Smaller Things

Chapter Three: Hemigraphis Latebrosa

The sky was blue and I was sitting on the camp ground. It was new year and the last day of the nature study camp I was attending. I come here every year. And by here I mean the place where the camp takes place. I can breathe freely here; no parents are here to watch your every single step or scold you on mere indiscipline-ness. This camp has its own beauty and its own discipline. The nature really binds you and to say truthfully, for the five or four days this camp takes place, away from the pollution of the urban area, my mind and soul finds peace in it. The storm of pressure and intense emotions that rages inside me throughout the year, calms down when I come camping with them.

I am a teenager; name's Julie and I am fifteen years old. As a teenager, I am totally perfect and the worst thing is, I know that. I score the top marks of my class and I am the president of the students' council. I do many kinds of fund raising programs for school fetes and also participate in voluntary works and community services. My record is clean and I am a normal human being; maybe a bit too normal for a fifteen years old girl. And no, I have no boyfriend. Anyway, this is to tell you my story.

Last day in camp is really an unhappy one; like a really teary one. My best friend in camp, Margaret Andrews (oh yeah! I have a best friend in camp... without her, this camp is incomplete) broke down into tears this morning. I gave her a stale marshmallow because that was all I had left and she loved marshmallows anyway. We were busy packing up our tents and rucksacks. There were so many things that I had brought with me and I did not realize that until all my things were out of my tent and lay on the polythene sheet that I had spread on the earth. But I could not find my pen case anywhere. So after I had packed my whole bag I went to the Lost and Found box; it was a box where we dropped whatever was not ours and generally got whatever was ours if anyone had already found it and dropped in the box. But no. There was no purple and black stripped pen case. So I went to the river bank where we had had our last class on nature study the night before. Again it was empty of any such case. I walked along the bank and it was ten minutes when I realized that the path I was walking on was leading into the restricted area of the forest. I looked around and there was the bridge on my left; we had our treasure hunt there. And to my horror my pen case was dangling dangerously from the bridge's end. There was the flowing river below and if the pen case fell it would be impossible for me to retrieve it. My pen case had many things that I treasured; my late grand mother's fountain pen, my prized gold tipped pen, my girlfriend's letter which she wrote to me during the camp (yeah, I brought her to camp too; this year is her second time camping with me and we are unfortunately in different teams.) and there was my family photo, a very battered one; it was clicked before the war, when everyone in my family were alive. It was the only picture where I ever saw my uncle and my elder brother.

I ran up to the bridge; it was swaying violently just like it had done yesterday. I held onto the rope of the bridge tightly and walked towards the middle. There was a hole the size of my fist; and if only I could slip my hand through it the I would be able to reach my case. So I put my hand in it and felt my fingers touch the leather cover of the wretched case. I softly pulled at it but it would not just come; it was attached to something. I pulled harder but in the process got my hand cut near the wrist on a particularly sharp edge of the broken wood. And when finally I got the pen case out from where it was stuck, I realized that my hand was badly stuck . I tried to make my hand as narrow as possible but it would not just come out. I was stuck there for a couple of minutes when I heard a rustle behind me. I turned my head to see what the source of the sound was but could see nothing. And then the sky above started to get darker and darker and rain came. The river below was even fiercer and I was stuck in an awkward position with my hand into the bridge and my kneels on the wood and my back and head getting wetter and wetter. And then there was thunder and a fierce wind started blowing. It blew away my cap and my sloppy hair was whipping my face...