Just a little one-shot I dreamed up after finding my old Calvin and Hobbes comic books in the bottom of a box. I love these two, and would do anything for the series to continue, but alas. :( Anyway, it's more than a bit angsty, but I've always thought that somehow it would end along these lines. Enjoy.

~.~

In the furthest room upstairs, beneath an inch and a half of filth, Calvin finds another box of old toys. He kneels down and pries it open, sneezing until the flurry of dust and mold settles around him again, and peers inside, smiling slightly. He finds a puzzle with at least half the pieces missing, a toy robot with the head bitten off, and a few wooden blocks with wild jungle animals drawn in crayon covering up their painted alphabet letters. The rest he doesn't recognize; it's just a pile of miscellaneous odds and ends, most of them in ruins, that hold no sentimental value to him. He shakes his head though, still smiling as he closes the box again and stands up, fitting it under his arm. He had been such a destructive child.

Calvin whacks his head on the top of the door frame as he heads for the stairs. It's the umpteenth time he's done that this week, and he's starting to worry about the rate at which he's killing his brain cells. As his mother says, he doesn't have any to spare—and the last thing he needs to do now is knock himself silly the day before he heads off to college. Funny how the world works, he thinks; Ten years ago he would have done anything to be able to see over the dashboard in his dad's car.

He comes down the stairs, walking through the living room and into the kitchen where his mother sits nursing a mug of coffee and a box of tissues, and out the front door (he remembers to duck his head this time) to the driveway. Two piles of boxes await him, all filled with his stuff: one is headed for the landfill, the other to the Salvation Army. Calvin drops his box onto the right-hand pile, the one for the useless junk, just as his father comes around the car. He's been loading up the backseat with the boxes that they're going to donate.

"Another one? Where's all this junk of yours coming from, Calvin?" he asks, although he looks happier than Calvin has seen him in a very long time. He's done nothing all day but smile and hum and go around hugging his wife and telling Calvin how proud he is. Most likely he never though that his son would complete high school, let alone be accepted to college.

"Mom decided that if I'm getting rid of stuff I might as well clean out the attic while I'm at it," Calvin says, helping his father lift a particularly heavy box and shove it into the car with the rest.

"She never was one to waste an offer of manual labor, your mother." He pats his son on the shoulder. "How many more boxes are you going to bring down? There's not much more room in here. This poor car can't handle as much as it used to, either."

"I've only got my closet left," Calvin says, turning to head back into the house. His dad nods and starts to rearrange boxes in an attempt to make more room, whistling happily and unconsciously smiling.

Upstairs, Calvin's room is barren. It's strange and sad looking; usually it's so messy and filled with stuff that he can't see the floor. Now the bed is made and the carpet is fully visible, no posters grace the boring blue walls, the desk is empty and the only thing to be found under the bed is the occasional dust bunny. In a corner a suitcase sits open, neatly packed and awaiting the morrow when it will accompany Calvin as he heads off to face the world.

The only thing left is the closet. The hangers are empty, but the floor of it is still a war zone, caked with layers of old clothing and unfinished homework. He should have cleaned it out days ago, but he has been avoiding it, because he knows what he's going to find and he doesn't want to face it. Even now he procrastinates, skirting around it as he looks under the bed and checks all the drawers in his desk one last time, even going so far as to read the letter he had gotten a few days earlier for what has to be the fortieth time.

It's from Suzie. She had been admitted to Harvard (no surprise) the year before when she had graduated with the rest of her class. It used to be Calvin's class too, but he had been held back in the sixth grade for flunking half his subjects and spending most of the year in the principal's office. In the letter, Suzie had written that she was proud of him for getting into college and promised that it was worth it and he would be happier in the long run. She told him that she would be coming home for Christmas this year, and if he did too, maybe the could see each other.

Do you remember how surprised we were every year when Santa actually came? She had written. We were always sure that we had ruined our chances of getting anything from him when we clobbered each other with snowballs in the park the day before Christmas every year.

The first time he had read that part, Calvin had laughed. Of course he remembered. It really was a miracle that their parents never found out what they did to one another, or else they really wouldn't have been getting anything.

But really, Calvin, you should come back for Christmas. We've got to talk. I haven't seen you in forever, but my mom said that you got in a car accident a little while ago and almost killed yourself. I know that you've had it hard the last few years, but I don't think that half the stories she tells me about you are true. I want to hear what's been really going on directly from you, okay?

She had finished the letter by telling him that she was happy, and that she had gotten a stable job on the weekends and a boyfriend. In the bottom margins, she had written her cell phone number, which Calvin had memorized without meaning to but never called.

The letter makes him sad.

He has a scar on his back from when he had totaled his mom's car, it's true, but he could only guess what Mrs. Derkins would make of the incident. Calvin knows that he is one of the favorite subjects of the community's gossip chain, and he really can't blame them. He is, after all, a mentally unstable, trouble-making delinquent who flunks his classes and takes fifteen different pills a day and tries to kill himself every other week. At least, that's what they thought.

Calvin lets go of the letter, and it falls from his fingers and flutters down through the air to land face-up on his suitcase, where it stares up at him. He glances around at his nearly-empty room again, wishing that it still looked like his room, before he turns and contemplates his closet. If he had expected it to look any less intimidating that it had before he had stood there reading Suzie's letter, he is disappointed.

The first thing to go is the clothing. He untangles it, piece by piece, from the packed pile on the floor and tosses it into a box. Most of it is in good shape, just to small for him or not his style, and can be washed and donated. The unfinished homework gets crumpled unceremoniously up and tossed into a trash bag, not to be missed. Once all that is gone, there's not much left. A few pairs of shoes that are too beaten and worn out to do anybody any good get tossed, some cheap DVDs are thrown into the donation pile. A handful of candy wrappers is thrown away, and some ancient, petrified Play-Doh is picked out of the carpet. The only thing left then is a single, lonely-looking box in the far back that Calvin has been avoiding like the plague.

He slowly drags it out into the light and sits down on the foot of his bed, putting the box at his feet. There isn't much in it, and it weighs almost nothing. TRANSMOGRIFIER is written on it in messy, all-capital, little kid handwriting, and he reaches down to touch the letters. The box brings back all kinds of memories, memories that Calvin has forgotten since he shoved this box into the back of his closet many years ago.

Gently opening the flaps of the Transmogrifier, the first thing that he sees is a book. He lifts it from the pile and holds it as if it might disintegrate in his hands, tracing the title with a finger. Hamster Huey and the Gooey Cablooey.

The thin little book is worn and dog-eared, obviously well loved, and on the inside of the front cover Calvin's name is written in the same big messy letters that all six-year-olds write in.

Turning the pages tenderly, Calvin reads it silently to himself, word for word. He can understand now why his father hated it so much, but that doesn't mean that he loves it any less. The sadness that has been festering inside him deepens as he finishes the last word and closes it slowly. The last time he had read this book, he had been happy. Young and happy and untouched by, if not oblivious too, that horrible loss of spirit and imagination that people call "growing up."

He sets the book down on the bed beside him. It's in good shape for the most part, and somewhere out there is another little boy who will love it as much as he had. But he doesn't want to put it back into another box yet.

The next thing that comes out of the Transmogrifier is a costume. It has been neatly folded and untouched for years, and Calvin is half afraid to rip it as he lays it out on his lap, marveling at how tiny it is.

He had been ten the last time he wore his Stupendous Man outfit. He remembers now the way his mother, who had been on edge around him for quite a few days by then, had exploded upon spotting him skulking around the living room in uniform, muttering about revenge and justice. She had yelled at him, tears in her eyes, about how he was becoming too old for things like that, how he should be at the park playing baseball with his classmates instead of lurking around at home in a homemade costume like some antisocial nutcase. She had told him how she was disappointed with him, and how she had hoped that he would grow out of his odd solitary phase. Later on, when Calvin's father had come home, he had overheard her telling him about how Calvin was different . . . about how "something needed to be done."

That was when he had decided not to wear the costume anymore. Maybe his mom was right. Maybe he was too old to play Stupendous Man these days. He was ten, after all.

Calvin folds the costume back up again, that sad ache in his chest a crater now. He realizes that the first step he had taken towards growing up had happened that day. It had been a turning point, that moment when he had decided not to play pretend anymore.

He lays the costume next to him, on top of Hamster Huey and the Gooey Cablooey.

Reaching into the Transmogrifier once more, he brings out a set of wagon wheels. They used to belong to a little red wagon, but now they're all that's left. He had been eleven when he had smashed the beloved little thing, bending it around a tree while rolling down a hill. He could remember hauling it home, bruised and scratched and bloody, and asking his parents when he could get a new one. They had never given him a straight answer.

There is only one thing left in the Transmogrifier. Calvin doesn't want to, but he reaches down and gently takes the little stuffed tiger from the bottom of the box and holds it in both hands. It looks just like he remembers it, not a day older, but the most painful thing about it is that, to Calvin, it appears to be nothing but a toy.

Why did this have to happen to me, Hobbes?

Calvin sets the stuffed tiger on the bed, leaning back against his pillow, and sits cross-legged in front of it. Hobbes does not speak. Does not blink. Does not move.

You were alive. I know you were.

Drawing his knees up to his chin like he used to do when he was little and afraid that the monsters under the bed would bite his toes off, Calvin looks at the tiger. "Why don't you talk to me anymore?"

He intends for it to be an accusation, but it comes out as a plea. It's been so long since Calvin has talked to someone, really talked to someone about his opinions and his feelings and his fears, and now he feels empty.

"Is it because you thought that I don't need you now?"

Just because Calvin had started to grow up did not mean that he no longer needed a best friend. But the tiger just sits there. It used to be Hobbes, but he's not there anymore. It's just a stuffed animal now.

"I never wanted to change, you know."

Nothing.

"Well, if you're mad at me, and that's what this is all about, I'm sorry, okay?"

Calvin is talking to himself.

"I still believe in you, Hobbes. It's a magical world, after all."

He's imagining it, he knows he is, but Calvin thinks that the tiger looks a little bit more sympathetic that it had earlier.

There's nothing more to be done. Calvin gets up, his heart heavy, and puts Hamster Huey and the Gooey Cablooey, his Stupendous Man outfit, and the wagon wheels on top of the clothes in the box headed for the Salvation Army. He doesn't close it yet, though. The Transmogrifier gets flattened down and shoved into the trash bag with the homework and the shoes and the candy wrappers.

Hobbes sits on the bed, watching, his little plastic eyes dull and dead and maybe, just maybe, a little bit accusing. Calvin picks him up, gently smoothing down the fur on his tail, and stands in the middle of his bedroom, undecided. Hobbes had lived in a box since Calvin had been twelve, seven years ago, and he hadn't spoken since a few days after the little red wagon was destroyed.

But . . . still . . .

Calvin makes a decision. The trash goes to the landfill. The donations go to the Salvation Army.

And Hobbes goes into his suitcase. It's a magical world, after all.