Melissa sighted at her newfound situation, sitting under the table with the intention to overhear what Julian, her brother, said about her to his friends when she wasn’t there.
She, for one, already knew Julian talked about her to his friends, they’d giggle when she passed by them in the school halls, so it wasn’t that hard to notice.
Although she wasn’t sure of what she was even trying to accomplish by snooping into their conversations, she was already waiting for them to come into the living room, so what else was there to do?
As soon as she heard close steps, she moved to the middle of the table in case they sat down too, which turned out to be a good idea, since Julian and his friends all immediately sat down.
“So, about the Melissa thing,” Xavier, Julian’s middle school friend muttered.
Melissa could hear Julian groan in what she thought was irritation before he spoke, “Enough about that! It’s stressing me out, man.”
Stressing him out? Why would it? Melissa was the stressed one if anything. What were they talking about?
Luo Yi, Julian’s friend, hummed before adding to the conversation a comment that made it all bittersweet. “I think she’ll like the cake decorations, why stress? Don’t be silly.”
Huh?
Melissa popped her head out from under the table to find the three friends staring at her and giggling. When she looked in front of her, there was a cake propped up by a small table.
“Happy birthday, Melissa,” Julian said with a laugh.
Luo Yi was right, she loved the cake decorations.
This was a writing exercise from a Young Authors’ Book Project session at Phelps ACE High School. Here’s the prompt that the student used:
Write a story about what is happening in the picture below. Be sure to describe the setting, character(s), the main action of the story, and how it is resolved.
