I turned around to look at the waterfall. It was breathtaking, even though I had seen it once before. When I turned around, Finn was kneeling down with a ring in his hand. “Miri,” he said, “you're the best friend I have ever had. You have always been there for me when I needed you. I love you. Will you marry me?” He smiled up at me.
“Yes,” was all I could say.
Edyn is a sixth grader at Pickford Public Schools and a first-year member of the Young Writers Workshop at Pickford Community Library. She has a vivid imagination and loves writing fantasy stories. She is good at coming up with on-the-spot ideas and excels at creating flash fiction, though she has a bit of trouble deciding how her stories should end! It seems her favorite endings are happy ones. This is her first published work.
* * * * *
Amy Lehigh lives in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and enjoys fishing, swimming (when not freezing), playing with Rusty, her white Pomeranian/Japanese Spitz mix, and horseback riding, plus photography and writing (naturally). Without any siblings, she likes to walk in the woods around her home and see what kinds of creatures she can find, often ending up being startled by a squirrel, or sometimes a chipmunk!
Amy is a returning author at Pickford Community Library’s Young Writers Workshop. She is in the tenth grade at Pickford High School. Being an excellent artist, she likes to illustrate her own stories, as can be seen in last year’s Young Writers Workshop anthology. One of Amy’s strong points is recognizing that the smallest things might make an interesting story. She has become comfortable with writing down her thoughts, her dreams, and little incidents of everyday life as they happen. The following is a collection of what she calls “snippets” that could be used for a future novel.
SPRING BREAK FOR DEMON HUNTERS (working title)
Amy Lehigh
“IT’S SPRING BREAK!” I ANNOUNCED, stretching in the sunlight as I walked up to Gen and Siya in The Pit, which is the big gravel pit my family owns. Siya’s green eyes and Gen’s brown eyes unlocked as soon as they saw me, and I was not about to ask what they were up to—I had something of my own I wanted to tell everyone.
“Yeah, what of it?” Sora asked from somewhere to my left.
“We’re going on a trip!” That got everyone’s attention.
“What kind of trip?” Siya asked warily.
I gave him a sly smile. “I signed us all up for the trip to Virginia with our college-prep group.”
“You did what?” Gen said.
“Get packing, we’re leaving tomorrow, and, so help me, we are all going to enjoy ourselves.”
“Well, see you,” Dust said from behind Siya and Gen, smiling.
“What…? You’re allowing this?” Silver asked.
“Who do you think signed the papers?” he said.
“OKAY GEN, WAKE UP. IT’S time to eat,” I said, pushing his shoulder from across the aisle.
“Mm? Where are we?” he asked groggily, barely opening his dark brown eyes to slits.
“Uh…I don’t know what city. But we’re at a restaurant.”
“Come on, Gen! Up, up,” Siya said, his russet hair a clear marker as he walked up the aisle to Gen’s seat and threw a hand in Gen’s face. Gen jolted upright in the same moment, catching Siya’s hand by the wrist six inches from his face, letting it fall a moment later.
“Now that’s how you wake him up,” Siya smiled, turning to me with laughing green eyes.
“HEY, BIRU? YOU OKAY BACK there?” I heard Kiiro say.
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m…no, no, actually I’m not. I think I’m going to be sick.”
“Psst, Amy!” I heard Kiiro in my ear now. He was looking across the aisle from behind Gen. “Biru-”
“I heard. We’re good,” I mumbled. I moved to the seat behind Biru.
“Hey, Biru.”
“Hey,” he replied, trying to turn and smile at me before shivering and gripping his stomach.
“Sorry I don’t have anything for you like Silver, but she’s asleep and up front.”
“’S’okay.”
“Can you lean back, Biru?”
“Yeah,” he said, adjusting his seat. Luckily the closest person not in the Pack was asleep, like most of the charter bus, so I wouldn’t have to worry about any infringement upon rules. I rubbed my hands together as if to warm them. Actually, I did it to prepare myself to touch someone because I didn’t like—and don’t like—invading peoples’ space. Either way, I got him to turn over and started rubbing his back. Eventually, he fell asleep, and I hissed for Kiiro.
“Was’sup?”
“Get a garbage bag. He’s probably gonna throw up as soon as he wakes up.”
“Uhkay,” he said, still half asleep.
I moved back to my seat and wouldn’t you know it? Kiiro made a noise as he was putting the bag near Biru, which woke him up automatically due to his natural danger response to all that demon-fighting. And I was right—he blew (thankfully into the bag).
“No more of that restaurant for Biru,” I mumbled.
“SO,” I SAID, “LOOKS LIKE they’re starting up the cannons.” I plugged my ears in preparation. The Colonial Williamsburg tour was great—there were so many old houses and history, and I loved it. Now we were watching a demonstration of the soldiers and their marches and muskets and cannons. I looked up, and one of the people who had dressed up as a soldier gave a command. One nearer to the cannon motioned for us to plug our ears.
I looked to my right. Kiiro hadn’t picked up on the signal, so his ears were still unplugged. “Plug your ears!” I told him, repositioning my seat on the grass.
“What?” he said, looking at me, before nearby thunder rolled. I looked over and saw the cannons smoking and looked back to see Kiiro as I unplugged my ears.
“Oh. Ow.” He leaned slightly farther away from the cannons and touched his ears before drawing away his right hand with blood on it. His blue eyes looked at it with what appeared to be mild surprise.
“Oh, great job, you dunce. You probably blew an eardrum,” Silver told him.
“Oh well. It’ll heal.”
I rolled my eyes. “Kiiro, plug your ears, there’s another one coming.”
After the cannons fired I muttered, “Well, you heard me that time.”
WE SAT IN THE ATTIC of the tavern, waiting for our second plates of food. I sat between Kiiro and a wall. Two fiddlers came out and played songs for us.
They finished a Scottish one with most people clapping the beat, and then the younger player, with a somewhat chiseled-looking face, told us we should know the next one and that we were free to sing along. The older player pulled out some sort of recorder and started playing along with him to “Yankee Doodle.” Somewhere in the first thirty seconds is where Kiiro started singing, “Yankee Doodle went to town, Riding on a po-ny…”
We all clapped for the trio before the original duo began to fiddle another tune that we were supposed to be familiar with. I did not know what it was, and neither did Kiiro. Also, to Kiiro’s disappointment, no one else started to sing, either.
“I DON’T THINK I LIKE our waiter,” Gen said as the person in question walked away from our table.
“Gen, relax. We are public, for one,” I told him.
“What’s your second point?”
“Uh…I forgot already.”
At this, I received a glare. “What do you want, Gen? All unimportant information goes to the furnace in my head to make more storage space,” I said.
“Yeah, you need more of that,” he said.
“Oh, shush.”
2014 Pickford Community Library's Young Writers Workshop Anthology of Short Stories, Flash Fiction, and Essays Page 2
