Silk Flowers

[Murtagh'tugals]

Author's Note: I was given an assignment to find a photo and write a story about it. The photo I chose is sort of described in the closing paragraph of the story. It's not entirely fiction, because Brianna is real. She was hit by a stray bullet while she was sleeping. The photo was of one of her classmates, and the memorial they had left for her on her desk.

Silk Flowers

Brianna didn’t come to school today. That’s too bad, ‘cause we had hot dogs for lunch. Bri liked hot dogs. The lunch ladies always made them on Wednesdays. “Weenie Wednesday”, Bri would whisper to me. Then she would laugh, which would always make me laugh too, and then we got in trouble.

When we got back to class after lunch, teacher was crying. She said Something Bad had happened to Brianna. She said the hospital people tried to make it all better, but they couldn’t. She said that Bri would not be coming to school anymore.

After that, they made us go home for the day. Mom came to get me, and she was real sad. She cried a lot, then hugged me. She squeezed so tight that it was hard to breathe. She said,

“Baby, do you understand what happened to Brianna?”

“Yeah, I guess,” I tried to talk, but my mouth was smushed up against mom’s tummy. Mom let go, and I wiped off my mouth so it wouldn’t taste so much like her blouse.

“Brianna’s in heaven now,” Mom told me.

“I know,” I said. They had told us all about heaven and the angels in Sunday school. When kids get hurt real bad, God sends his angels to bring them to heaven. I suppose that’s a good thing, only if it was, why would mom cry so much?

The next day at school we made cards for Bri’s mommy and daddy. Some of the girls were crying, but not me. Boys don’t cry. On the outside of the card I drew a picture of Bri, with big wings, a halo, and a white dress. Some of the others were writing words on the inside, only I didn’t know what to write so I just left it empty.

We got our math test back after that. I dropped mine on the floor, by Bri’s desk. I was gonna ask her to pick it up, but then I remembered. Bri wasn’t there, just her picture taped to her chair, and two silk flowers on her desk.

[Lindpen]

Aww. That poor girl and her family. You did a nice job getting inside one of her classmate's heads and using the diction that he would use. This was a really cute story.

[Anna_Telcontar]

I second Lindpen's "Aww". That was one of the sweetest stories I've read in a long time. I liked that you gave importance to the word "bad" by capitalizing it--that was a really nice touch.