Writing 101, Day Fifteen: Your Voice Will Find You

You’re told that an event that’s dear to your heart — an annual fair, festival, or conference — will be cancelled forever (or taken over by an evil organization). Write about it. For your twist, read your piece aloud, multiple times. Hone that voice of yours!

My brother rushed into my bedroom, without knocking. The look on his face stayed my angry shout. I eyed him,  gulping as he gulped for breath, his eyes bulging. I felt my own breath squeeze.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“They’ve stopped it,” Cedric shouted, at last finding voice.

I grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him, hard. “What are you babbling about?”

“The show. There’s no show … not ever again.”

I frowned at him, so full of questions that I didn’t know where to start.

Cedric began to cry. “I’ll nev-never be able to g-go on the g-ghost train again,” he said, stuttering, gulping his words. “No more putting b-b-b-balls in the clown mouth, ” he wailed.

He was finding it hard to breathe and I thought I knew the best thing to do for shock. I slapped him.

He looked at me in surprise as I stood over him, trying to put on my kindest look, asked where he had heard such nonsense.

“Me mate Jimmy heard it from his sister’s boyfriend, ” he snivelled, hiccupped, wiped his nose on his sleeve. Disgusting little brat.

I felt alarmed, but still not convinced. How could anyone stop the Annual Agricultural Show? I had my rosebuds ready, they would be perfectly formed roses by show day. I glanced at my wall. Would I never get a blue card to go with all the green and red? This was my year, I knew it. And I had just put clean straw in the hen’s nests to keep the eggs clean, and put extra grit in their feed boxes. The eggs would be perfect come show day.

Mum came in and asked what all the yelling was about. I told her.

“Nonsense!” she declared, through twisting lips. She looked like she was trying hard not to laugh. “I’m President of the Mother’s Club, I would know. We cater for the officials, you dill.”

I glared at my stupid little brother and mouthed idiot at him.

Mum smiled at me over Cedric’s head. I tried to look nonchalant as if I had not, for one horrible moment, believed the tall tale.

DISCLAIMER: Big sisters should never slap their little brothers, no matter what. ❤

NO BROTHERS WERE HURT DURING THIS STORY and any similarities to real events are purely accidental.