I glanced around, I couldn’t see anyone but I heard a growl. That would be Alexander, or Dave. They growl a lot. I started climbing over the fence. They leaped over the fence just as I did, their mouths and faces smothered with dirt, they had been stealing and digging again. I had no way of knowing what they stole. I landed in the garden, it was quite beautiful, despite the holes and piles of dirt my brothers had made. I glanced into the tranquil garden, but then jumped back over the fence and chased after the little thieves.
Only about 20 minutes later I had the boys set in front of the tv watching the program that was supposed to calm them for their bedtime. Clarisse would be back in a few minutes. I had the things they had stolen, and I walked shamefully back to Mrs. Cardishon’s yard. I jumped over the fence and started fixing the mess. It seemed she hadn’t seen the holes and piles. Likely because there was a huge bush in front, obscuring the view from her back door. I grabbed a stolen trowel and started filling in the holes with the out-of-place dirt.
“Hello?” A yell came from the back door. Those little devils get me into far too much trouble!!! I thought as I rushed the rest of the stuff back as quick as I could. I saw the beam of a flashlight hit my back as I vaulted over the fence. I fell hard on my arm, it hurt badly. I staggered back home, my ankle had caught on a loose fence board.
“Where were yo-” Clarisse trailed off as I crumbled into the door. “What the hell happened?!?!” She screeched, fireman-carrying me up to our shared bedroom. I stayed silent. “You don’t seem to be bashed up too bad.” Clarisse looked me over. As I sat, she talked to me about everything and anything, I noticed that it really helped, I didn’t focus on the pain. “Tell me about your day.” She asked when she finished. I signed to her what had happened and how my day had been before then. She was putting a splint on my arm and bandaging it. My injuries must be pretty bad, she was taking a while. We all took a first-aid course when I was old enough, so we could care for the boys, it’s helped out more than we thought.
‘Clarisse?’ I signed, looking up at her quizzically. She stopped telling me the story she had been telling.
“Yeah?”
‘You’re amazing, you know that?’ I let my eyes sparkle with admiration and love as I signed.
“Yeah, I guess. But you’re the best.” She then continued her story with a sheepish grin, and a tinge of guilt.
I fell asleep that night confused about the guilty look I saw. Clarisse tossed and turned longer than she normally did. I waited until she fell asleep, then I quickly shuffled through a little shoe box she kept under the foot of her bed. It contained some special things, her first tooth, blanket, toy and other milestones. Nothing new, nothing new, bingo. A college pamphlet and application form. She was leaving us in two weeks. Two weeks. She was leaving. Mom, Dad, Alexander, Dave and me. Why was she leaving me? And why hasn’t she told me? Maybe she will? Questions blurred through my brain as I shoved the box and forms back under Clarisse’s bed. I jumped back under my covers and cried.
“Morning!” Clarisse said when I walked past the kitchen the next morning. I just walked on by. I went out the back door and up the steepish hill. 0n this hill there was a little oak tree. I could climb it, but I didn’t today. I sat under it and watched the sun for what felt like hours.
About the Creator
Delaney Carlson
I’m a cringy author uploading stories I wrote when I was like 10, so please enjoy the depressed weirdness.
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13 Letters
Alianara (Ally) McCarthon was a great person. And she couldn’t even speak. Story in Her perspective. When she came to the school, she was bullied. Her brothers stole from her teacher’s yard and she was caught there returning the items. Her two brothers had mental issues. Her older sister dealt with them, until she had to go to college. She moved out and 2 months later Ally and her two little brothers got taken away. Their parents forgot to feed them too many nights in a row, and so they resorted to stealing. A nice person let them eat, then called social services after asking their names. Ally was bullied because the teacher’s daughter, the teacher's pet, was in their class that year. The teacher told her daughter about Ally and her family. Everyone knew. Ally did have friends, but they all used her for things. She had been placed in a very good rich house, she and her brothers were separated. Ally was used left and right, someone would calm and console her, then use her for whatever it was. They did this until whatever they wanted ran out or they no longer needed or wanted. This happened 11 times. Once she was dumped in a lake, buckled into an old golf cart. People hurt her and hurt her, she never even met her foster parents, they worked so much, she knew their servants and their expectations. She had done nothing wrong her entire life. All she did was fix problems she was tossed in to. She became friends with herself. By the end of middle school, she had collected thirteen letters she wrote to each person or group of people who had betrayed or hurt her. One to her parents, for not caring enough. One to her current parents, for the same but the opposite. You get the jist. She found herself in the most beautiful and dangerous place in her little town. The Point of Nonexistence. People call it that, it isn’t what it seems. A sheer cliff with specks of trees that grow thicker into a forest behind this peak. It is forbidden. It is dangerous. She was there. The cliff was a sheer face of sharp rock into the river, where the rock spiked out like the bottom of a waterfall. Just this wasn’t water. There are train tracks on the other side of the river. There the forest continued. She was there, thirteen letters in her coat pocket. She sat on the very edge. She slipped down, just from the steepness, not her push. When the police found her, they found the letters. She was famous in newspapers, ghost stories, all for going through what she did and ending it. That was how she spoke. That was how she lived. She didn’t need words, she used the letters to tell her tale.
By Delaney Carlsonabout a year ago in Fiction
The Spring
The sun was high when Lance pulled off the road and into the dusty lot of the service station. The sign back at the hairpin--the first sign in a long time--said they just rolled into Hatter’s Creek, Population 63. It was small enough it didn’t appear on the handmap in Shelby’s lap, yet here it stood, the first backwater township on the fringes of the National Park. The plan was to gas up, restock the snack bag, and press on into the wilderness.
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