If Only
If only I had told someone about the crack in my helmet, if only I had run around the defender, if only I didn’t play in the championship game, if only I did what I...
Stories
Original fiction by young writers ages 8-13
View:
If only I had told someone about the crack in my helmet, if only I had run around the defender, if only I didn’t play in the championship game, if only I did what I knew I should have done all along… if only.
I woke up at six in the morning. The game wasn’t until ten o’clock but I wanted to get there early.
By Tatum Schutt
Illustrated by Phoebe Wagoner
So there I was, trying to keep my voice calm as I laid out my case to my archenemy on her front stoop.
“You just have to promise,” I said, hating how my voice sounded so weak and pleading. Jess regarded me like a dead mouse her cat had dropped at her door.
“Fine!” she finally spit at my feet, and promptly slammed the door in my face.
I didn’t dare breathe. The air smelled of fish—dirty, rotten fish, and the slightest of sea salt. In the distance I saw a long boardwalk out to sea. Dark, musty, wooden, it gave off the air of failure.
I shivered, but not with cold.
In front of me was the village I was born in. A poor fishing village hidden in South Korea.
I looked back. My family stood behind me.
Timing is a funny thing. Some religious figures see it as fate, when in reality, it’s chance. The world doesn’t care about any one person enough to stop its continuously moving clock and allow what some people see as “fate” to occur. The world is morphing and changing all around us, and having bad timing can alter what could have been to what actually is.
By Mathilde Fox-Smith
Illustrated by Anika Knudson
He had decided earlier that he wouldn’t do it tonight. This nagging annoyed him profoundly. Though now that he was already plastered against a wall, inches from the swerving shaft of police-car headlights in the city, it might as well happen.
Kevin jumped out of bed and pulled at the curtains to open them. He glanced outside and groaned. The sun was not yet over the horizon, but snow was falling very heavily and the wind was whipping the trees back and forth. The snow was so thick he couldn’t even see the houses on the other side of the street. Kevin threw himself back on the bed and tried to console himself.
Since the beginning of time itself, my mom, my sister, and I have baked chocolate-chip cookies. They’re not amazing or perfect and definitely not round, but to us they’re as good as paradise. We bake them all the time, on rainy evenings, or mopey afternoons, or cozy Sunday mornings.
By Molly O’Toole
Illustrated by Ravela Smyth
Beep! Beep! I spring out of bed when my alarm sounds, but no alarm was needed to wake me up. I have been waiting for this day my whole life. I keep my pajamas on, because I need to wear clothes that aren’t important for cooking. My stomach is doing that all too familiar flip-flop motion that indicates Today is St. Lucia day.
THIS IS A TRUE STORY
Guang’s stomach grumbled. He sighed, took his bread out of his backpack, and looked at it, trying to control his appetite. “Remember, don’t start eating it as soon as you get off our doorstep!” his mother had said as she placed the bread in a small paper bag with her flour-covered hands. But his stomach growled again and he took a very small bite.
Alex skied down the mountain and breathed in the scent of the pine trees. Everything was peaceful. He spotted a cluster of dark blue puddles of water seeping through the cracked ice. He longed to investigate and decided to stop and take a peek. As he got closer there was a quick flicker in one of the bigger puddles, creating a growing ring of tiny waves. He supposed it was a fish.