencil, I took mine back and got one like it that you can have!” Jacob declared proudly and gave it to her.

“You… got this for me?” Kiara grinned widely.

“Yeah!” He didn’t mention how he actually just found it on the floor in the hallway conveniently. It didn’t matter anyway, as long as she was smiling. “Now we’re matching.”

“Yeah,” Kiara repeated, looking down at the pencil, fondly caressing the sparkles on it with her thumb.

No, pencils weren’t boring or unimportant at all.