English class in tenth grade. Our chap book was a collection of our work from the year, typed up and bound. Mine had a green cover, and I entitled it "A Bird's Eye View." Here's a photo of it, very much disheveled now:
Mr. Franek was the best English teacher I ever had. He wrote in the back of my book, along with my grade (B+/A-, because try as I might I rarely ever received an A in his class) "writing, I suspect, is a release for you," and "I don't worry about you. You like to read & write. Don't ever stop." Boy, he had me pegged, and those words were so inspiring for me back then, as they are now.
Here is a rewritten story, pulled from my chap book, about an incident that happened to my sister Allison from my sister Kelsey's point of view:
It was the summer of 1983, and my cousins had come for a short visit. My mom made me and my cousin Sarah sleep on the floor in Allison and Lauren's room, because Aunt Karen was sleeping in my room. My mom gave me a sleeping bag from the little closet. The air conditioner was broken, leaving the house unbearably hot, so my mom put a small electric fan in the room to circulate air. She placed the fan between Sarah and me and warned us not to sleep to close to it, because the blades were sharp.
In the middle of the night, Allison woke up screaming from a nightmare. She had dreamt Jesus was sitting on the end of her bed drinking a Pepsicola and told her to be careful. We all laughed about her and went back to sleep. About an hour later, she awoke frightened again. She said, in her dream, a man had kidnapped her and killed Lauren. She was afraid, and she crawled out of bed to sleep on the floor in between Sarah and I, and extremely close to the fan.
Around one in the morning Allison woke up. She felt something wet on her hand, but couldn't tell what it was. Allison tried to wake me up, but I groaned. She walked over to the light and turned it on. The first thing she saw was blood on the wall. Allison peered down at the ground and saw a trail of blood leading towards the light switch. Blood streamed down her arm, and she saw a huge gash on her hand. She began screaming, as she realized what had happened. I sat straight up, saw the blood, and I began screaming too but Lauren slept soundly.
My mom ran upstairs when she heard Allison's screams. She burst into the room yelling for Allison and me to stop fighting, but then she saw the bright, red blood stain on the wall. Allison was cuddled up in the corner, crying, and there was blood everywhere.
My mom called my dad (he was on call that night and was on a call at the hospital), and she told him to bring Allison directly to the emergency room.
Mom told us to get in the big, brown van, and she went back upstairs to pick up Lauren and bring her downstairs. Lauren woke up, bleary-eyed and half asleep, and Mom whispered something about going to the hospital. Uninterested, Lauren quickly fell back to sleep.
My dad came outside to help my mom carry Allison into the ER. She was still screaming and bleeding. They left Lauren and I in the van with Aunt Karen. The doctor on duty sent Allison to x-ray to make sure she had not injured her bone. The blade in the fan had cut her hand deeply, but luckily missed the bone. Her hand wasn't broken, but she did need stitches.
The doctor made sure that Allison had not cut any tendons. He, with my dad looking on, then proceeded to sew up her hand, placing twenty stitches into the skin. Allison left the hospital with a lollipop in her mouth, holding my mom's hand and skipping. She was happy again. Allison climbed up into the big, brown van and sat down next to me. Lauren rubbed her eyes, waking up, not knowing where she was or what happened.
"Where are we?" Lauren asked.
"At the hospital," Allison said.
"Why?" Lauren asked, curiously.
"Well you see, a big monster came in the middle of the night and ate my hand off! But it's all better now, because Daddy fixed it!"
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