Teen Time

The Brat

A young girl has to endure her brother's mischieviousness with dire consequences.{/c|



A Writer’s Cramp prompt: (1,000 words or less/24 hours)



Write a story or poem about someone deliberately thwarting the purpose of someone else, though not for anything other than annoyance. Example: A co-worker interrupts someone every six minutes with inane questions so that person can't finish a project on time. Remember your line counts for poetry or word counts for stories - in your forum post.

The Brat

His freckled face, carrot-hued hair, and spring leaf-green eyes usually caused most people to smile. Not me. I had to endure his constant interruptions and his mean-spirited little pranks.

“What are you writing? Why do you that? Why do you hide it when you finish? Why don’t you want to share with me? I promise not to tell anyone what you wrote.”

Sure, like I’d believe that? I hadn’t reached nine without learning the facts of life. They went like this. Whatever Timmy says, don’t believe it. It had only taken me five years to learn that, five years of putting up with Timmy!

Besides, I’d never share my diary with anyone. It held private stuff. Things I didn’t want anyone to read – like how I felt about James T. Bufford in Mrs. Peabody’s fourth grade class, or how, sometimes, my best friend, Molly, really got on my nerves. I’d never want anyone to see how much I despised my sixth grade teacher, either, or have anyone else hear about how he told me my drawings reminded him of his kid’s. Mr. Crossby’s son was in third grade. How could he say that to me? How?

Anyway, there were lots of things I’d never tell anyone, but I could write them down. I could unroll my feelings onto the plain white paper and sprinkle them with tears or decorate them with flowers, or even scratch them out when I was finished. Then I’d close the book, tie the red ribbon on it, and hide it away. Nobody – especially not Tim – could ever read what I wrote.

“Are you finished yet?” the pest asked, his hair scratching against my bedroom door since he knew he couldn’t come into my room without permission.

“No, I’m not. Now, go away, Timmy,” I yelled as I widened the period I’d just placed at the end of a sentence about Molly being spoiled because she had the bike I always wanted but my parents couldn’t afford. Her parents had given her the bike just because her grandmother died. When my grandmother died, no one gave me a bike. In fact, my parents hadn’t given me a single thing. It wasn’t fair. The bike was red. Molly didn’t even like red. Red was my color.

“Screeeeech.” Timmy was using his fingernails on the door. He always let them get too long. Sometimes they even had dirt in them, too. Yick. What a pest!

“Go away, Timmy,” I yelled as I drew a picture of Molly falling off her new bike right next to the sentence about how her new bike was red.

“Boom, boom, boom.” Timmy was kicking the door. If he kept at it, he’d make Mom mad. The only problem is that whenever she got mad at Timmy, she got mad at me, too.

“Go away!” I screamed.

I used one of my new colored pencils to color the bike red, then I added some detail of puddles of blood all over the ground. I put some blood on Molly, too.

“I’m gonna tell,” he whispered.

The whisper part got my attention. Usually Timmy only had one volume – very, very loud! But what did he mean he was going to tell? Tell what? My mind started going over all the things I’d done wrong in the last week. There were quite a lot of them. “What are you going to tell about? To who?”

“Gonna tell James T. Bufford that you’re in love.”

“What?” I sprang off the bed and went running to the door. “What are you talking about?” I yelled at him as I flung open the door.

Timmy’s eyes didn’t widen even for a second, nor did he answer the question. Instead, he dashed under my arm, ran to the bed, swiped up my diary, and jumped out the open window.

Of course I chased after him. I went flying through that window and down the graveled path of the driveway, chasing after the pest like I had wings on my feet. At least, I did until I ran into Molly.

Timmy stood at the end of the driveway, the diary open in his hands. He was already reading what I’d written.

“You give that back!” I yelled.

Timmy gave me one of those smiles of his, the one with the dimples practically springing out of his cheeks, the one that everyone always oohed and aahed over. But I wasn’t oohing and aahing. I was fuming.

Molly eyed me a second, then her eyes flitted back and forth between Timmy and me. “What’s the big deal?” she said. “Who gives a fig?” but I could see her stepping backward, just about to make a leap for the diary.

“No!” I cried out, just before she twisted the book right out of Timmy's hands. It dropped in front of her, opened, of course, to the page I’d just been working on, the page where she was bleeding to death just because her parents had given her a brand new red bike.

Molly picked up the book, scanned what I’d written, then handed it over to me. Her face had gone pale. Her smile had slid and was slightly wobbly -- at half-mast. Without a word, she turned and walked away.

I should have said something. I should have stopped her. I should have apologized, but my mouth just kept flopping open and closed.

Meanwhile, Timmy had shimmied up the apricot tree and was hanging upside down like a bat, his fingers in his mouth so he could make nasty faces at me.

“You look like a piece of flea poop, you horrible little brat!” I screamed just before I broke into tears and ran back inside, clutching the diary to my heart.


960 words