Moving Day

By admin

I’m a writing mentor with an organization called WriteGirl. I meet weekly with my 15-year-old mentee, C, at the Huntington Gardens and Library. We write together about this and that, and each year WriteGirl publishes an anthology of the work of all the girls and their mentors. (You should pick one up!) I’m tired of all this writing just sitting in my journal, so here is a story I wrote during one of my meetings with C.

Moving Day

Shelby sat on the floor, hugging her bent knees, staring blankly at the boxes when she should have been packing. Moving again—new house, new friends, new school. Her features hardened as she thought about it, mouth tightening and eyes narrowing in an effort not to cry. Standing weakly, Shelby tripped through the cardboard maze, barking her shins on the loose flaps of the unsealed cartons. She reached a pile of stuffed animals and scooped up a furry armload, ignoring the bite from the scrapes on her legs.

Unable to see the way back over Snowy and Frisky, Hephzibah and Elton, Shelby charged heedlessly into the maze. She stumbled and tumbled hard into stiff corners and rough edges, adding a bruised hip and elbow to her catalogue of injuries. She lay motionless in a heap on the floor, listening for footsteps. No one came.

Shelby started to cry, angry at the boxes, angry at herself, angry at her toys. She sat up and hurled them across the room at the waiting box. Onetwothreefour. Elton hit with a kunk and slid down the wall. Hephzibah and Snowy pmphed into the animals already packed away. And Frisky made a small groaning noise as he umphed to the floor beside the box.

Stricken with guilt, Shelby stared over the cardboard battlements at her loyal friends. Her tears renewed and redoubled as she crashed back to the box. Blinded, she reached down and picked up the nearest toy. She was still wrapped around Frisky, the black bear’s fur matted and wet, when her mother came into the room.