Read Online Write This Down by Claudia Mills - Free Book Online Page B

the chicken.
    â€œBut now I see,” Ms. Archer says. “I was wrong before. Take out the bits about the spiders and the chairlift. Those are red herrings. They lead us in the wrong direction.”
    Isn’t that always the way it is when you write? She wants me to take out the very things I worked so hard to add in.
    â€œThis isn’t about fear,” she says as she hands my essay back to me. “It’s about love.”

 
    12
    I end up writing my personal essay on something entirely different. Well, maybe not entirely different. I write about “Goofus and Gallant,” and how hard I tried to be like Gallant when I was little, but how now I feel kind of sorry for Goofus and sick and tired of Gallant, too.
    I write it late that night, after the band concert, where my flute solo went great and Hunter wasn’t there to hear it, claiming he had too much homework. Mom and Dad let him get away with not coming because they’re so desperate to believe Hunter actually cares about homework and is actually doing any of it.
    The essay is definitely about something. It’s about how people aren’t all bad or good, how the lines between bad and good get blurred all the time, and how that’s a good thing.
    But I think I spelled the point out too clearly.
    When we hand them in on Friday, I want to ask Cameron what he wrote about, but I don’t want to sound like a total stalker girl. I do peer over at his desk as casually as I can so that I can read the first line: My mother says the first thing I ever loved was rocks.
    In my view, that is a wonderful first line.
    Does he still love rocks? Rocks are sort of a strange thing to love. But one of the things I love best about Cameron is that he’s not afraid to be strange.
    As she collects our essays, Ms. Archer says, “I can’t wait to read these!” I hope she likes mine, whether I spelled out the point too clearly or not.
    When she has them in a tidy pile on her desk, she holds up a flyer. “Breaking news: This was in my mailbox this morning, an announcement of a contest for, yes, personal essays! From the Denver Post . And—this is the best part—the contest is for essays from young writers ages twelve to sixteen. In other words, writers like you.”
    The deadline for the contest is one week from today, Friday, October 21. They’ll let the winners know by mid-November. Winners will get their work published on the op-ed page of the newspaper—that’s the page op posite the ed itorial page.
    Ms. Archer says we have to submit the essays ourselves, only one essay per applicant. I copy down the website address she gives us. Olivia copies it down, too, of course. Cameron doesn’t. Kylee doesn’t either.
    I have my “Goofus and Gallant” essay completely done, so I could send it off today as soon as I get home from school. But maybe I should wait first to see what grade Ms. Archer gives it. If I can only send in one essay, I want to make sure the one I send is my very best. I don’t think this one is as good as the essay I started about Mrs. Whistlepuff, the one I didn’t know how to finish. So maybe I should try to finish that one instead.
    But how?
    That’s what I need to figure out. Because it’s hard not to feel that this contest flyer, showing up in Ms. Archer’s mailbox at this very moment, is a sign from the universe for me.
    A sign for me, not for Olivia.
    *   *   *
    The band comes over to practice at our house again on Saturday afternoon. This time I do not change into a flowing, poetic-looking dress for possible admiration by observant older brothers. What I should do is stay in my room as far away from the band as possible or, better still, go to Kylee’s house and watch her knit. I could also text Brianna and Isabelle to see if they are free, but lately all they want to talk about is the Southern Peaks seventh- and eighth-grade fall