Young Writers Society

The next morning Lillian’s father had a very important announcement to make. He was going off to work i n the countryside, in a small town called Elk Creek, Nebraska. He would be working on a farm his friend owned. Charlotte tried to seem like she didn’t care, but her heart was screaming in pain. Lillian, however, was in tears. Mrs. Dale shot Mr. Dale an I-told-you-so look. He simply went to go comfort Lillian.

“Now that that is over, can I go to my room now?” Charlotte said.

“Fine,” said her mother, having nothing else to say.

Charlotte ran up to her room, holding back tears. When she finally got to her desk, she rummaged through her bag for a pencil. She got out her journal and opened it with shaking hands. In her journal she wrote,

Dear Journal,

Daddy is going off to work on a friend’s farm and leaving me here. I can’t believe it. Why would he do this to us? Maybe he got fired. That would be awful. Or maybe he just wants to work on a farm. I sure as heaven don’t. But maybe he just wants to leave us. That is probably it. He is bored with us and needs to take a break. But that is okay. Someday he will come back, I hope.

She never got to finish her entry because her little sister came in the room and told her it was time for school. Mondays, she hated Mondays. But it would be over tomorrow, she hoped.

Lillian was glad she got to walk to school with her sister. She was glad the school was still open, for that matter. They walked into the school. Charlotte walked to her fourth grade class and Lillian to her first grade class. Lillian walked into the classroom and went to go sit with her friends.

Her best friend in the whole existing world and even bigger, Vivian, was already in her desk. She was showing off a new bracelet her dad gave her. Vivian stood up when Lillian came over.

“Lilli, look what daddy gave me! Isn’t it pretty? Those are real crystals.” The bracelet was, in fact, beautiful. It was a silver chain, with two large crystals hanging off it. One was pink, one was blue. The other girls gaped and stared at the pretty thing.

But Lillian didn’t care. She knew that bracelets could be lost or stolen. What mattered were friendships. They couldn’t be lost or stolen. Or at least she hoped not. The teacher called for order in the classroom. The lesson began.

Charlotte sat inattentive in her own class; she was even caught off guard when the teacher called her to answer a question. But she didn’t care. In fact, she couldn’t care less. Her dad would be gone when she got home. Nothing else mattered, nothing else at all.

The school day passed uneventful for the girls both. And they went home to a mother covered in tears. Their father had left.

Both girls’ lives were beginning to fall apart.