The story I didn't finish (excerpt included)

Cafe Society
1

It’s the post apocalyptic story of a group of hunter gatherers hunting for the scare resources of a Kalahari-like world. They’re facing a dilemma: should they remain on their traditional hunting grounds and risk being massacred by increasingly warring neighbors or travel to the northern end of the desert, where a thousand years of peace await them according to Albino Brother, a boy they found abandoned in the southern brush. The group decides to go north, but only a dozen of the initial clansmen make it to the boreal marshes. Everybody learns Albino Brother’s thousand years of peace are indeed more than a myth, but they’re over.

I quit writing the story because it felt too sad. Here’s a fragment of what I did write:

“Albino Brother,” Father Feet whispered inaudibly.

Albino Brother found himself in the dark heat of an underground oven. It was morning but it felt as though he had closed his eyes only moments ago. The sweet-oily scent indicated Father Feet was chewing raw mongongo nuts inches before him. The old man was able to see the inside of a black cat in the pitch dark night.

“Today I will teach you how to bow hunt.”

Just as the question was arising in the boy’s mind two fingertips pressed his baked lips, “Not now. You don’t want to wake the children up. Here.”

Father Feet handed Albino Brother a couple of the bulbs they had boiled last night. As the boy quenched his thirst, his sight adjusted to the nebulous murk and he managed to distinguish some of the clansmen gathering for the hunt.

There was no perceivable change in the morning swelter when they reached a cluster of acacias partly swallowed by dune sand. Father Feet sniffed the gentle waft and signaled the men to stop.

“The herd is on the other side of the thicket,” he murmured.

Brother Clouds picked a handful of fine dust and threw it in the air to test the force and direction of the wind. Then he gestured that he and the other hunters would move opposite the dunes. Father Feet and Albino Brother took position behind the trees and the old man handed his weapon to the boy. The bow was surprisingly light for a three-foot-long, one-inch-thick tool. The old man had smeared it with animal fat yesterday and its tough wood seemed softer and suppler under the juice of the grease.

“You must be very careful with these,” he picked an arrow from his skin bag hung around the shoulder.

All the other clan huntsmen carried their arrows in quivers made from acacia roots covered in leather but Father Feet would never give up his skin bag where he at all times lugged medicine, fire sticks, fly whisks, a club, a long probing stick, several arrows and poison.

“Especially with the poison,” he added.

The secret of bow hunting resided in the arrow, a complex piece of equipment comprising four parts: the bone point, the reed collar, the wood link and the main shaft. Once the arrow struck the antelope, the brunt caused the link to split the main rod so the larger portion fell off while the venomous point was left embedded in the animal.

“You turn the spike over in the shooting position,” the old man explained while performing the action himself.

The bone points had to be reversed when the arrows were carried in the quiver for the poison to be securely contained within the reed collar.

“I did not apply the poison on its tip, but right below it. You don’t want to kill yourself, do you.”

Father Feet laid the arrow on the ground facing toward the closest antelope. It was not dawn yet but the boy managed to make out the silhouettes of the herd about two hundred feet away from the trees, between a batch of bushes on their left hand and the dark dunes towering in the distance. The unmoving antelope was staring straight at Father Feet without being able to see him.

“Hand me the bow.”

Albino Brother watched the old man’s body take the shooting stance. Standing with his toes to the arrow shaft, shoulder width apart, Father Feet picked the arrow up and stepped his right foot back a little so his feet should form a line heading straight to the antelope. Pointing the bow towards the ground, he placed the arrow in the center of the bowstring and for a moment he let it rest on the bow, just above his hand grip.

“The actual shooting took no longer than a second,” Albino Brother was telling the kids back at the camp several hours later.

In the small cave on the hillside, the antelope had been grilled and handed out to the clan members so everyone should perk up before the long journey that lay ahead.

“Let Albino Brother eat,” Father Feet scolded the children. “I can tell you what happened next if you really need to know.”

But the young ones were curious to hear the end of the story from Brother Book, as they called Albino Brother.

“Brother Book, Brother Book,” cried Galah Son. “Please finish the tale, Brother Book.”

“It all happened in a matter of seconds,” Albino Brother continued Father Feet’s hunting story, which he would recount a thousand times from that day on. “Just as he was raising the bow and drawing the string in a fluid motion, one of the antelopes gave the alarm snort. Father Feet held his breath and released the arrow as the herd took flight past the bushes – yet he did not move until he heard the point hit the flesh.”

“Did the antelope flee, Brother Book?” Galah Son asked.

“It fled with the others, of course,” Albino Brother confirmed. “But the rest of the huntsmen had already set off in pursuit of the herd. They had been lying low behind the batch of bushes, ready to take the antelope down in case Father Feet failed to strike it.”

None of Father Feet’s arrows had ever missed a target.

“Father Feet’s arrows never miss a target,” Brother Clouds nodded.

2

I am currently writing a novella for young children, entitled They Call Me Apple. I haven’t finished it yet, so I thought of posting this stuff here instead of starting a new thread. :slight_smile:

I’m interested in finding out if the story sounds realistic enough and if it may actually appeal to the targeted audience. Please be ruthless. Here’s the first chapter:

Chapter 1

My name is Helen and I’m a good girl even though I often get in trouble at school.

“Be good, Helen,” my dad kisses me good-bye whenever he goes on a trip.

I seldom see my dad because he’s a truck driver and there’s constantly an urgent shipment he has to deliver. Usually he’s away for a couple of weeks. When he arrives home I’m always asleep and by the time I wake up, he’s gone again.

“Why are you on the road all the time?” I ask my dad when I finally get to see him.

“Because we need to pay for the house, Helen,” he shrugs. “For your mom’s car too. And for your toys and clothes. All these things cost money.”

I’d like to see my dad more often, but I don’t think I’m ready to give up my clothes and toys. Then I wonder if mom really needs her car. I quickly realize she does because she has two jobs – a morning job at the asylum for old people, and a night job as a babysitter for the rich children downtown.

I used to have a babysitter too, Ms. Mendez, an old woman who lives in the neighborhood. I hated her and she hated me too. Once she locked me up in the garage and kept me there in the dark until mom came home.

“Why don’t you listen to Ms. Mendez?” Mom scolded me when the old woman had left. “Why are you a bad girl?”

“Ms. Mendez is the bad one, not me,” I protested. “She never babysits me. She only smokes and watches TV.”

I haven’t seen Ms. Mendez since my grandpa, Antiman, moved with us. The man who was supposed to manage grandpa’s pension fund stole all the old people’s money and ran away with it. The police are still looking for him.

“Your aunt is here to pick you up,” Own teases me every day because I call grandpa Anti and his gray hair is as long as a woman’s hair.

“Are you an Indian, Anti?” I ask him as we leave school.

Grandpa is a man of strong makeup. He carries my two-year-old baby brother, Luke, in one arm and holds my hand with the other all the way home. And he’s more patient with Luke than anybody else in our family.

“My grandma was a real Indian lady,” Anti shakes his head. “I’m just an apple. Red on the outside and white on the inside.”

We’re going around a construction site. When I first went to school four years ago, we walked through the park that used to stand here and I would spend ten or twenty minutes in the large playground, but the mayor gave the land to the rich people and they’re building a shopping mall now.

“I shoved Owen hard today because he keeps calling you Chief,’ I confess. “The teacher said I got in trouble again.”

“How come she didn’t tell me anything?” Anti raises his bushy eyebrows.

“The teacher wants to talk to mom, not to you,” I say. Then I ask the question that really bothers me: “Why can’t everybody be as nice as you are, Anti? Why are people so bad?”

“I’m just old, not particularly nice,” Anti laughs. “What makes you think people are bad?”

“I try to be good and I always get in trouble,” I explain. “Own and his friends make fun of me every day and if I answer back, the teacher punishes me, not them. And she doesn’t want to talk to you on account of your long hair, or Indian background. She’s pretty much the same as the police who can’t find the man who ran away with your pension money. My old babysitter, Ms. Mendez, smoked and watched TV, and when I told her to look after Luke she locked me up in the garage, with the lights off. Plus, the mayor pulled down the park and we can’t play there anymore because they’re building a shopping mall. And if dad and mom stop working long hours, the bank will take our house and car away. Why is everybody so mean, Anti? Why are they so bad?”

“Now there’s a story,” Anti smiles.

Every time something happens grandpa has a story to tell.

“People were really nice in the past,” he begins. “Good lived among us and gave everybody a hand when they were in need. But Evil lived among people too and he grew stronger by the day until he drove Good away. To keep away from Evil, Good had to fly high up in the sky where he talked to the Sun, the king of heavens. The Sun told Good that he and Evil should meet people in turns, not at the same time. The problem is Evil lives with us on the earth, which is why we meet him all the time, while Good has to come a long way from the sky to reach here, and that’s why we barely get to see him.”

I wish people lived in the sky so we could meet Good every day and come across Evil only once in a while, or even never if possible.

3

I’m not very smart, so don’t pay much attention to my comments.

Story 1 - The first thing that bothered me was the full names being used repeatedly. And I gave up reading it. However, I came back with an adjusted mindset, and read through the whole thing. The names stopped being distracting once I accepted that quirk.
Obviously that is just a short piece of writing, so I can’t say much for the pacing, character development, etc.
There were only 2 or 3 minor things that I would change:

  • one being the repitition of the observation about Father Feet at the end; I didn’t know if it was an intentional joke or not.
  • another was the use of ‘inaudible whisper’ at the start. That made me think of Dan Brown. Maybe it is a correct use of description, but to me it implies that it’s a whisper that can’t be heard. Maybe ‘barely audible whisper’ might be more accurate?

Anyway, I’ve paid good money to read whole books full of worse writing than that.

To paraphrase someone (Stephen King?), you only get better at writing by writing. If you have the story in your head, you may as well finish writing it down. No?

4

re the second story…don’t use present tense. There’s almost never a good reason for it, and it distracts terribly.

For now, as you’re beginning to learn the craft, go for a “vanilla” standard “Strunk & White” style. Present tense, third-person. Either limited omniscience or limited to character knowledge. (I favor the latter.) Single point-of-view: don’t jump to someone else’s internal thoughts; keep the focus on the protagonist.

Straight and simple…to begin with. Once you’ve mastered the form, then you can experiment. Sentence fragments are like a high-speed lathe: shouldn’t be used by beginners.

5

I listen to smart people (who doesn’t?), but I pay more attention to people of character. So, thank you for your comments.

Those full names are supposed to give the tone. The inaudible whisper is of course an audible one and I almost deleted “inaudibly” before posting the fragment but on second thought I didn’t. I should have been true to the “vanilla” standard “Strunk & White” style that **Trinopus **recommends in his post. Everything else is excuses. As for the repetition, it was supposed to create both solemnity and irony. I’m not sure what it does right now. :dubious:

One day maybe. It depends. :slight_smile:

6

I did my best to keep the story clear and simple. I took the liberty to use the present tense though. Is it really distracting?

7

The plot thickens a bit in chapter 2.

Chapter 2

“What did your mom pack for your lunch today, Helen?” Terry, Owen’s friend, asks. “Apples again?”

Terry is so fat that Owen only looks a little chubby when they stand side by side, but Owen is really overweight too. They think I prefer to eat the food in my lunchbox instead of the hamburgers and chips they sell at the cafeteria because I can’t afford it.

“I can buy anything I want,” I show them my pocket money. “But I’d rather have my tomatoes and turkey than the junk you, guys, eat.”

“Who do you think you’re fooling, apple-pie?” Owen sneers. “We all know you’re saving to buy your own trailer when you grow up.”

I don’t even bother to reply anymore. The only time I complained to the lunchroom supervisor about their attitude I ended up being sent to see Mr. Redford, the principal.

“I don’t think you realize how serious it is to call your friend fat,” Mr. Redford said after inviting me to sit on the chair in front of his desk. The chair was so tall and wide I couldn’t find a comfortable position even if I lay down on it, like a sofa.

“Owen is not my friend, sir,” I had to stiffen my spine lest I should roll on my back. “And I only said he’s going to get fat if he keeps eating junk food.”

“Just stop using the word already,” the principal bursts out. “It’s really rude.”

“What if he was short and I called him that?” I retorted. “Would it be rude to describe a fact?”

Actually, Owen is short – shorter than me anyway. And because he’s overweight too, he looks like an annoying orange making fun of everyone who’s afraid of standing up to him. Well, I’m not, and he’d better get used to it because apples and oranges will never mix.

Eventually Mr. Redford rang my mom up and invited us both to discuss the matter in his office again.

“This is a serious situation, Mrs. Destero,” the principal said. “If your daughter’s behavior persists, Owen’s parents will be perfectly entitled to report a hate crime.”
I had to give a public apology to Owen and promise I would never make comments on his size again.

How come it’s wrong for me to tell Owen and Terry to stop eating junk food or else they’ll get fat when they’re visibly overweight, but it’s not wrong for them to make fun of grandpa on account of his Indian origin or to call me trailer girl every day? I bet our house is bigger than Owen’s and nobody in our family looks like an Indian anyway.

“It all started with the gold,” grandpa shook his head. “If it hadn’t been for the gold, we would still rule this land.”

“Back in the day our people only looked for the game they could hunt and the stone they could build temples with,” Anti explained. “They didn’t even use money. Gold appealed to children who gaped at shiny things and ugly women who craved to become attractive. Our decline started when kings began to love gold too and priests used it to adorn our temples.”

“Oh,” I remembered. “You mean when they sacrificed humans and stuff?”

“Europeans and Asians were way crueler than our people, if that’s what you’re getting at,” grandpa frowned. “Genghis Khan and Hitler each killed 40 million people, and that’s only the tip of the iceberg.”

The next weekend Anti took me to the Native American market. Grandpa pointed at a huge Indian casino that stood at the back of the market place.

“Our people were already going downhill,” he said. “But the final blow came when the Europeans planted the love for money in their hearts. That’s when we became American as apple-pie.”

Anti gave me a dollar to spend on anything I wanted, but most of the souvenirs in the Native American market were expensive and I didn’t want to waste my pocket money.

“How about some candy?” Grandpa suggested.

“I don’t eat junk food,” I shook my head.

Just as we were leaving, an old man selling Indian art offered me a tiny wooden statue for my dollar. The little thing looked so common and simple even I could carve it if I put my mind to it.

“What’s this?” I asked. “What shall I do with it?”

“It’s an ancient Indian god,” the old man said. “If you tuck it under your pillow before you go to bed, you’ll wake up with a dollar bill in your hand every morning.”

“Seriously?” I laughed. “Then why are you selling it? You will have a dollar when you wake up tomorrow morning anyway.

The man explained he needed a dollar urgently and couldn’t wait until the next day, but I still had by doubts about the little statue. I think people shouldn’t be allowed to sell or buy gods anyway.

8

One thing I noticed in the first chapter of the second story: be careful of having people do things that are impossible. You can’t “shrug,” “laugh,” or “smile” a sentence. If it’s not something that a person can do in speech (such as protest, answer, or just say) then put a period in front of it, not a comma. So:

“Because we need to pay for the house, Helen,” he shrugs.
becomes
“Because we need to pay for the house, Helen.” He shrugs.

9

Yes… It is distracting, but this is, in large part, because of convention. We’re accustomed to past-tense narration, and so when we get present-tense, it disrupts the ease and flow of reading. It isn’t wrong, intrinsically, it just isn’t “the way it’s done.”

David Brin (big name author, titanically successful, movie deals, etc.) wrote a story with a whole lot of neologisms. Brutally distracting. “Cute” devices should be eschewn!

10

Hey, I appreciate it. You hit the nail with this recommendation. I’ve been wondering how I should deal with this exactly. :slight_smile:

11

I know and feel the same. That’s why it was a little awkward for me when I read Al Capone Does My Shirts by Gennifer Choldenko, but once the story caught me I got accustomed to the present tense and I’ve been experimenting with it too since. So now I pick the first person narrative and keep the story simple, but try to employ the present and past tenses a little creatively and pray it’ll work. :slight_smile:

12

I am posting chapters 1 and 2 again after making the corrections suggested by Infovore and fixing a couple of other mistakes. I’m adding chapter 3 too in the hope I’ll keep getting reactions. :slight_smile:

Chapter 1

My name is Helen and I’m a good girl even though I often get in trouble at school.

“Be good, Helen.” My dad kisses me good-bye whenever he goes on a trip.

I seldom see my dad because he’s a truck driver and there’s constantly an urgent shipment he has to deliver. Usually he’s away for a couple of weeks. When he arrives home I’m always asleep and by the time I wake up, he’s gone again.

“Why are you on the road all the time?” I ask my dad when I finally get to see him.

“Because we need to pay for the house, Helen.” He shrugs. “For your mom’s car too. And for your toys and clothes. All these things cost money.”

I’d like to see my dad more often, but I don’t think I’m ready to give up my clothes and toys. Then I wonder if mom really needs her car. I quickly realize she does because she has two jobs – a morning job at the asylum for old people, and a night job as a babysitter for the rich children downtown.

I used to have a babysitter too, Ms. Mendez, an old woman who lives in the neighborhood. I hated her and she hated me too. Once she locked me up in the garage and kept me there in the dark until mom came home.

“Why don’t you listen to Ms. Mendez?” Mom scolded me when the old woman had left. “Why are you a bad girl?”

“Ms. Mendez is the bad one, not me,” I protested. “She never babysits me. She only smokes and watches TV.”

I haven’t seen Ms. Mendez since my grandpa, Antiman, moved with us. The man who was supposed to manage grandpa’s pension fund stole all the old people’s money and ran away with it. The police are still looking for him.

“Your aunt is here to pick you up,” Owen teases me every day because I call grandpa Anti and his gray hair is as long as a woman’s hair.

“Are you an Indian, Anti?” I ask him as we leave school.

Grandpa is a man of strong makeup. He carries my two-year-old baby brother, Luke, in one arm and holds my hand with the other all the way home. And he’s more patient with Luke than anybody else in our family.

“My grandma was a real Indian lady.” Anti shakes his head. “I’m just an apple. Red on the outside and white on the inside.”

We’re going around a construction site. When I first went to school four years ago, we walked through the park that used to stand here and I would spend ten or twenty minutes in the large playground, but the mayor gave the land to the rich people and they’re building a shopping mall now.

“I shoved Owen hard today because he keeps calling you Chief,’ I confess. “The teacher said I got in trouble again.”

“How come she didn’t tell me anything?” Anti raises his bushy eyebrows.

“The teacher wants to talk to mom, not to you,” I say. Then I ask the question that really bothers me: “Why can’t everybody be as nice as you are, Anti? Why are people so bad?”

“I’m just old, not particularly nice.” Anti laughs. “What makes you think people are bad?”

“I try to be good and I always get in trouble,” I explain. “Own and his friends make fun of me every day and if I answer back, the teacher punishes me, not them. And she doesn’t want to talk to you on account of your long hair, or Indian background. She’s pretty much the same as the police who can’t find the man who ran away with your pension money. My old babysitter, Ms. Mendez, smoked and watched TV, and when I told her to look after Luke she locked me up in the garage, with the lights off. Plus, the mayor pulled down the park and we can’t play there anymore because they’re building a shopping mall. And if dad and mom stop working long hours, the bank will take our house and car away. Why is everybody so mean, Anti? Why are they so bad?”

“Now there’s a story.” Anti smiles.

Every time something happens grandpa has a story to tell.

“People were really nice in the past,” he begins. “Good lived among us and gave everybody a hand when they were in need. But Evil lived among people too and he grew stronger by the day until he drove Good away. To keep away from Evil, Good had to fly high up in the sky where he talked to the Sun, the king of heavens. The Sun told Good that he and Evil should meet people in turns, not at the same time. The problem is Evil lives with us on the earth, which is why we meet him all the time, while Good has to come a long way from the sky to reach here, and that’s why we barely get to see him.”

I wish people lived in the sky so we could meet Good every day and come across Evil only once in a while, or even never if possible.

Chapter 2

“What did your mom pack for your lunch today, Helen?” Terry, Owen’s friend, asks. “Apples again?”

Terry is so fat that Owen only looks a little chubby when they stand side by side, but Owen is really overweight too. They think I prefer to eat the food in my lunchbox instead of the hamburgers and chips they sell at the cafeteria because I can’t afford it.

“I can buy anything I want.” I show them my pocket money. “But I’d rather have my tomatoes and turkey than the junk you, guys, eat.”

“Who do you think you’re fooling, apple-pie?” Owen sneers. “We all know you’re saving to buy your own trailer when you grow up.”

I don’t even bother to reply anymore. The only time I complained to the lunchroom supervisor about their attitude I ended up being sent to see Mr. Redford, the principal.

“I don’t think you realize how serious it is to call your friend fat,” Mr. Redford said after inviting me to sit on the chair in front of his desk. The chair was so tall and wide I couldn’t find a comfortable position even if I lay down on it, like a sofa.

“Owen is not my friend, sir.” I had to stiffen my spine lest I should roll on my back. “And I only said he’s going to get fat if he keeps eating junk food.”

“Just stop using the word already,” the principal burst out. “It’s really rude.”

“What if he was short and I called him that?” I retorted. “Would it be rude to describe a fact?”

Actually, Owen is short – shorter than me anyway. And because he’s overweight too, he looks like an annoying orange making fun of everyone who’s afraid of standing up to him. Well, I’m not, and he’d better get used to it because apples and oranges will never mix.

Eventually Mr. Redford rang my mom up and invited us both to discuss the matter in his office again.

“This is a serious situation, Mrs. Destero,” the principal said. “If your daughter’s behavior persists, Owen’s parents will be perfectly entitled to report a hate crime.”

I had to give a public apology to Owen and promise I would never make comments on his size again.

How come it’s wrong for me to tell Owen and Terry to stop eating junk food or else they’ll get fat when they’re visibly overweight, but it’s not wrong for them to make fun of grandpa on account of his Indian origin or to call me trailer girl every day? I bet our house is bigger than Owen’s and nobody in our family looks like an Indian anyway.

“It all started with the gold.” Grandpa shook his head. “If it hadn’t been for the gold, we would still rule this land.”

“What are you talking about, Anti?” I chuckled. “When did we rule the land?”

“Back in the day our people only looked for the game they could hunt and the stone they could build temples with,” Anti explained. “They didn’t even use money. Gold appealed to children who gaped at shiny things and ugly women who craved to become attractive. Our decline started when kings began to love gold too and priests used it to adorn our temples.”

“Oh.” I remembered. “You mean when they sacrificed humans and stuff?”

“Europeans and Asians were way crueler than our people, if that’s what you’re getting at.” Grandpa frowned. “Genghis Khan and Hitler each killed 40 million people, and that’s only the tip of the iceberg.”

The next weekend Anti took me to the Native American market. Grandpa pointed at a huge Indian casino that stood at the back of the market place.

“Our people were already going downhill,” he said. “But the final blow came when the Europeans planted the love for money in their hearts. That’s when we became American as apple-pie.”

Anti gave me a dollar to spend on anything I wanted, but most of the souvenirs in the Native American market were expensive and I didn’t want to waste my pocket money.

“How about some candy?” Grandpa suggested.

“I don’t eat junk food.” I shook my head.

Just as we were leaving, an old man selling Indian art offered me a tiny wooden statue for my dollar. The little thing looked so common and simple even I could carve it if I put my mind to it.

“What’s this?” I asked. “What shall I do with it?”

“It’s an ancient Indian god,” the old man said. “If you tuck it under your pillow before you go to bed, you’ll wake up with a dollar bill in your hand every morning.”

“Seriously?” I laughed. “Then why are you selling it? You will have a dollar when you wake up tomorrow morning anyway.

The man explained he needed a dollar urgently and couldn’t wait until the next day, but I still had by doubts about the little statue. I think people shouldn’t be allowed to sell or buy gods anyway.

Chapter 3

They call me Apple, but they should name me Tomato because I eat so many of them I must be red on both the inside and the outside. I’m neither, actually.

If it wasn’t for his long hair, nobody would guess grandpa is of Indian origin. Anti is mom’s father and they look the same as dad’s family, who come from Europe. Except for pasta and pizza, we eat Italian food, which I didn’t even know it was Italian until my best friend, Kara Mayo, began to attend our barbecue parties that we throw every weekend after returning from church. On these Sunday parties, dad has a lot of cheese snacks and prefers wine to beer, while mom offers everyone her favorite coffee. I mean real coffee, like espresso, not the tasteless slop most people take for coffee.

“I’ve noticed your recipes include a lot of tomatoes, bell-peppers and corn,” Mrs. Mayo remarked.

“Our cuisine is simple,” mom said. “We use the stuff everybody else does, but each food is based on few things. I focus on the quality of the ingredients, rather than fancy cooking.”

That’s why I eat so many tomatoes. If I’m hungry when I come home from school, I’ll just wolf down a couple of tomatoes and I can easily wait until mom returns from her second job and we have dinner together. And if I feel dehydrated after playing with Billy and Mark, I’ll eat a tomato too because it can quench my thirst better than any soda invented.

I made friends with Kara because she was the best student in our class. I didn’t care she was black, like Terry, and it didn’t bother me she seemed almost as overweight as he was. Soon after we became close, Kara quitted buying the hamburgers and chips they sell at the cafeteria and ate the food her mom packed for lunch, just like I did.

And since grandpa is at home all the time, Mrs. Mayo allowed Kara to come over to my place after school almost every night. At first she was shocked to see I barely watched TV or played computer games. I didn’t need to, because there were a lot of boys and girls in our neighborhood who enjoyed baseball. My friends, Billy and Mark, were reluctant to allow her in our team at first, but Kara is an ambitious girl. She lost tons of weight last summer and even though she still looks a little plump, she can now play as well as I can.

Terry Hall has been mean to Kara ever since she became my best friend and this morning he called her Radish, saying she was black on the outside and stark white on the inside. I told Kara to ignore him but it hurt her because, despite Terry’s constant teasing, she’s always been nice to him. Mrs. Mayo and Mrs. Hall go to the same church and Terry’s mom asked Kara if she could help her son improve his math skills because he’s terrible at math. Kara would rather come to my place and play after school, but she still tutors Terry every other day. And what does Terry do in return? He bullies her.

“Now there’s a story,” grandpa says on the way back home.

Anti is carrying my baby brother Luke in his right arm and holding Kara’s hand with the other. I’m holding Kara’s left hand.

“Why don’t you let Luke walk?” Kara points at my brother. “He can walk, can’t he?”

“He can walk all right.” Grandpa laughs. “But it would take us twice as long to reach home and you’d have less time to play.”

Plus, we’d probably get bored of listening to Anti’s many legends. Yet, I can see Kara is all ears and she enjoys paying attention to him.

“Back in the day, Eagle thought it was better if she made friends with Fox,” grandpa begins his tale. “Eagle’s chicks were little and she was afraid Fox might want to devour them. But then Eagle realized she didn’t need to be faithful to Fox because Fox couldn’t eat her chicks, which were perched high up on the cliff, and she decided to swallow up Fox’s little cubs instead. Yet, Eagle needed to take some food to her chicks too. So, she stole a piece of meat from the food the church gave out to the poor and carried it to her nest. But because Eagle failed to notice a lit candle that was stuck to the meat, the nest caught fire and her chicks burned to death.”

“Wow.” Kara shudders. “Why do your legends have such extreme endings?”

“It makes them harder to forget, I guess.” Anti smiles.

They don’t sound extreme to me though, and I wonder how many people, besides grandpa, still remember these old stories.

13

My stuff hasn’t sparkled a lot of commentary. I’m posting chapter 4 now and if there is no reaction I’ll just assume the story is satisfactory and move on. :slight_smile:

Chapter 4

Kara didn’t want Terry Hall to come to her birthday party, but he invited himself. It was Mrs. Hall, in fact, who insisted that Terry should attend our get-together.

Mrs. Mayo’s house is a small one, where only she and Kara live because Mr. Mayo was killed during an overseas deployment mission that he took when my friend was only two years old. She has few memories of her deceased father, but there are photos of Mr. Mayo all over the house and in most of them he’s proudly wearing his Marine uniform.

There were five of us, all girls, at Kara’s birthday party when Ken, Terry’s elder brother, dropped him outside the house. Terry handed Kara the present without a word and began to scour the place. It took him only five minutes to get bored to death.

“Ken is planning to go to boot camp to become a marine too,” Terry broke in on our conversation. He pointed at one of Mr. Mayo’s photos on the mantelpiece and beamed with excitement. “He’s going to leave me all his pogs, and some of them are issued by the U.S. Army.”

I knew Ken’s collection of pogs because Terry had secretly brought it to school a couple of months before. Teachers regard pogs as some sort of gambling trophies and don’t allow them on the school premises, which is why Terry didn’t keep them in his locker that day for fear somebody might snitch on him to the principal. It wasn’t until school was over that I realized where he had been hiding his brother’s pog treasure – in Carlos’ cleaning trolley, which the janitor always parks under the stairs while he’s handling his daily repairs. There are two janitors in our school, Jimmy and Carlos, and all repairs are Carlos’ cup of tea because he hates cleaning after kids but has a knack of mending things.

The day after her birthday party Kara got in trouble.

“Mrs. Green,” Own called in the middle of the class. He showed the teacher Kara’s bulging backpack. “Kara Mayo brought her toys to school again.”

Mrs. Green asked Kara to open her satchel and we all saw the scientific manicure set that Mrs. Hall had bought Kara for her birthday. Surely it must have been Terry who informed Owen on the present because my friend never meant to open the set at school – she had been planning it as a surprise for when we played at my place after classes.

I had to do something to stop Terry from picking on Kara, and the opportunity came on the same day because Officer Addams was visiting our school. The principal had come up with the idea that a police officer should give the students lectures about the law, as well as our rights and responsibilities as future members of society, and Officer Addams seemed the perfect man for the job. He had been serving in the police force for a long time and loved talking to children on right and wrong.

“I can’t wait to tell Officer Addams about your inappropriate touching.” Terry winked at me.

I had wished Kara happy returns of her birthday again in the morning and she had hugged me, which our principal does not permit. On the one hand Mr. Redford insists we should consider everybody a friend, not a mere classmate – yet we’re not allowed to have best friends at school.

I had noticed, however, that Terry had brought his brother’s pog treasure to school again, probably inspired by his visit to Kara’s place the day before, and I knew he must have hidden it in the same place. So the scheme formed the moment I saw Owen leave his soda can on a corridor windowsill before he and Terry entered the lecture theater. All the students had already emptied the hall into the theater, and nobody saw me knock the can off the ledge. The soda that was still in there began to leak outside the door.

“Jimmy!” I heard Mr. Redford bellow when he and Officer Addams arrived.

Jimmy was way on the other side of the school, cleaning the gym during Officer Addams’ lecture. Carlos showed up instead and fumbled under the stairs to pick a cleaning pad from the trolley that he almost never used. He accidentally knocked a pail over and hundreds of pogs spilled out all over the place.

“Whose are these?” Officer Addams stared at the crowd of students in the lecture theater.

Nobody uttered a word.

“Take them to my office,” the principal instructed Carlos.

I winked at Terry, who whose face had turned purple. He was on the verge of crying.

Later that day, Kara blamed me for having been cruel to Terry and I turned to grandpa for help. He didn’t take my side, but told us this story:

“Dung Beetle and Rabbit were best friends,” Anti started. “Dung Beetle warned Eagle not to devour his buddy, but Eagle was not impressed. So, when Eagle ate Rabbit, Beetle flew to Eagle’s cliff and threw her eggs out of the nest. The eggs crashed to the ground. The next time she had eggs, Eagle soared above the clouds and placed them on the laps of gods, who loved eagles. But Beetle flew up in the sky too and dropped balls of dung in the gods’ laps. They brushed the dung off their knees and Eagle’s eggs crashed to the ground again.”

The next day Mrs. Mayo retrieved Kara’s manicure set from Mrs. Green, but Ken’s pog treasure seemed lost forever.

I don’t think Terry is going to pick on Kara any time soon.