Young Writers Society

Hey! Wrote some more of that.

I'm not a native English speaker, so notes about grammar and wording could be very helpful, but please feel free to reply with any kind of review! :)

I wake up at five in the morning without an alarm clock. I try to remember what day it is, and then I know it's Monday. So I have math and history and English classes.

I study at our house, with Keren, my teacher. It's called homeschooling. Sometimes it's not indoors, if it's nicer outside, but when it's too hot we stay in the house with the air conditioner on twenty-three degrees or on twenty-four if we get cold. Keren the tutor and me are always alone at home during school hours, because Yair is at work, which is dancing an teaching other people how to dance a dance he creates, which is choreography, as he once taught Yaron and I watched and learned the moves too. Avi is also at work, which is writing in the newspaper new things that happened, and visiting places, and telling experiences from his life, and also writing a blog but he only does that when he is at home. Or not, I don't really know, because I never watched him at work. Yaron is in kindergarten, which will soon be a school. I wonder if Yaron will study at our house, like me, or if he will go to a public school.

After I wake up I look at my bed and see that there are four lashes that have fallen out of my eye. I take one at a time and ask for different wishes and then blow on them.

First: I wish I could taste stuffed vine leaves once. It looks so delicious on TV in the famous chefs' shows, and I want to feel it in my mouth.

Second: I wish Yair would agree to keep the lizard I found as our pet.

I've already wished for the third and fourth wishes once, but maybe if you ask a few times it's stronger.

Third: I wish I'll visit Monte Escuro.

And fourth: I wish the mother's mother didn't die to a bad place and that she's fine now.

I get the blanket off of me and get out of bed. It's still dark, so I go out of to sit on the bench outside to wait for Mrs. Sunrise.

We live in a place without tall buildings, and with a lot of sand and stones on the ground and small mountains. It's in the south, and at night you can see the stars really pop out because there is no light of bustling cities like in the mother's mother's previous house. We lived there together, and when she died, Yair and Delores started living with me there, and then no more, and we started living here suddenly, which is actually more pleasant.

I move the curl that bothers me to see, and look up as high as I can at the sky. They are blue and quiet, as always. It could have been so great if one day I looked up as high as I could at the sky and they would be green. Or orange. Sometimes they are orange, at sunset.

I look at my feet and move my toes, as if they are dancing. The song "Mad World" is playing in my head. My ass gets itchy sitting on the bench, so I stand, but it's not comfortable, so I go back inside the house without watching the sunrise.

I brush my teeth, and secretly I only do one minute instead of three. I want to go to the toilet but my foot suddenly slips on the floor and I almost accidentally go down to a split, but the knee of the other leg stops me for a moment, before it slides aside, and I try to hold the sink while falling but I just drop the glass with toothbrushes on the floor. I suddenly feel my hurt knee and it's like I'm exploding. I hold my breath and try not to scream because everyone else is sleeping in their beds and for a moment I feel it makes me vomit. But I'm not vomiting. I close my eyes really hard so the pain will go away, and lie on the floor holding my sore knee with the toothbrushes scattered on me. I accidentally get another hit on the head because of the floor and it makes a little noise so I stop moving to stop making noises. Then I hear a door open. I think it's the door of Avi and Yair's room by the sound of creaking. I recognize slow, tired and a little nervous steps approaching when I'm still not moving a muscle. Then I see Avi standing above me at the bathroom.

"Hey there, buddy. What happened?" He bends over me and picks up all the toothbrushes from me. I take the glass I dropped from the floor and hand it to him so he'd put it in it. He does so and returns it to the countertop. I sit down and he stands.

"Are you daydreaming today?" He asks. I answer that I am always daydreaming. He laughs.

"Sorry I woke you up," I say quietly.

"It's Okay, I was supposed to get up anyway in... an hour and a half," he looks at the clock in the kitchen, struggling to see what the hands are pointing at because he's not wearing glasses so he doesn't see well enough, and twists his face a little.

"Did you eat breakfast?" He asks me as he goes to the fridge.

"No."

"You want me to make one for you too?"

"Yes."

He takes two tomatoes out of the fridge and puts them on the counter. He goes back to the fridge to get something else but it's already closed so he opens it again. He makes himself a tuna salad and a hard-boiled egg, and for me he makes a toast with cheese and tomato. I don't really like it because the bread is too burnt at the edges and the tomato is too soft, but I eat anyway. When I make it, it turns out tasty. Sometimes Avi cooks meals for Yair, but not toasts and tomatoes. Yair used to make me delicious sandwiches that every day had something different inside them, and it was surprising in a good way, but he stopped doing this a long time ago. Now when Yair makes me breakfasts it doesn't turn out at all, which is a bit of a joke, because I meant he never makes them anymore.

"Will Yaron study in our house like me, or at a school?" I ask Avi as I take a bite of the toast.

"What? Don't talk with food in your mouth, I don't understand what you're saying."

I swallow the food and ask the question again.

"Oh. I don't know. There is still a long way to go before we have to decide."

"A year."

I drink a whole glass of water.

"Probably at school," he replies and it stings my nape. "Why do you ask?"

"To know," I reply.

I chew the last bite of the okay-thing Avi made me. He stares at me for a few quiet seconds.

"What would you prefer?" He suddenly asks.

"I don't know," I shrug. "It's not important."

He doesn't say anything.

"Okay," he finally responds and looks like he's going to continue the sentence, but eventually he's not.

I'm going to get dressed. I quietly enter Yaron and mine's room so as not to wake him. I open the sliding closet and it makes some inevitable noise. Yaron flips over in bed and opens his eyes a little. He looks at me and then closes them again and goes back to sleep. I take a green shirt that Yair bought me a long time ago alone without me trying it on so it's oversized, and red tailored pants, which I bought myself once when he let me. I want to go out again and keep watching the sunrise, so I go back to the living room to get out the door and then I see Yair standing there tired next to Avi, with a cup of coffee in one hand and the other is wrapped around Avi's waist.

"Good morning," I say.

"Good morning," he replies.

Avi looks at me and then at Yair. I keep going to the door.

"You don't want to get a haircut sometime?" Yair stops me.

"Sometime, maybe. Not now."

"Sure? Your hair is already wild enough, I think."

"I don't," I say and get the black curl that bothers me to see out of my eyes.

"Doesn't that bother you in the eyes?" Avi joins the discussion. I shrug.

"Okay. Whatever you want," Yair says even though it's almost never true. For the most part it's whatever he wants.

I decide I want a snack to eat at the sunrise.

"Can I have a snack?" I ask.

Yair is in the role of the father so he has to decide when Avi says nothing. After a while Yair says yes.

I open the cupboard and take out a snack I always ate with the mother's mother. I called her "Mom," but I say "Mother's mother" to stop confusing everyone like Yair tells me I do.

We would go to the small balcony she had at home in Tel Aviv, and eat small rectangular crackers with sesame seeds, along with butter. I could eat ten crackers: five with butter and five with nothing or anything else. She would always put pesto on those five, but I preferred nothing. I liked the crackers with the butter almost as much as the ones that were butter-free, but still a little more. After I first ate the ones with the butter, I was always disappointed they were over. Mom would say it's okay, because now I have five more to eat, just without butter, but I would still be disappointed and want to go back in time to eat them again. At the end we invented a method, that we eat the crackers in this order:

1. Cracker with butter

2. Butter-free cracker

3. Cracker with butter

4. Two butter-free crackers

5. Two crackers with butter

6. Two butter-free crackers

7. Cracker with butter

Together it came out five such and five such, and it was the best arrangement to eat them. Mom would eat them in that order with me, and we would do it almost every day.

So I take these same crackers from the cabinet and butter from the fridge and a knife from the drawer, and spread it on five quickly, before sunrise is over.