HPA and GSMS Grade Eight LA

A Lesson Taught

 

                He had no reason to write, nor had he one to read.  You see, where young Jack lived, these abilities weren’t really all that important.  People like Jack had far more weighty matters to deal with.  Food and water.  Fruit, along with the occasional loaf of bread had to be pilfered, and water had to be extracted and smuggled from local wells. Shelter.  Allies and paper boxes served their purpose, but truly, no one enjoys complete exposure to storming weather.  And so, for the same reasons as his father had, Jack just never found it necessary to take up reading.

                Jack really didn’t have anyone to show him these things anyways.  In his town or village as I suppose you should call it, not many people were learned.  Real people, that is.  The rich undoubtedly knew the material.  For Heaven’s sake, they spoke a whole different language.  But the point of the matter is that Jack never really thought all that much of them and they weren’t especially fond of him and his kind either.

                And yet, against all odds, one summer Jack met an educated failure at the market sneaking a banana from the basket and she caught him doing the same.  Automatically, a connection was made. And soon after these initial few chapters of their relationship, Jack, perhaps the first in the entire history of his family, could spell his name.

 

 

The Perfect Life

 

                Felix strode down the hallway of his school smiling to himself and thinking about his current life.  A year ago he would have been what you called a nerd or a geek.  He would have been the person you always thought of as the scenery in the room and nothing more.

                These days that was no longer the case.  He was the man, the “go to” guy,  the one everybody depended upon.  He had a beautiful girlfriend and a best buddy who was the one that had given Felix his confidence back.  As he paced down the hallway with that superior grin on his face, he kept thinking how perfect his life was.

                Parched with thirst, Felix decided to stop in the student council room and grab a soda.  Still smiling, he entered the room where he was faced with something that stopped him dead in his tracks.  There in the corner, embraced in each other’s arms were his friend and his girl.  That moment froze solid.  It was the moment before the fall when you realize that you have left solid ground behind you.  Slowly time began to speed up and the shock and surprise turned into anger.

                Harnessing that raw emotion Felix let go of his conscious self and lunged at his girl, blocking out all sounds except his girl’s gut-wrenching scream.