She sat at the wooden desk, her head bent and eyes narrowed in concentration.
She held a pencil in her hand as she stared at the blank piece of paper in front of her, as if challenging her to write on it. Ignoring all the shuffling, shouting, talking, and all the other kinds of distractions which came in the form of noises, she clutched her pencil hard, thinking. A strand of her black hair fell in front of her eyes and she put it behind her ear, treating it like it was some obstacle or a blockage. She closed her eyes, thinking hard.
An idea was coming up but it needed a few moments of more thinking. That did not happen as her thoughts were rather rudely broken by the shrill sound of the bell ringing, indicating that it was time for recess. As soon as the bell rang, the teacher stood up, and the girls did the same. A chorus of a dull “Good afternoon and thank you Ma’am”, ran through the class as the teacher walked out.
It had been a free class, the History teacher happened to be absent so a junior teacher had come, just for substitution, telling everyone to do their work, but not talk.
Instantly, as the teacher exited, the atmosphere of the small room changed to a great extent. Children started running out of the class, lunch boxes in hand.
Some thought it better to just ditch the food, and play. Some, with their food, just walked to their friend’s seats, and sat together in a group, sharing food as well as gossip. Sometimes, two girls, behaving a lot like two love birds, would sit together, softly talking and eating. And there were those unpopular girls who had to tolerate sitting and eating alone, every single day.
She still sat at her desk, not moving from her position. A girl called Sarah Higgins walked up to her, sitting at the edge of her desk. Sarah’s eyes were sharp, and looked almost painted. Her eyes looked at the piece of paper. Only seven letters were on the top of the page, underlined.
“SOMEDAY”
Sarah Higgins chuckled, “Trying to write, Ellie?”
Ellie hesitated, fiddling with the pencil in her hand.
Sarah just smiled and said, “Forget this, come and play with us, come on”.
Ellie shook her head and finally said something, “No, I, I have to do this.”
Sarah merely smirked, twirling her golden locks between her fingers and let out a sigh, “Come with us and play, maybe if you run, you’ll lose some weight. And you need that.”
Ellie bit her lip, trying to ignore that impulsive comment about herself and her weight.
Sara gently picked up the paper, cleared her throat and read, in a loud voice, “Someday”.
She snorted and said, “Someday I will be thin.
Someday I will be beautiful. Someday I will be amazing. Yeah, yeah, Ellie, keep writing, those wishes of yours will never come to you.”
Ellie’s lips tightened into a straight line. She wanted to scream at Sarah, hold her by the shoulders and violently shake her. Sarah would never understand Ellie’s feelings. Sarah just tore the paper in fourths, and threw the remains at Ellie, and walked away.
Ellie’s eyes stung with hot tears. She wanted to be an author. The class knew that, because during the start of the year, the teacher had asked everyone what they wanted to grow up to be.
They didn’t know how Ellie felt about writing. She considered writing to be a world of paradise. It was an imaginary world which she controlled. She could make anything happen in that world, it was hers and only hers to control. The class didn’t get that. Just because she preferred to sit and write during any free time she got, they thought she was a geek.
Someday, just someday she would become a writer and show them that she was never a failure. Someday, they would see her name on books stacked in shops. Someday, they would realize that they had been terribly wrong. Someday, they would feel guilty for treating her like this.
A smile at her lips, she bent down to open her bag and take out her lunch box.
Someday, she would accomplish what she wanted to, despite what the others said.
