The Wrong Backpack

After class, Nina stayed in the school library to finish an assignment. She had put her blue backpack on the chair beside her, and a few tables away another student, Leo, had placed a backpack that looked almost identical. Nina noticed the colour, but not the small details that made one bag different from the other, for the simple reason that she had never needed to.

When the bell rang, she shut her notebook, picked up the nearest blue bag and hurried off to science. She had barely sat down when she opened it to find her textbook. Instead, she saw a history book, a red pencil case and a notebook with “Leo” written on the cover in neat capital letters. For a moment she simply stared at it, as if the contents might change on closer inspection.

She looked at the bag more carefully. Her own backpack had a yellow key ring dangling from the zip; this one had none. The explanation was obvious, and it made her uncomfortable, because Leo might well need his books for his next lesson and he would have no idea where they had gone. She could not simply carry on as if nothing had happened.

She told her teacher that she had taken the wrong bag and asked permission to return it. Back in the library, she found Leo bent over, searching under the table. “I’m really sorry,” Nina said. “I think I took your backpack by mistake.” Leo straightened up, visibly relieved. He admitted that he had begun to fear that someone had stolen it.

They swapped the bags and checked the names inside to be certain. Before leaving, Nina tied a bright ribbon to her own zip so that she would recognise it at once, and Leo said he would put a sticker on his. They both laughed at how easily two ordinary blue backpacks could cause such a fuss, and Nina walked back to class a little late but with a lighter conscience.