"Christmas is a time of..."
It was a sweet, fresh December morning. The wind was cool and gentle. Christmas decorations filled the streets and the campus. The whole city was in a festive mood.
Carter walked into the campus and realized that it was nearly Christmas. He hadn't given it a real thought before, until then. He tried to hold down his guilt, being a Catholic. He smiled as he reached his mates, ready to have a good, old long chat with them.
Suddenly, the air chilled, as if he joined the penguins for Christmas in Antarctica.
His friends were all there, no doubt, but they were not paying him any attention.
“Hey, did you watch the football match yesterday? ” he asked.
No response. They would have passed as deaf.
“Christmas’s coming. Got any plans with that?” he asked again.
Suddenly they stopped their discussions. One next to him, Ivan rolled his eyes. The other on the right, Jeff, stared around, suddenly became very interested in the ceiling. The one on his left, Winston, winced.
Finally Ivan spoke and broke the tension. “I expect better memory from you, Carter! Just yesterday you were bragging about how you were going to spend the holiday in Switzerland skiing and all. Et cetera et cetera. Thank you for sharing. Here’s your assignment for today: figure out what happened then and what happens next.”
“Seriously, is this a joke?”
They snorted and walked away. His question hung in the air, awaiting its answerer. It’s clear that he had been bullied. He had been left in the dungeon of loneliness and misery, expected to mourn his own mistakes.
Unfortunately, Carter could only remember disoriented bits of the disastrous conversation. His thoughts floated to yesterday recess, when his big mouth should have kept shut.
They were talking about the Christmas holiday.
“I am planning to revise for my exams for most of the time, and possibly spend the rest of the time enjoying the holiday,” said Jeff.
“I decided to read a couple of books, then write and send the passages to a magazine, perhaps,” said Winston.
“I would be spending the holiday in Switzerland! How cool is that!” Carter replied, drunk in excitement and pride.
“God! How long would you be staying there!” exclaimed Ivan.
“Possibly a week. We are going to have so much fun there! We would go skiing and enjoying the natural scenic splendour there.”
He could not remember the rest of the details of the chat, except it went completely uncontrollable in the end.
He had been playing this scene in his mind, grabbing for any clue that could help him get his mates be friendly to him again. Anything that could heal their rift. However, he didn’t find sharing his feelings and thoughts a fault.
In fact, he had not been attentive to the first few lessons. He was lucky that they were having oral presentation and tests in LS and Putonghua, so he could have a lot of time thinking about the incident.
However science was entirely different. Day-dreaming in science was strictly prohibited. With Miss Ho asking questions all of a sudden, you could hardly escape. Day-dreaming could earn him a face-to-face interview with his parents, or even worse- detention classes after school for a whole month. He wanted to avoid leaving school at five in the afternoon.
Unexpectedly, that helped him to collect a hint.
They were discussing about electric current and free electrons. Miss Ho made an analogy about resistance of electrons and atomic nucleus.
“Imagine atomic nucleus as your classmates and you are the free electrons. If they offend you, you will not just sit there and tolerating it right? It causes conflicts between you and your classmates. It happens similarly in a material. The free electrons clash into the nucleus and they are being blocked. A resistance is then formed.”
Suddenly a thought lightened up Carter’s mind, like an electric current flowing through a light bulb. Would he have said something to offend them? He bore that in mind.
The fourth through eighth period went quite smoothly. That gave him sufficient time to remember details gradually. But he figured that one crucial piece of detail was still missing.
He was so mystified that even the hilarious, thrilling film ‘Home Alone’ in the ninth period English Oral did not cheer him up. He went to choir practice in great sorrow, grieved that he could not figure out what’s wrong. The conductor had to yell at him a few times so that he could concentrate on the notes and the lyrics.
Carter studied the Christmas Carols they were practising in great interest. The beautiful language and gorgeous harmony soothed and calmed him.
‘You better not cry, better not pout… Santa Claus is coming to town.’
‘Dance and sing for joy that Christ the new born king is here.’
‘None may hear my pipes on these hills so lonely.’
‘Need a little snappy "happy ever after”, need a little Christmas now.’
He got it! What he had been struggling to figure out, the vital piece of information, was Christmas. After all, Christmas was a time for having fun. For clearing up sorrow and bitterness in the year before. For preparing to contribute and attempt more in the new year. Most of all, it’s a time to share, to love, to give, and forgive. The only thing he lacked was a proper apology to his dear friends.
The next morning, Carter went to school with both anxiety and confidence. He couldn’t help second-guessing himself, but he had faith that his sincerity would help him much.
He found his mates. His heart dashed. Without realizing it, he caught himself saying,
“I am sorry for what happened that day. I know ‘sorry’ simply do not sound sincere, but I beg your pardon. I apologize for the things I said that day which hurt your feelings. Honestly, I didn’t mean to be sarcastic, self-centered, or disrespectful, but I sounded just like a brat. For that, I hope you can forgive me, and renew our friendship.”
Their facial expressions softened, letting out a hint of agreement.
Ivan said, “We have all thought yesterday through. It was all a silly joke. We have agreed that we would die of boredom without you. The apologizing ones should be us. Not you.”
They locked their eyes together, gleeful and overjoyed. Carter had a relieved smile, while Winston actually wept and sobbed secretly, but of sheer happiness.
Far away, from the other side of the sky, came a joyful tune of ‘Jingle Bells’. The twinkling, spirited melody raised Carter’s mood to its highest. He had never felt so happy and free of burden and stress since his tenth Christmas, but that’s another long story.
Christmas decorations would be fabulous, but he would have to work out that matter later. For now, he just wanted to share the good times with his friends.
‘Possibly I would write my feelings down in my next composition,’ chuckled Carter.
Points:
Time spent:
Canary word: Present
Possible AI signals:
Original Text:
Are you sure you want to delete this comment? This cannot be undone.
Mark this comment as a review? Points will be awarded to the poster.
Your comment was posted, but it wasn’t long enough to count as a review. Reviews need about four complete sentences (at least 250 characters). Try writing another review that explains your thoughts in more detail — the author will appreciate it, and you’ll earn points for it.
125,018 Literary Works • 672,857 Reviews
Hey Duncan! Aravis, here to review! Happy Review Day! (though it is night for me
)
Good things: I like that you created your characters and your story line in such a short amount of time. I have to write a short story for English class and I'm really struggling with it. On the other hand, you pulled it off wonderfully. Plus, I love Christmas!
Nitpicks: jazzydracula got pretty much all the nitpicks I was going to point out. I think you can find the rest yourself if you read your passage out loud. This helps me to catch things I might miss if I'm just reading it in my mind.
Other critiques: Are your characters in high school? They speak like...nobody I know. try to make your dialogue realistic by using diction that people actually use in everyday life. I'm pretty sure I have never heard someone call a football game "fascinating".
Random thing, you don't have to capitalize "science".
And last thing (which is really the first thing), you need a better beginning to pull readers into the story. Maybe start with dialogue or a description that goes along with the rest of the story. What I mean is- your first and second paragraphs seem mostly unrelated (other than the Christmas theme). Try tying them together.
Keep up the writing because "The skill to write comes from writing!" Go Team Green!!!!!!!
Thank you for giving me ideas for improving this work!
I wrote this last year as a school work, and I set the characters in senior primary school, like primary six, which is like fifth or sixth grade. Anyway, thank you for your helpful suggestions.
Hello! Christmas isn't very far away. Exciting, hey? Anyway, I better begin reviewing. I'm going to write down every little nitpick that comes into mind while I read this. Don't be discouraged by that; you can ignore what I say if you don't agree because all that really matters is whether you like the story or not.
This is a good description which I can understand, except deadly freezing doesn't sound quite right. I suggest you say something like The wind wasn't uncomfortable or dangerous, it was cool and gentle.
You should mention the cause before the reaction. So first say that the air suddenly became chilly, then tell us that he froze.
"Hey, did you..."
The one next to him...
You've made the above mistakes a few times. Just read through again and you'll see any typos which had escaped your eyes the first time.
He wanted to avoid leaving school at five in the afternoon.
Watch out for your tenses! I hope you can forgive me. It's a lovely apology speech, though, and wraps up the story well.
Aww! It's such a nice Christmas story. I can see this as a cartoon on Christmas Eve.
Great work! Just fix up those things I pointed out and it will be amazing.
Thank you for your review!