That Small Whisper
“How did you sleep last night?" my sister Rose asks. She tosses back her honey-brown hair and hands me the breakfast bowl she just washed. "OK," I reply, rinsing it, "but I woke up with...
Stories
Original fiction by young writers ages 8-13
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“How did you sleep last night?" my sister Rose asks. She tosses back her honey-brown hair and hands me the breakfast bowl she just washed.
"OK," I reply, rinsing it, "but I woke up with a headache."
Rose is eleven, three years older than me, and usually we get along well. But today I am feeling grumpy.
My Burton had a taste for dramatics. Her daily schedule was crammed full of acting lessons, ballet, and auditions. Her room overflowed with masks, stage makeup, and old playbills. Every day after school she would walk over to the acting studio where she took musical theater classes. Often, she would come home with amazing news about her budding career.
"Hurry up, Chris," my dad whispered in my ear. "He's gonna get away. You need to shoot him now." I was looking down my brand new Remington 20-gauge shotgun at a mallard. It was a miserable Youth Waterfowl Hunting Day for me. I knew shooting those ducks would make my father proud, but I just couldn't. My father was an avid duck hunter and fisherman when his job allowed it.
Swissh! Ed was playing basketball on the slab, a super-smooth playground on the campus of Country Day, his school. In the coolness of the evening the asphalt felt oddly warm beneath Ed's bare feet. He was playing with his best friend Dave, and he had just scored a two-pointer while Dave was blocking him.
"In your eye!" Ed screamed.
Tap, tap, tap. The light drizzle sprinkled upon my window. I stood up and ran downstairs. "Yes! Only one more hour till eight. My favorite show 'Rocket Power' will be on." I skipped into the living room and grabbed my Gameboy off the top shelf. While doing this I thought about how nice it was on rainy days like this. My parents couldn't make me go outside.
I poured my cornflakes into the bowl.
My fingers trembled as I laced up my toe shoes. I drew in a long, shaky breath. Why, when I had longed for these new satin shoes just a few months ago, did I want so badly to take them off and crawl under my bed?
"Got the recital jitters?" a voice asked gently. I nodded, oblivious to the speaker of the comforting words. Vaguely, I looked up. Of course. It was my best friend, Sarah.
On that day in 1939, Ben was only ten years old. Yet, as he sat sipping cream soda in his father's store, his legs dangling off the high wooden stool, Ben felt almost as old and wise as Heinrich Goldberg, the ancient bookstore owner who had fought in the great World War.
Yes, Heinrich knew everything, all right.
For all my life, I had hated writing. In fact, I had loathed it. When we were at school, our class would have to do writing exercises every day. My teacher, Ms. Sanders, would write a seemingly random topic on our whiteboard every morning. Before the end of class, each and every one of us had to write at least ten sentences about it.
An eleven-year-old girl woke up on a patch of sunlit sand. Her small elfish ears picked up the sound of crashing waves and the rustling of bushes and the dense canopy of intertwining branches and leaves to her right. Her green eyes opened slowly, first slits, and then wide open and darting quickly over her surroundings.
You never truly know what you have, until you try to live without it. Until something you love is taken, you don’t know how fortunate you are. You take everyday things for granted, like listening to the wind swirl around the branches of a giant oak or hearing the night owls call farewell to each other in the mist of the evenings.
Sometimes I want the sounds.