U-WRITE-IT RESULTS

Panting rapidly, eyes darting back and forth from the mailbox to Uncle Nestor, Alfie felt hot panic rising in his throat like lava up a tube.

Uncle Nestor reached a gnarled, dirt-caked farmer's hand out toward the battered metal mailbox.

As if fearful, the mailbox trembled slightly.

"See what I mean?" Alfie whispered. "There's something IN there!"

Before their very eyes, the mailbox rose several inches, heaving itself from the hill of dirt at its base, only to fall sideways with a tooth-rattling THUMP!

"Not in THERE, boy," Uncle Nestor clarified, pointing first at the mailbox, then toward the disrupted dirt pile, "in THERE!"

Just before disappearing down the hole where the mailbox post previously stood, the beady-eyed gopher winked right up at his audience of two!

"Whisper voice, please."

Mrs. Knittles' gentle reminder would have normally caused Alfie to turn tomato red. He always followed the rules, and it aggravated him no end when his own reading was disrupted by rude library patrons.

However, whispering excitedly now, Alfie pointed to the book on the shelf once again. "Mrs. Knittles! Look! It was this one; it MOVED!"

Adjusting her bifocals, Mrs. Knittles leaned over the little boy to more clearly read the title of the book he had chosen.

"Ahh, yes," she spoke with a smile of recognition in her voice. "Good choice, Alfie: My First Book of Telekinesis!"

"It's a rock, Alfie!" Jackie said. "It can't move and it doesn't have a beady little eye."

"It did just a second ago. I swear it did. The rock looked at me with one eye, and then shuffled a little closer to me."

"You're wacked in the head. Rocks don't..." Jackie's voice trailed off as the rock shattered into a million pieces, the crack of a rifle echoing through the valley.

It took the hunter five minutes to come down from the hillside and greet the boys. "Say there, little fellers. Glad I happened along. A few more minutes and you'd both be dead."

"What?" they asked together.

The hunter kicked at the pile of shattered rock remains. "That was a rock-weasel snake. Looks like a rock, mean as a weasel, vicious as a snake."

Alfie smirked at his brother. "I told you I saw it move!"