Tales of An Aspiring Author: By Molly M. H.

A Taste of Home

Jenna ran into her house to pour herself a glass of ice cold water.  The house she lived in with her parents used to be a run-down shack – windows broken and boarded up, hues of dull color which had once been bright, plumbing out of order, boarded up, and in a generally miserable condition.  When her family moved in, they’d gotten it for a bargain price and fixed it up. It was cozy now, and Jenna could barely remember the house as it once was.  It was like paradise on earth with cool, clear running water always available.

And, oh, the heat! Before, in the old house up north, it had snowed almost every week in winter.  Jenna loved to wake up and see the ground covered in a pillow of white, but watching it melt was beautiful in its own way, when it peeled away to reveal the healthy, green grass underneath.  Most days here, though, she could see the heat, and she hadn’t seen even a glimpse of snow at all. No wonder, though. They were living on the Florida beach.  The sun beating down on her made her mouth water. The ocean waves were a place to get away from the heat; but Jenna liked water in its natural form.  It tasted cool, refreshing, relaxing yet energizing; it reminded her of home in snowy upstate Pennsylvania.

She missed her old house, because she knew that if her family stayed here (and it was almost guaranteed that they would be here until she went to college), she would probably never experience snow in her lifetime again – never roll around, jump on a sled and go flying down a hill, make snow angels, in the white blanket covering the ground – and she just couldn’t imagine it.  She’d even miss being dared to put her tongue on an icicle. This shack on the beach, she pondered, could be the nicest house anyone could think up, but it’s not home. This water is snow in another form, probably the closest I’ll ever get to tasting snow again.

Jenna dropped an ice cube into her glass of water and drank, tasting home.

Note: Thank you to my English teacher for helping me revise “A Taste of Home”.

 

All’s Well That Ends Well

“Julia, we’re leaving soon, so get some water and meet us by the car!”

“Okay, Dad, I’m just tying my shoelaces. I’ll be right there.”

Wincing in pain when my bruised finger rubbed too hard against the shoe, I finished tying the sneakers and ran outside to the car. I rode with my dad and two sisters, with Mom’s and Dad’s bikes on the top.  My mom and my youngest sister, Gloria, were riding in our minivan with all the kids’ bikes. “How long do you think it’ll take to get there?” asked my sister, Anna, the second to youngest, who looks just like me at her age.

“I think it will take a half hour,” said Dakota, the second oldest. “Or maybe fifteen minutes.”

By the time my dad had set us straight, saying that it would take maybe a minute to get to the biking trails, we were already there. We got out of the car and I helped my dad set up his burley, which he would attach to his bike so Gloria could ride in it, since she doesn’t know how to ride. No one in the family used training wheels or tricycles, since Anna, who is six, learned how to ride a two-wheeled bike this year. My dad pulled out his new phone, set it to track our mileage, and we rode out of the parking lot.

At first it was easy going. There were a few small hills which were easy to climb.  Soon we came to a spot where we had to do a U-turn to stay on the trail.  The last time Anna rode on this trail, she hit the telephone pole on the side of the turn. This time, she did very well getting past it, and the rest of the family followed her example.

When we had ridden for a little while along the trail, I saw two groundhogs run across the road. I’ve seen these furry creatures several times before, but I always love spotting them. They quickly ran into the underbrush before I got there. When I saw the spot where they had gone, I peered into it. I saw many beautiful flowers, with small, delicate, pastel colored petals, but no sign of the groundhogs.

When Dakota rode up next to me, she challenged me to a race, and I agreed. She had a head start, but I caught up right before the finish line. There we had to stop to wait for Anna and my parents (Gloria was riding in the burley with my dad pulling it).  When we were all assembled, we continued around a bend, and waiting for us was a hill I could not climb on my bike on the last trail ride! However, it was downhill this time.  I decided not to hold down my hand brakes. I cannot describe the thrill of riding down a steep hill without braking. I looked down and I became dizzy, because of the pace at which the gravel was falling away behind me! Soon I was wobbling because of the speed, so I gripped the brakes, but not firmly. I saw my dad speed up ahead of me, and the mere energy of the downhill carried me up a small hill ahead.  Soon I was close enough to hear Gloria chattering away. “Daddy, Daddy, can you go fast like that again?”

However, just now my dad replied, “Everyone else can’t go that fast. Maybe later, Gloria.” For a time I rode alongside him, and we came to another small downhill. After I glided down this hill, I saw my dad speed up!  Quickly, I decreased the space of gravel between us by pedaling as if for my life.  A short while later, my dad stopped at a roadblock, the purpose of which was to keep cars off of the biking trails. I kept going and soon caught up to him.

“Hi, Dad!” I said breezily.

Surprised, he looked around. “Where’s Dakota?”

“Oh, a ways back. Gloria, did Daddy ride fast enough for you?”

“Yeah, Julia!” Gloria said happily, clapping her hands.

“I thought so.”

After waiting for my mom, Dakota, and Anna, we maneuvered our bikes around the roadblocks, which were made of logs. After daring my dad to jump the last one – which challenge he declined – we rode for a little while until we came to a trout fishing stream, also on the property of the park. Dad announced that we would stop here to look at the fish.  Advising us to avoid the weeds, like burnhazel and poison ivy, proved unnecessary as we had been raised to be well aware of such evil plants whenever we went fishing with Dad.  Ironically, we saw no fish, but noticed life in the creek in the form of bullfrogs – two of them, and big ones too. Dad’s new phone, which had several useful abilities, took pictures of the bullfrogs when he cued it by pressing the camera button.

When the bullfrogs, weeds, fish, and water had ceased to be of interest, we took a vote to determine which way to ride – the long way, which included a fish pond, and the short way, which included a no-exhaustion guarantee. Much to my surprise, the fish seemed to be too great a lure for simply not feeling like your legs have turned to jelly, so we picked the long way. I’ll bet after twenty yards my sisters regretted their choice, and I did too. It was an uphill, and not one of those steep ones that are about fifty yards and it’s over. It was around, in fact, five hundred yards up the hill, and it was steeper than it looked.

When I reached the top, I found I was breathing so hard that when Dad and Gloria rode to the top, I found it only within my ability to choke out, “Hi. Where (pant) are (pant) Dakota (pant), Anna, and (pant) Mom?”

“I don’t know. They’re probably still down there.”

Somewhat puzzled as to where the rest of the family had gone, I jogged back down, only to find that Anna had almost fallen into a ditch off the road.  We all met up at the picnic spot at the top of the hill. There was a grassy trail, leading downhill, with a sign that said “Fish Pond” and an arrow pointing down the trail. Dakota, Anna, and Gloria, forgetting their utter exhaustion, wanted to go see the fish, but when Mom pointed out that they would have to ride back up the hill to get back to the parking lot, their actions were somewhat negative. “I veto!” said Dakota, disgusted.

“Yeah, me too!” agreed Anna.

Gloria, who didn’t really care where we went because she wasn’t pedaling a bike, went along with peer pressure. “Let’s go home!” she said. When we heard thunder in the distance, it was decided. We would ride the short, flat distance to the parking lot.

Mom and I, riding side by side, determined an unspoken agreement to race each other to the parking lot.  When we could no longer see Dakota in the distance, she sped up. Just when I was about to drop dead from fatigue, I raced up to her, made it past her, and didn’t pedal any more; I glided into the lot and stopped at the car, beating everyone there.

When all of the front wheels were off of the bikes, the bikes were loaded in the car, and all fake sleepers were aroused, we again drove the mile back to our house.  All of the kids ran into the house while Mom and Dad again put the front wheels back on the bikes and put them in the garage.

After riding three miles, my sisters all said they felt like they would “pass out soon”.  So I served them lemonade and then went to get my mother, since they all felt “feverish”. Of course, even though I told them they had just been exercising, so of course their foreheads would be hot, they begged me like dying people to “bring Mommy back”. Complying with their wishes, I went outside to get Mom so she could set them straight. She was wheeling the last bike into the garage, and fat raindrops fell everywhere.

“We just beat the storm, didn’t we?” I said.

“Well, yes, we did.”

“Oh, yeah – Dakota, Anna, and Gloria want you. They said they feel like they’re going to pass out, and they also feel feverish. I told them they’d just been exercising, so of course they’ll feel a little hot, but they didn’t listen.”

“All right, I’m coming in.”

My sisters did not, in fact, pass out, but finished their lemonade quickly and jumped up to run to their rooms and read.

The family pessimist, Dakota, who’d predicted rain during the ride, was wrong. There was rain, but not during the ride. All I can say is, all’s well that ends well.

Finish Line

The obstacle course this year is a classic, with hurdles and weaving through cones, although contestants also dig for Paddle-balls. The sand is hot, yet flip-flops are an obvious disadvantage. To start off the races, my cousin Payton and I will go head-to-head, muscle-to-muscle, and brain-to-brain to complete the ultimate feat: cross the finish line. We are given the instructions on how to race. We are ready. We are set. We go!

Hurry, hurry, find the ball. There it is! Roll it down the track! Is it in the bucket? Finally! Weave, dive, hurdle, over the ditch! Done! Wait. Why is that jump rope there?

Payton has leaped over the jump rope while I stand there in bewilderment. “Cross the finish line, Molly!” everyone yells. But I did. I stand there stupidly while Payton smiles. I had won, had jumped the ditch, had come to the end first, but I had forgotten to cross the finish line. I stepped over the jump rope, while instead I would have liked to jump on it and pound it into the dirt…but I won’t, because I’ll have another turn, and then I hope I’ll cross the finish line first.

Wipe Out

I didn’t think it would happen to me, yet it did. The ocean, the same ocean that only yesterday had glided me softly over its waves – as a child would treat her china doll, carefully, so as not to break it, as if the ocean knows that I am fragile – was now a wild, irrepressible child, throwing her doll onto the floor, pounding it mercilessly.

But there the resemblance ends, for the child’s mother would have scolded her, called her away, while the ocean has no mother. And that is why I can’t breathe. I need air now. This is a true need, a necessity. I need it. Air.

My head breaks the surface, my uncle picks me up, and we start to run back into the ocean, because we are standing in “no-mans-land” – the breakers. A wave looms. Oh, please no, not again. But the ocean hears me not, for it is only a thing, and its Maker has a purpose. “Under!” shouts my uncle. I have only enough time to close my eyes and mouth before I attempt to dive, but again I tumble. The ocean has no mother. I need to breathe, I can’t do this again, I was out of breath before. I can’t hold my breath. But I can. And again my uncle carries me out to the sand where only the gentle surf licks my feet, and I run up to the chairs and the towels and safety.

I will not cry. But the fact that I will is unavoidable, and so the tears come. I am glad for the concern, because I really can’t open my water bottle or sit down by myself. My hands are shaking too much and my vision is blurred.

I don’t know why they call this experience a wipe-out, but twice is enough. There will be more as long as there is an ocean, and a girl who dares to go out when the ocean is rough and is taught properly that although the ocean has no mother, it has a Creator who controls its every ripple, every wave, every creature – and every wipe-out.

Can I Go Again?

At the beach’s amusement park I stand, in front of the Gravitron. I stand in defiance. I stand for those who don’t like rides that have uplifting and happy nicknames, like the Vomit Comet. I clutch my aunt’s hand.

Handing my tickets to the person in charge, I walk inside the canvas roof structure, taking in the distracting, flashing lights and the distracting, blasting music. Key word: distracting. I see red mats the color of blood leaning, securing, against the sides of the ride. I see no restraints. “Don’t they fasten you in?” I ask of my aunt, who has done this many times before.

“No, the air pushes you hard enough to keep you back.”

I am now leaning against a mat. “Uh, I’m not so sure about this!” I don’t trust science. “I’m scared!”

“Just hold my hand,” my aunt reassures me. Meanwhile, Payton is striking out on her own. Smiling and lip-singing, she is next to her mom but still ready to spin. I, on the other hand, am clutching the side of the mat with the hand that’s not clutching my aunt’s.

“Wait! I want to get out! I’m scared!” I say, panicking.  This is the only time in my life so far that I have not been practicing hyperventilating (don’t ask why).  I am really hyperventilating and truly scared.

A seven-year-old next to me says, “It really isn’t scary. I’ve done this a lot before.” As he does so, the door shuts. Well, after being schooled by a seven-year-old, I really don’t have much choice.

“When are we going to spin?” I ask my aunt after ten seconds. I am feeling the pressure of wanting not to throw up, but nothing else.

“We’re spinning now.  Oh, put your feet up on the black mats so we can go up and down,” she tells me. Now I feel the pressure. So this is all it is? Being sucked into the wall and being jolted up and down? Oh, I can relax!

The ride finally stops and I get off, after grabbing my sunglasses from a little bag on the railing, with a sign saying: “Deposit all small items, such as cell phones, here.” During the ride the bags were sticking straight out.  There is a little mob of cousins and my dad outside. They all have tickets, but they’re waiting for the “experts” (which, I guess, we are, after going before them).

“How was it?”

“Okay. Susanna, are you going?”

“Yeah!” Susanna, my six-year-old sister, would try the Super Flip (also known as the Zipper in other fairs I’ve gone to) if she were tall enough.

“I’ll take anyone who wants to go,” says my aunt.

And words come out of my mouth that I never thought I would hear, the sounds produced by my very own vocal cords,

“Can I go again?”

Damsels in Distress

It all started when those Greeks sacked my hometown, Chryse.  For nine years the Trojans and Greeks had been fighting, and we supported the Trojans. Since I could see fuzzy outlines of the future, I knew that my cousin Chryseis and I would both be kidnapped; but among the confusion in battle, I dragged Chryseis off while Chryses was praying to Apollo, and we hid in the woods near Chryse, the only place I’d known for the first eighteen years of my life.

Chryseis couldn’t help rubbing in my face that she had parents and I was an orphan (of course that made her so much better than I); no wonder I was tempted to leave her behind – but who wants to get carried off by a bunch of Greek show-offs even if it is a spoiled cousin?

The Greeks caught us because Chryseis kept on cracking twigs as we ran, and right away they started acting like a bunch of royal pains. “I get that one!”

“No, I get her!”

“No you don’t; I’m older!”

“Well, I’m richer!”

Really, I was surprised they would even win the war, much less that a great poet would write that epic about them.  What was it called again – The Iliad?  Something like that.  Anyway, we were way outnumbered (I really could’ve taken one out with my Gladiator Survival 101 knowledge that I learned from eavesdropping on Chryseis’s brother’s lessons, but not several hundred), so they carried us off to their camp.  You could hear Chryseis’s dad, Chryses, wailing in the distance for his daughter.  I can’t really blame the guy.  I mean, Chryseis was his only kid.  He’d be pretty lonely in Apollo’s drafty temple now.

Although Chryseis and I were led away, heavily guarded, Chryses was still following us.  He brought gold and even the ribbons of Apollo to Agamemnon, a great general who claimed Chryseis as his prize, as a ransom for Chryseis, but no. That crazy Greek wouldn’t give up my cousin.  Needless to say, Chryses was pretty mad.  I could hear him muttering in the distance.  I thought even then that he was praying to Apollo, and believe me, Apollo listened.  For the next ten days, a bad (I’m talking fatal) plague settled on the Greek camp.  So many men died that Achilles, who was invincible except for his heel (and who, of course, got me as the leftovers, since I’m always the leftovers), decided to call an old seer named Kalchas to find out why his men were dying.  I suggested calling a doctor, but no one here appreciates humor, let alone my brand of humor.

Anyway, this Kalchas guy said that to appease Apollo, they needed to send Chryseis back.  Notice how there was no clap of thunder with a deep voice saying, “Give Briseis back or I’ll zap you.”  Oh no. It was more like a groveling old seer saying, “Please don’t kill me, Agamemnon, but the gods say to give Chryseis back or else!”  I mean, couldn’t her father have at least asked for his niece back, too?

Odysseus, another great honored Greek hero (and one who actually seemed less selfish than Achilles and Agamemnon; in fact, I’m pretty sure that same Iliad guy wrote an epic about Odysseus as well, was assigned the task of taking Chryseis back. I can’t help feeling sorry for the poor guy.  I know I couldn’t stand to sail with Chryseis for more than ten minutes, but I never got the chance, since I was stuck at the Greek camp. Her father, I’m sure, was overjoyed; but I sat watching the ship disappear, knowing as I watched that my last connection to my long-dead parents (well, to my dad, anyway; I’d never known my mom) was disappearing over the horizon, leaving me with a bunch of spoiled brats.  It wasn’t like I would really miss the garbage pits and stone doorways I used to hide in as a homeless orphan before Chryses took me into his house. Still, this was a pretty rotten destiny.

More surprises awaited me that night – I saw Athena in a vision.  I knew it was her immediately, what with the battle armor and the owl on her arm – but I sure wasn’t prepared for her revelation. “Briseis, take courage.  Daughters of Athena never lose.”  Then she disappeared.

Wait a second.

Daughters of Athena?

Daughter?

Me?

I wanted to laugh. I, Briseis – always picked last, always abandoned – a daughter of Athena?  Oh, please. You’re kidding me, right?  But, oddly enough, it all made sense. I’d never known my mother.  Chryses was my father’s brother, and my father having drowned at sea, I became an orphan.

I was a daughter of Athena.

And now I laughed.

I laughed because Achilles and the rest of those high-and-mighty baboons had stolen a daughter of Athena.  I laughed because the Greeks had made a very, very big mistake.  Athena was on their side; and yet Athena was also on mine.  Mother was on my side.  Mother.  I had a mother.

Finally.

The next day, I heard Achilles and Agamemnon fighting outside.  They were only as loud as elephants stampeding; it wasn’t like I was nearly deaf or anything.  I drew back the tent curtain, quietly.  Women weren’t supposed to listen to men’s conversations; but then women weren’t supposed to know how to write either, and look what I’m doing.

I heard them arguing, and they were arguing about me.  About who was going to get me.  For once, someone knew I existed, even if it was my sworn enemies.  Honestly, they sounded like two spoiled brats.  It really was not as glorious as the poet Homer would depict.

Oh yes, I almost forgot; I was the toy.  That’s a fun idea, isn’t it?  I felt strength surging through my veins.  Who did these Greeks think they were, anyway?  I had feelings too.  I certainly didn’t want either of them to claim me, because I wasn’t property.  I had a brain, I had a heart, I knew what pain was, and I knew what happiness was; and it wasn’t being a slave to a bunch of dirty men with all their ugly scars and war wounds.

Then the oddest thing happened. I saw Achilles reach for his sword, and then I saw Athena appear beside him and give him some instruction.  I heard it; I guess Agamemnon was so wrapped up in listening to himself babble that he didn’t hear it.  Athena told Achilles, “Do not set your hand on your sword.  It is not the time.  Now you are to fight with your words.”  Then she turned around and winked at me.

I nodded.  I understood what she was telling me, even though technically she was talking to Achilles.  I was to fight with words, since walking out into a field of tens of thousands of Greek soldiers waving sharp pieces of metal was like saying, “Please kill me now.”  So, I stepped out into the bright morning sun.  It was my turn to talk.

When I walked out, I interrupted Achilles in his speech.  Sure, I wanted to listen to Agamemnon being called an old wineskin, but I wanted just as much for Agamemnon to listen to me.  Thunder rumbled in the distance, and I smiled as Athena’s pet owl flew to perch on my arm.  The men all turned around, shocked, and looked at me.  Finally, I thought.  They shut up.

I could hear the gasps circling the camp, and I could feel the eyes on me, but I began to speak.  “Listen, you rude buffoons.  You just about ruined my life.  So I don’t care if you win or lose this whole stupid war, as long as you remember that you got schooled by a girl.  The only war I really care about is mine, and I just won.  I’m outta here. Good-bye and good riddance.”

I ran over to one of their skiffs, pushed it into the water, and leaped onto it with a smile.  I rowed far enough away that they could not stop me but could still hear me, and then I shouted: “By the way, girls hate unwashed swine!”

Now I’m back in Chryse with my cousin Chryseis and my uncle. Chryseis and I had a tearful reunion.  She isn’t half as bad as I thought she was, and even Chryses seemed very happy to have his niece back.  Now sometimes I think about the Greeks and how they won the war.  There were some true heroes in that bunch, though some didn’t quite live up to their big old heroic reputation.  Homer won’t pay attention to me in his epic, like a lot of people here in Chryse; but I laugh when I remember that for about forty-three seconds, lots of armored Greek soldiers paid close attention to me:

I, Briseis, Daughter of Athena.

Chocolate for Eight Legs

*note: earliest known work

  Once upon a time there was an octopus named Eight-Legs.  He loved to eat, but he was allegic to chocolate.  One day Eight-Legs went to a friends house for a play date.  His friends name was Rob.  Rob’s mom gave Eight-Legs and Rob chocolate for their snack.  Eight-Legs opened the chocolate and ate one.  He coughed so hard that his nose began to run.  Rob’s mom gave Eight-Legs a magic robe so he would feel better.  She asked him if he also wanted oatmeal, but he said “NO!”