I Brought My Dragon to Show and Tell

I brought my dragon to Show and Tell this morning. Smoke's just a little one, the kind that roasts bugs to eat. It's easy to feed him. I catch blind crickets and spiders and centipedes that live by the pool at the back of our cavern. Sometimes Dad likes to use Smoke to light his cigars to show off at parties. People laugh. I wanted Smoke to do that for Show and Tell but Mom wouldn't let me. She said it was not appropriate.

Anyway, Smoke wore the cute pink muzzle I made for him. I trained him good so Mrs. Williams let me fly him to the wall lanterns and back to the padded perch on my shoulder Mom made.

Everyone in class oohed and aahed at his flying tricks. Except Tommy. Tommy hates dragons because he has scars and his burned uncle. But Smoke isn't anything like that. He's too tiny and cute. So Mrs. Williams told Tommy he could go to the library for the rest of Show and Tell. I was glad he left. He made too much noise and scared Smoke.

For my report, I talked about all the different kinds of dragons that live in the world today. After the Genes went crazy, Dad says. There are the cute little ones like Smoke, bigger ones that ate all the birds, and bigger ones still that scared off the rest of the animals into the mountains or deep into jungles.

Mrs. Williams stopped me then. "Thank you, Amy, for that wonderful report," she said before I could talk about the really big dragons, the ones all the people hide from in our cavern. But I guess the class already knows about them.

Still, I so wanted to ask Mrs. Williams who those Gene people were and why they all went crazy about dragons. Dad never answers and Mom won't let me talk about it at all.

It was so disappointing Mrs. Williams stopped me before I could finish my report. I worked so hard researching and writing it. I wanted to tell the class all the interesting stuff on the big dragons I looked up.

Sometimes at parties, people say the tech company should never have invented dragons to sell in the first place. I don't like to hear that, though. Because then I'd never have gotten Smoke. And that would make me very sad.