Lost Keys – Truth, Lies and the Wicked Witch 12

This is another installment of a rough draft of a memoir chapter that covers fourth grade.

To start this piece from the beginning, click here.

I thought about it all morning, trying to imagine how Mom would explode if she asked for the key back and he didn’t have it. If I could endure it in my head, maybe I could endure it in real life. If I imagined it all in exquisite detail, maybe the key wouldn’t be his and he would have our key tucked safely in his backpack. But I just couldn’t imagine it. I hit a wall once I imagined her finding out. I couldn’t go past it. I still felt like I might puke.

When Mrs. Domaracki came around to check homework, which once again, I hadn’t fully done, I raised my hand and explained the whole situation, said I wanted to check with my brother. She knew my mom. She said sure.

I went downstairs to Randy’s classroom and knocked on the door. When his teacher, Mrs. Martin, answered, I said, “I need to talk to my brother, Randy Jordan.”

She sent him out to the hallway. “Do you have the key?” I asked. “Do you think the one they found was ours? What if Mom asks for it? Do you have it?”

“I don’t know,” Randy said. He finally sounded worried. “I don’t know.”

“Check your backpack.”

He did. He went back in the room. I paced in the second grade hallway and waited. And waited. Randy finally came back to the door. “I can’t find it,” he said, sounding panicked now. “I thought I had it.”

Shit. “Maybe you should go to the office and look at the one they found. Do you remember exactly what it looked like?”

“No,” he said. “I gotta keep looking. My backpack is a huge mess.” He disappeared back into the room. I waited so long I thought maybe he forgot. Mom was bound to ask for the key back soon—we’d only needed to use it that one day—and she’d gone so crazy on Randy on Tuesday.

Randy finally came back to the door. “I found it,” he said. I went back upstairs, practically traumatized by the magnitude of my relief.

~~~

Next Segment in this Piece: Aftermath

So this is an excerpt from a chapter from a project I’m working on called Eclipses of Jupiter. It’s in its infancy still, but it’s about growing up with albinism and being legally blind in my crazy family, and all the school and social implications. It’ll also focus on blind camp and related programs when I get into teenage years. This chapter, which will be broken up into installments and posted over the next few weeks, is all about fourth grade, which was a bit of an epic school year. It’s still pretty rough, and way too long, so yeah, infancy stage still.

Check out the Samples Page, as well as Published and Early Work, to read more of my writing!

~Emilia J

2 thoughts on “Lost Keys – Truth, Lies and the Wicked Witch 12”

Wow. Just wow.

Emilia Jordan says:

October 19, 2013 at 7:35 am

Hahahaha, it gets a little crazier in the next section. And then it calms down a little, I promise.

~EJ

Reply