KCTS 9

By Emily
Eighth Grade
Odle Middle School
Bellevue, WA

She rolled down the car window and let the cold rain droplets pound her skin. The wind rushed in and blew her hair askew, but she didn't care.

For company, there were only the raindrops relentlessly hitting the ground. Wearing away the stones while giving life to the plants, they fell. Paradoxical, she thought.

She got out and slammed the door. The window was still half-open and it would be wet when she got back in, but she didn't care.

Relentless. The rain dripped down her skin. When she turned her face upward, it hit her neck in cold blasts. She didn't care, she deserved it. It was her fault.

She zipped her coat halfway and started up the cold and desolate mountain. Alone.

The last time she was here, she had not been alone. She had been hiking with a friend. They had been talking and laughing a teasing at this point. No, she had not been alone.

But now she was. It had been raining that day, too, a fine drizzle gently pattering in their hair, beginning about halfway up. By the time they had gotten to the top, it had evolved into a cats-and-dogs pour. Neither of them had raingear, and they got soaked. She was getting soaked now.

Halfway up was also halfway down, and halfway down she had been alone. She had been confused, shocked and scuffed and scratched. She had been beaten.

She was still beaten. The rain hit her face in tiny blows, but washed the guilt away, wore away at her resolves. Salt mixed with the rain, and her vision blurred. Up and up. Higher and higher.

She stopped before she got to the top. She stopped at a dangerous place, the trail leading along the edge of a ravine. Nothing to stop someone's fall, no one to hear her faint cries. Nothing but emptiness.

The harsh sound of a bird's cawing grated her ears as she stepped into place on the trail.

She stood in the very place she had stood that last time she had been there. The last time for her friend, too. She would not be going anywhere.

Junk littered the bottom. Deadly junk. It was a dangerous climb down, if anyone had tried. Loose pebbles, vegetation with only the slightest grip on the soil. She couldn't have, even if she'd tried. She hadn't tried.

How long had she waited there until she died? Bled to death, they told her. She had yelled to her, screamed her lungs out, no answer. Only the faintest whisper of whimpers from the bottom.

She had gone back for help, too cowardly to even try to climb down to help herself. Too confused to remember her phone. Too scared to do anything else but turn back. It was inevitable, after all.

The ground here was muddy, especially since it had been raining. That accounted for her slip. She had been walking on the outer edge of the trail. And--she tried not to remember--they had been joking about the edge of the ravine. And she had been pretending to nudge her closer to the edge, but then--well, that accounted for her fall. There was glass, there was barbed wire, there were thorny thickets at the bottom. That did not entirely account for her wounds. But...the glint of a dropped pocket knife, sticking straight in the air. Shattered glass bottles. They could have been broken by her fall, cut into her flesh in a million rills of blood. Concrete pieces to hit her head against. A death ravine. That accounted for her wounds.

And she, her friend, who could not go down to help her. Who forgot her phone to call for help and insisted on going all the way down the mountain before remembering it and making the call. Too late; she bled. That accounted for her death.

The rain pattered her gently. No, it wasn't entirely her fault. So many factors, and she was only one of them. She had to let it go.

They were making this trail much safer, so no one else would suffer. Remove the junk. Install rails in portions of the trail like this one. Solid rocks and shrubbery to hold the soil together so it would be harder to fall like that.

For now, though, nothing had started though the plan had been finalized. So she was here, standing in the same place, looking on almost the same scene, still unable to help. It was her fault. She had teased and half-pushed, she did not get help in time; it was all her fault.

The rain washed her guilt and finally she could see. But it still came pouring down in torrents, determined to beat her into submission.

She looked up into the sky again, but the rain fell in stinging pricks of ice on her skin. She shuddered, and hunched down to shield herself.

She could not blame herself. She could only forgive herself. It was not her fault. She had done her best: called and gotten help, but it had been too late. It was inevitable. She had done everything she could.

Meaningless words uttered to herself, empty consolation. But she relaxed her shoulders and stood up straight, edging to the cliff, gazing at the expanse before her eyes.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, barely audible, and she looked down into the ravine again. She smiled at the sobbing sky.

The coarse caw of a crow stung her ears and she turned around abruptly, tipping her head up to the sky to see.

Her foot slipped, she teetered, and--

"I'm sorry," she whispered again, but the rain took the words from her lips as she tumbled. A resounding blow knocked her head. The shards of glass tore into her skin and the blade of the pocket knife dug deep into her thigh. Spots flared before her eyes before she blacked out.

It was inevitable.

Storymakers: A Creative Challenge for Young Writers, is a program inviting students in sixth, seventh, and eighth grades living in Washington State and British Columbia, Canada, to submit their own original creative writing pieces.