Young Writers Society

Okay, I haven't written in a while, so hopefully this will help a lot.

Marvin Dumars was just an average fourth grader. He could read and write just like everyone else. Multiplication and division were still difficult concepts for him just as much as the rest of the children. He was average in height, with dark brown hair and light brown eyes, and a few freckles. He was somewhat shy, mostly nice, and sort of athletic. He played four square and wall ball, basketball, baseball, and kickball. He played with Deckiman cards while they were popular, then sold them when they weren't. He was just your average, ordinary nine-year-old. So what made Marvin stand out so much? Marvin Applebee Dumars was the most unlucky person ever to walk the earth.

Don't believe me?

Marvin is so unlucky that he gets letters in the mail telling him he's lost contests he's never entered. He receives nothing but junk mail, both on- and offline, and any legitimate letters or emails are sent to the wrong address by accident at least twice before he ever receives them. When he was a baby, he was confused for the child of a hobo's daughter. They didn't even realize that there was a mistake in the babies' parents until Mrs. Dumars changed his diaper- to find that "he" was a she!

So it is fairly safe to say that no one was suprised when Marvin showed up one sunny summer day an hour and a half late (he had to walk to school because the bus route had changed without telling his family), soaked to the bone, despite the couldless sky. A few kids sniggered as he sloshed his way to his seat- the uneven one that was too small and had gum stuck anywhere he touched it- but most of them had become too desensitized to Marvin's bad luck to even notice. He looked to his left, where his secret crush, Amanda Jones, sat, and instantly blushed. She was smiling at him! Then she opened her mouth, and whispered- to him!- "I like your shoes." Smiling shyly, Marvin looked down- and realized that he had forgotten his shoes entirely! As he looked up again, as red as he had been when he dropped a can of red paint on his face in first grade, and heard another voice behind him, saying, "Thank you." Turning around, Marvin realized that Amanda had been talking not to him, but to her best friend, Katie Uno. Crestfallen and blushing even more, Marvin looked up at the teacher- who was glaring right back at him!

In fact, the entire class was looking at Marvin, waiting for him to say something. Obviously, he had been asked a question, but had been to busy thinking about Amanda to notice! Stuttering, Marvin muttered something intelligible.

"Now, Nickelby," the teacher, a senile old man by the name of Knobs, told the boy, "don't worry- there are no wrong answers!" Marvin seriously doubted that.

"Um... uh... you forgot your lunch?" Marvin relpied, blurting the first thing that came to mind. The class laughed out loud- some were even rolling on the floor laughing, and others were laughing their arms off. Smiling sadly, the teacher quieted the class with a wave of his thin, knobby hands, and turned back to Marvin.

"I'm sorry, Jonathon, but that's not correct."

"But, you said-" Marvin sputtered.

"When I said there were no wrong answers, I was trying to boost your confidence so that you would feel free to speak, you see," Knob's nose twitched, "Had I known that you would give such a horrible answer, I would never have said that." Marvin just sighed, bracing himself for another long day of school.

The rest of the day was all the same- Marvin was always caught off guard, and could never answer any of the questions he did happen to hear. He was picked last for basketball at recess, tripped and skinned his knee during P.E. and had to see the nurse (who was gone for at least an hour before she could finally help him), and had accidentally switched his lunch with a bag of his sister’s craft materials- again. By the end of the day, he had finally had enough. As his teacher tried to guess his name for the third time that day, Marvin snapped.

“I’ve HAD it!” he shouted, making everyone in the room jump two feet- with their desks. “Why can’t I just have one normal day? Why do I always have to be unlucky? No one remembers my name, the weather forecast is always wrong, but only for me, I forget a different piece of clothing each day, and I never-” Marvin crashed to the ground as one of the legs of his desk finally gave way and snapped off.

“That’s it, I’m going home! And it can rain cats and dogs for all I care; I’m not coming back until I start being lucky again!” With that, Marvin stormed off out of the school.

It is fairly safe to say that no one was surprised the next day when Marvin showed up two hours late, bruised and battered, covered in shed fur, being followed by a parade of wet cats and dogs.

“When I said it could rain cats and dogs,” Marvin grumbled to himself as he sat down (a Labrador tried to climb onto his lap, a pair of Siamese cats leapt onto his desk, and a Chihuahua stole his shoe and started to chew it up), “I didn’t mean literally!” The cats simply looked at him and mewled. No one even paid him any attention, and it was another normal day.

Well, normal for Marvin Applebee Dumars.