A simple girl sits at her simple desk and begins to doodle, her math teacher was droning on, and she had already finished her worksheet, so there was nothing left to do, but draw. At first she draws a tree, and it sits there on her page, unchanging, like any drawing, so why did she stare at it so long. Next she added a bird to the branches, at least she thought that was were she put it, but now it was beside the tree. She must be seeing things, she thought, and she blinked hard, but when she opened her eyes the bird was in the middle of the page, and still moving. The girl was amazed, but also stunned, and decided to test something, by drawing a garden, she started with a tomato plant, with just one tomato. It began spreading, and taking over the page, even growing more tomatoes. She had to think fast, before it covered her answers, she realized that if logic worked properly, then a simple fence would work, quickly she drew a fence around the tomatoes. As she had expected the plant came toward the fence and then stopped, suddenly her teacher started walking over. She wasn’t sure why, but decided to keep it a secret, the tomato seemed to have stopped growing, so she simply erased the bird, and just in time, because her teacher was standing over her.

"Have you finished your worksheet?"

"Yeah," the girl said, closing her notebook in what she hoped was an inconspicuous way.

"Oh, well, then carry on. Good job getting your work done."

The teacher walked away, and the girl slammed her notebook open. The tomatoes and the tree looked largely the same, that was good.

Of course they looked the same, she had just barely drawn them, and drawings can't move on their own. Probably. But what about the bird?

As an expirament, she drew another bird on the page, flying above the tree. As soon as her pencil left the page, the bird flew down to land in the tree. WOAH. A magical notebook? Possibly. A dream? Honestly, more likely. But it sure didn't feel like a dream. She decided to expirament more. She turned to the next page, waited a second, and turned back. The bird was in the same area, but now had the beginnings of a nest.

The teacher had started talking again, so she closed her notebook and tried to pay attention. Her mind was on the notebook the entire time. It was 5 minutes to the end of class, and everyone was cleaning up. She opened the notebook, but stopped when she saw inside. The tree was now taking up nearly the entire page, and there was another bird. And... eggs in the nest. Gross.

The birds were moving about like normal birds do, acting as if they'd no idea they were drawings. The girl watched them, transfixed. And then one of the birds flew away. Onto... the next page? She flipped the page to find the bird in a grassy field, pulling worms out of the ground. The girl had never drawn a field. Where on earth had it come from? She flipped back to her tree, and then flipped back another page to the tomatoes.

It wasn't just tomatoes anymore. Someone had taken down the fence and built a much bigger one. There were rows of corn, pumpkins, peppers, the whole works. The tomatoes had been pruned down to a manageable size, and were sitting happily in the corner. Who would have done this? Could there be a gardener? She'd never drawn one. A bit terrified, she turned back another page. There was a small cottage. With gardening supplies at the side of the house.

Had... all of her drawings come to life? She flipped through the notebook, scanning for doodles and sketches. It was mostly just math, which was comforting, but as she turned a seemingly normal page, it felt concerningly damp. A quick inspection of the page showed a pirate ship she had drawn. It looked a lot bigger and scarier than the one she remembered drawing, and the pirates were capturing her equations and destroying them. The ocean was the whole page, and it made the paper feel wet. If the drawings could influence real life, she was in trouble.

Before she had time to think of a solution, the bell rang. She put the notebook in her backpack and headed to her next class.

By the time she got home and studied her notebook properly, the pirates had conquered all of last year's geometry homework. Their ship now covered half the page, armed to the teeth with cannons forged from captured circles and trajectories. The huge black sails, sketched with a skull and crossbones, flapped fiercely in an unseen wind. Tiny sailors ran around the deck, pulling on ropes and waving cutlasses.

She squinted at the page, trying to make out the individual figures. They appeared in shocking detail, definitely better than anything she could have drawn herself. She could almost pick out the individual buttons on their clothes and hair on their scraggy beards. She hadn't drawn those.

The ship sailed around to the next page, and she followed its path to... wait, she had forgotten this drawing even existed.

A stick figure with messy hair and a baseball jersey stared at her with big green eyes, waving his arms in distress. She'd had a huge crush on Ryan, the school team's first baseman, back when she was in middle school. The picture of him really wasn't a very good likeness--for one thing, his head was much smaller in person.

Still, though, she wasn't about to let it get killed by pirates.

The ship loaded its cannons and shot at stick Ryan, who towered over its tiny sailors like a giant from a fairy tale. A cannonball hit him in the shoulder, and he reeled backward, reaching for a plus sign to use as a weapon. A second cannonball shattered the plus sign and its surrounding numbers, sending shrapnel all over the page. The pirate captain, who wore an eye patch and a long gray coat, shouted a battle cry. Disturbingly, the girl could almost hear the cry. Like he was shouting from a distant mountaintop, only the vaguest impression of a call reaching her ears.

She reached down and touched a broken piece of math. Her finger hurt almost like a mild electric shock, although she didn't see any blood or other wounds.

Stick Ryan lumbered towards the ship, ignoring the cannonballs bouncing off his batting helmet. The pirates switched strategies, shooting something that looked like a grappling hook at his leg. He couldn't unhook himself with his stick hands, so he was helpless as, one by one, the pirates climbed up the rope towards him with their cutlasses. The captain stabbed his sword deep into stick Ryan's leg, and the girl winced just looking at it.

This had gone on long enough. She reached down with her pencil and erased the pirates, starting with their grappling hook, then moving on to the front of the ship. When she erased a section of the bow, the rest of the ship buckled by itself, taking on water and sinking.

She watched in horror as the remaining pirates ran around their sinking ship, their high-pitched screams now more audible. She had done all that by erasing them. The ship disappeared beneath the waves bit by bit until only the mast and sails remained. Just as she closed the book, the last surviving pirate looked at her from the crow's nest.

His eyes glowed with malice and rage. He saw her.