Young Writers Society

Don't know where exactly this came from, but I enjoyed writing it. I just woke up...and there it was, just out of nowhere. Ah well. Enjoy!

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“Here you go, Mrs. Hue.” She said with a bright grin.

Slowly, her teacher extended her hand and grasped the paper; she gave it a quick skim as she addressed the student that stood before her desk, “Did you check and double check your answers to be sure you didn’t make any careless mistakes.” After quickly looking it over, Mrs. Hue placed the sheet on her desk and locked eyes with the younger girl.

She stood with her chin held high, a satisfied smile replacing the grin, “Don’t be silly, Mrs. H, this is me we’re talking. I don’t make careless or mistakes, or any mistakes at all actually.”

Mrs. Hue picked up a red sharpie and popped the cap off. Again, she took the paper in her hand, and she smiled weakly, “Well, there is a first time for everything, Miss Bradshaw.” She nodded to the third desk in the fifth row, “Now take your seat while I grade this.”

Diana did as she was told and turned around to face the rest of the class. Her classmates were all still hunched over in their desks, deep concentration clearly visible on their faces as they tried to calculate the math equations. They all seemed so serious, with their wrinkled foreheads and furrowed eyebrows.

Diana sighed, pleased with herself for taking yet another math test without any difficulty at all, and pranced back to her desk. She plopped herself in her seat and stared at the white clock that sat up against the wall in the front of the room. There was still a whole thirty minutes of class left! Diana sighed and tapped her pencil against the edge of her desk as she tried to think of something she could do within that time.

“Could you stop, please?” whispered someone to her left. Diana turned to the person, a boy with a mass of curly brown hair haloed on the top of his head: AJ, her crush. It was during the first few weeks of school that Diana found herself having puppy love feelings toward AJ. She knew that something was a little off ever since last year, in the fourth grade, when she would start feeling strange, yet welcoming, sensations course through her whenever he was nearby. They had been friends since second grade, and never before had she felt such odd tingling and jitters.

She gazed at him with a half grin as she continued her rhythmic tapping, “Stop what?” she teased.

He rolled his eyes and whispered back, “The pencil tapping! I can’t concentrate.”

She arched a brow and seized her beating, “Concentrate? For what! That test was super easy.” She started tapping again, “You would have been done already if you had actually studied, like I told you to.” She giggled quietly and turned back to the clock, still tapping; twenty-five minutes left.

AJ rolled his eyes again and sighed loudly, a bit too loudly as a matter of fact. Mrs. Hue looked up from her desk and tried to pin point the source of the sudden noise, “No talking.”

‘Since when is sighing the same as talking?’ Diana thought to herself.

“Oh, and please stop tapping, Diana. You are disturbing the other students.” She demanded. Diana nodded and placed her pencil down in her lap as AJ smirked and went back to his test.

‘Hmm’, She thought, ‘I know.’ Diana raised her hand to get Mrs. Hue’s attention. But seeing as that wasn’t going to work, since she was busy checking over projects, Diana got up from her seat and walked down the aisle between the desks to her teacher, “Mrs. H?” she whispered.

Bridget Hue, Diana’s fifth grade math teacher, placed one last “X” on the wrong answer of Rachyl Clarkson’s project, and looked up at Diana, “Yes?”

“Can I go to the bathroom?”

Mrs. Hue looked up at the clock; fifteen minutes, “Can you wait?” she asked with a soft smile.

Diana shook her head, “No. It’s one of those female emergencies,” she whispered with a wink.

Mrs. Hue just sat there for a second, gazing up at Diana with an expressionless face. Then, finally, it cracked into a smile and she folded her hands together, “You’ve already taken a trip to the restroom this week because of a female emergency. How many female emergencies can you have?”

Diana’s eyes shifted left and right as she tried to think of an excuse, “Umm. It’s… leaking?”

Mrs. Hue chuckled and shook her head, pointing to Diana’s desk, “Have a seat, Miss Bradshaw.” She looked back at the clock, “You have ten minutes left.”

Diana sighed and gave up on trying to find a way to get out of class. She walked back to her seat, but not before being tripped by two crossed legs that sat jutted out in the middle of the floor. Diana’s foot caught beneath the person’s ankle, sending her flying face first to the ground, but she held her hands out to prevent herself from busting her face in.

For a second, Diana just stayed on the ground, abashed. Then, when she heard giggling as everyone in class got up from their desks to see what klutz had tripped up, that embarrassment turned into anger; she stood up and slammed her hands on Kate’s desk, glaring at her nose-to-nose, “What was that for?”

Kate sat, unaffected by the sudden close contact, “Didn’t I tell you I’d get you back for what you did in the hall?”

Diana rolled her eyes and backed off, “For the last time, it was an accident! Ac-ci-dent!”

“Oh right, and I guess you trying to push me down the jungle gym stairs was an accident too!”

Diana nodded, “Yes!”

“What’s going on here?” Mrs. Hue intervened. She got up from her desk and came to stand by the two younger girls.

“Nothing.” Diana stated, folding her arms across her chest, “Kate’s just holding another grudge over something stupid, and she’s decided to trip me for it.”

Kate glared, but said nothing as Mrs. Hue addressed her, “Is this true?” Kate drooped down in her chair, also folding her arms across her chest.

She stared angrilly at the wooden desk surface, as if it was the cause of all this; she mumbled, “Yes.”

Mrs. Hue leaned forward so that her ear was in Kate’s face, “What was that?”

“Yes!” she cried, jumping up from her desk to stand in front of Diana, “Why don’t you tell her why, Ana? Tell her why I’m holding a ‘grudge over something stupid’! Maybe it's because you knocked all of my books and papers to the ground in the hallway, and didn’t even bother to help me pick them back up, even though there was one minute left before the late bell rang and my class was still five minutes away! Or, maybe I’m holding stupid grudges because you decided you wanted to try and push me down the stairs of the jungle gym!”

“Accident!” Diana shouted. “Am I speaking Latin to you?”

Kate rolled her eyes and placed her hands on her hips, “Oh! Look at Baby Annie trying to be all big and bad! One of the quietest girls in the class. But, I mean I guess she has to do something to get her little crush to notice her and finally ask her out!” At this, she turned to AJ, “She’s putting on a show for you, Ayden, at least try to look amused.”

“Girls! Stop this now!” Cried Mrs. Hue, trying to pull them apart.

The two yanked free of her grip around their forearms and Diana moved closer to Kate, speaking in a low whisper, “I thought we agreed that you wouldn’t say anything about that. You promised me!”

Kate backed up and grinned, “Why are you whispering, Annie? It’s impolite to keep secrets.”

“Hey, hey, hey!” Mrs. Hue shouted, this time yanking them both hard by the arm so that they would separate, “Stay after class. The both of you!”

Just then, the bell rang, signaling that class was now over. Everyone scattered about the room, trying to gather their things. Kate sat at her desk and Diana took the one right beside it; they watched their classmates buddy up with their friends and whisper, gossiping no doubt, and race out of the class. It was only when AJ was on his way out the door did Diana look away, finding the posters on the opposite wall to be much more interesting.

She really did hate Kate at the moment. The little brat swore she wouldn’t tell anyone about her crush on Ayden, and now he knew, as did their whole math class and probably every person in China too.

After the last person had finally left the classroom, Mrs. Hue closed the door and stood before the girls, staring down at them with a rare look of disappointment.

Diana was ashamed of herself for letting Kate get to her like that; it was a never-ending battle between them. One day they would be friends, the next day they would be enemies. And now, Mrs. Hue, her most favorite teacher, was looking down at her. She felt so small right then, small enough to slip between the crack in the tiled floor. Mrs. Hue hardly ever showed a sign of disappointment to anyone, no matter the situation, so to actually see it made Diana feel even lower.

She frowned to herself and looked up at the clock, thinking, ‘Well, at least I found a way to keep myself occupied for those last few minutes of class.’

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Mkay. I don't usually write stories, at all, but I like this and would like to continue it. So, any and all comments are welcome on how I can improve. Much thanks.

-Nicholas