So I said yes, but had no clue what to write! Which is shocking I always know what to write, but this time I was drawing up a blank. A major blank!
I then remembered what my mom said a few weeks ago. She said I was like Joe from Little Women. I could right about anything under the sun, but the best would come from the stuff that I knew personally.
So when that thought passed through my head, I remembered a promise I made to my dad a long time ago. I had started writing a story about siblings that went to Rift Valley Academy in Kenya. Dad liked this story more then all my others because it was about something I knew, experiences I had been through and such.
So I took all this and decided to pick up that story and turn it into a short story for my sister's class. I have set up a deadline for myself, so when January 31st rolls along, I promise I will post up the finished project, but for now I thought I'd treat ya'll to a peak of it. ^_^
Leila's long brown hair whipped around her as she skidded around the corner of the building. Her bright blue eyes widened as she saw a familiar profile coming towards her, a profile she didn't want to see at the minute.
She back peddled too slowly as she tried to avoid him.
"Leila!"
She groaned and stopped, waiting for him to catch up to her.
"Josh. I didn't see you there." She lied, trying to bite back on the sarcasm was impossible with Joshua Bennett. It's not that he wasn't a good guy at heart, it's just that he didn't get along well with Leila. Or actually, more accurately, she didn't get along well with him.
He was dressed like any other MK (missionary kid) she knew. Tattered cargo shorts that had seen better days, a dirty rugby shirt that was of the Rift Valley Academy team. His tousled dirty blond hair was windswept into his eyes and was practically crying out for a haircut. His dark brown eyes pierced hers with the stare that had unnerved her from the first time he had come to RVA.
Joshua hadn't been there long, his family had just come out on their first full term mission to Kampala, Uganda this year. He had been sent off to RVA and was boarding now. Leila was still hesitant to make friends with him despite her brother's nagging her to be nice to his roommate.
If she were to describe Joshua Bennett in one word, it would be: unnerving.
Joshua was standing in front of her now, that piercing gaze on her once again and she shifted, trying to become smaller in her large hoodie.
"I was wondering if you had the notes to our last Creative Writing class." He asked. She was taken by surprise by the question but nodded after a minute.
"Uh, yeah. Yeah I do. But why do you need them? Tomorrow we're all going home." She asked, trying to make sense of his request.
"I have some catching up to do, and I'd like to do it over break if that's alright."
"Oh! Oh, oh, okay yeah, um I'll go get those after I talk to my brother real quick."
"Is it checking to see if he's packed yet or not?"
Leila's eyes grew wide as he guessed the reason to her visit and she nodded.
"Don't worry about Eli, okay? I made sure he was packed this morning."
Okay so maybe her first assumption about him was incorrect, but his stare was still unnerving and got her uneasy.
"Um...thanks. I'll go grab those notes..." She said slowly, turning and walking away.
Sighing with relief that she had been able to have at least a half decent conversation with the boy.
Halfway to her own dorm, she decided to visit her brother anyways. Sure Joshua said he had gotten him moving, but that doesn't mean he was completely packed yet. Eli still very much needed a motherly figure and it was up to Leila to fill those shoes.
She pulled out her Nokia dinosaur of a phone and dialed up the dorm parents of her brother's dorm.
Once she got the a-okay to come on over, she snatched up her notes from her last Creative Writing class and headed to the copier in her dorm mom's rooms at the end of the dorm.
They chatted up a storm as they caught each other up with what they were planning on doing during the one month they had off before they came back to school for another three months. This was one of the grateful and welcomed changes Leila and Eli went through when they moved from their home in Virginia. Instead of getting a summer break for a couple of months and then another six months of school, it was three months of school, one month off, all year round. Their family was actually quiet grateful for this change.
"So you still don't like Joshua much huh?" Anna, the dorm mom, asked. Leila sighed and sunk into one of the welcoming, pour-out-all-of-you-feelings chairs.
"It's not that I don't like him that much, it's just that...he's..." Anna looked at her as if she could spit out the words any day now. "I don't know, I always get this feeling that I've seen him before, but I have no clue where from and so it's like déjà vu every time a see him! It's annoying and strange. I don't know what to do about it." She confessed. Anna's eyebrows pinched together as she thought about this but finally shrugged.
"Cast your worries into the river and let the crocodiles eat it. Don't let them eat you, okay?" She asked.
Leila nodded several times and sucked in a deep breath.
"Okay. I'll try to put it behind me. I'm going to go see Eli, I'll catch you later!" She cried, jumping up and rushing out the door.
"Yeah, bright and early!" Anna called after her with a playful smile.
.:+++:.
Pounding erupted on Eli's door.
He groaned loud enough for his obnoxious sister to hear him. She took it as an invitation and opened the door.
He watched her, gloomily, as she took in his messy room with shock and horror.
"Eli! We're leaving tomorrow!" She cried. "I mean like, leaving tomorrow! You've got to pass inspection and you've got to get all this cleaned up!"
"I know." He mumbled.
Leila sighed and looked her brother in the eye. His were a bright green like their mother's, his black hair was kept short because he hated dealing with it. He wore a big sweatshirt like his sister, shorts and flip-flops. Typical MK, also very typical Eli.
"I'll clean it up. Okay? I always do, now if you don't mind I'd like to get on it and you know I can only clean with my iPod on so there's no use being here since I wont be able to hear a word your saying."
She scowled at him, but handed him a few sheets of paper.
"These are for Josh. Please make sure they get to him okay?" She asked. Eli nodded silently and watched as she made her quiet exit.
Eli was true to his word and cleaned up everything in the room that had some kind of relation to him, and decided to leave the rest to Joshua. When Joshua did return, he handed over the notes and the two walked down to the cafeteria for their last dinner in it for a month.
The cafeteria was full of chatter, even tears, coming from girls, of course. They'd be back in a month and they always had to shed tears. Eli never got it.
Everyone said bye to their friends and gave a promise to write, though everyone knew no one would, but it was a heart felt gesture all the same. Before long everyone was ushered back to their dorms to get as much sleep as they could before the early morning.
.:+++:.
Four thirty found everyone bleary eyed as they dragged themselves out of bed and changed into comfortable traveling clothes.
Leila grabbed her backpack and single duffle bag to the buses with her pillow tucked under her arm.
Teachers and dorm parents were handing out breakfast in a bag for the road to everyone as they passed by, Leila took hers and thanked Anna, giving her a hug and promising to see her later before she climbed onto the bus.
Settling down by the window, she let the road become a gentle rocking, or tried to. Some of the potholes were so vicious she banged her head hard on the window and woke up. Sighing, she stretched her neck to see over the seat in front of her, wondering if she could see her brother, but all she saw was heads buried in pillows.
When the buses drove into Nairobi, the capitol of Kenya an hours drive from RVA, most of the kids were awake again. The city was always too much for Leila to take in at once. People were walking everywhere, even at five o'clock in the morning, some of the women had their babies strapped to their backs in a cloth sling while they balanced baskets of fruit on their head and kept up with their other children.
Men rode by on bicycles, grabbing onto the back of trucks for a lift up a hill, pikkis (motorcycles) zipped in and out of traffic where ever they could squeeze into. Horns were blaring everywhere, and the chatter of the streets soon became background noise for all the kids in the bus as they began to get ready to enter Wilson Airport.
This is all I have of it at the moment, but I hope you enjoyed the little sneak preview, I'll post up the finished story January 31st!!
