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When the Bough Breaks
A/N: On December 26, 2004, a horrific tsunami hit eleven countries bordering the Indian Ocean. There were massive casualties and many people lost their homes and loved ones to this terrible event. The authors of this story do not wish to bring up such painful events such as this, but this is a work of fiction that deals with an event which has gone down in history as being one of the worst natural disasters of the world. All the characters in this piece are indeed fictional, but the authors have tried to maintain a realistic setting for this work, researching carefully the details of this event. The authors of this story mean no offense by the content to this work of fiction; rather, they hope that readers will reflect upon the haunting true facts of this event, and feel lucky for their lives uninterrupted by this event.
Chapter 1.
Allie:
Welcome to ma grande vie, mes amis.
Sometimes I think all the teachers in this world are against me. Like they wake up and think ‘Today, I think I’ll be giving that imprudent Allison Reed a fifty-five per cent on the history project that she worked oh so very hard on, she even missed going to the movies with her friends to work on it and because of that hard effort, her friends could not get into the R-rated movie they wanted to see, and were indeed forced to watch The Incredibles, which resulted in Sammy thinking the world was going to get destroyed by a robot and Shayla thinking she had supernatural powers. And Shayla getting a broken arm when she tried to jump off the roof, with the idea that she could fly (NB, she could not and her cast was pink until she took it off herself with a fork.)’
I’m tall in the style of a lamppost. Which means I lie about my age, I say that I am eighteen and not fifteen, and I also kiss Shayla on her unusually flamboyant cheek and announce to the ticket-taker that she is my girlfriend, which she is not.
You’d think that a girl’s cheeks would never be described as flamboyant, but you don’t know Shayla Pint. And you don’t know Sammy Baardsdatter either; who is a doctor’s worst nightmare on account of she’s convinced she has Holligan’s Syndrome, which is in fact a disease I made up in order to scare her.
Sammy is scared. Even Gillian Roberts, don’t think Julia Roberts because my buddy Gill will blush, and her cash-heavy pockets could not do a thing about it, not even buy Sammy back into normalcy. Sammy is past normalcy. Sammy’s little Swedishly-blonde mind has taken a vacation and is indeed never coming back.
Still though. Sammy got ninety-four per cent on her history project. Something’s filling her head and it isn’t air.
Okay, so it’s a high school. My analogy of it being a prison is close enough, no?
Sammy and I are walking straight out of history and a slice of lettuce with mustard smeared across it flies through the air and pastes itself to Sammy’s face. Down the hall, three boys cheer and punch each other, grinning stupid jock grins and speaking in butchered English.
“Three points. I hit Blondie.” Jock one, Tall Dark and Handsome grabs Jock two, Short Fat and Cross-eyed around the neck and they fight.
Sammy sighs and peels the lettuce off her pale cheek. Sammy can’t tan because if you’re a blonde-haired blue-eyed babe, you’ll just burn and look like a fire truck.
“They almost got mustard on my project.” Sammy complains, we slink past the boys to our next class, a safe haven called French class. Bonjour, les good marks!
“Your report could be about Colonel Mustard.” We head up the stairs. Our school needs an elevator. Stairs take too much out of a girl’s legs. Sammy’s got such short ones, she can barely make it. “You know the guy from that game. You know the one.”
“Clue.”
“Tell me one, then.”
“No, the game. Clue.” Sammy holds open the doors for me and I very nearly have to duck to get through them.
“Thanks Sam. You’re a babe.” See, I was probably telling her that fifteen years ago, because I knew her when I was a tiny tot. Before I had two little brothers. I had my Sammy. Sweet, lovable, neurotic Sammy.
“Do you think I might be allergic to mustard?” Sammy’s hand with the sparkly nails is on her cheek. “My face is a little tingly.”
“You’re just hyped because we’re going to French. And Ms. Budzynski loves you, babe.”
“It’s because I handed in that assignment early.”
“It’s because you are très bonne au français.” We glide into the French room, easily the nicest classroom in this entire school. Partially because Ms. Budzynski, French teacher extraordinaire, is all human and also young enough to remember how to be cool. Partially because she has coloured chalk, which never squeaks when you write with it. But this of course, is the magic of French.
The other magic is the fairy dust which was indeed sprinkled on the fab gang’s schedules this semester, for it seems to be fate that we were all placed in the same French room with the same teacher extraordinaire.
That’s right. Allie Reed, Sammy Baardsdatter, Gillian Roberts and Shayla Pint are together in a class and ready to par-tay.
With Laura’s permission. Yes, we call the teacher by her first name. Shayla started this, because Ms. Budzynski is a mouthful and Ms. B is the name of my cat.
“Bonjour, les filles.” Laura greets us when we walk into the room.
“Yo, biatches!” Shayla waves from the back corner.
“Goodness.” Sammy mutters under her breath. Sammy’s ears, her poor virgin ears.
Laura babbles in French while maintaining a sparkly smile worthy of care from Shayla’s dentist parents. She has a sparkly wedding ring on her finger and a sparkly hair band in her chestnut curls. Laura’s more of a teenager than the rest of us.
“Ma classe.” She Frenches. “I have some exciting news to tell you.”
All around, tired heads perk up.
Beside me, Gillian takes the pen out of her mouth and taps it on her desk. Sammy, stationed at the front of the room, puts away her notes. I poke Shayla in the shoulder and she wakes up in time to see Laura taping a map to the chalkboard.
“One of the advantages of the Language Courses is of course, the foreign aspect of which we bring into our lives every day. Tous les jours. This is France.” She points it out on the map, and Shayla yawns widely, dark hair in front of her eyes, the blue streaks glowing under the pale winter sunlight inching through the classroom’s dusty windows.
“Hillcrest has just planned a trip to Europe, so that a group of students could experience what real life French is all about, and the language department asked me to pull together a group of worthy voyagers. So of course I told them, this afternoon class of mine, ma classe préférée, they’ve got what it takes.”
“We’re going to France?” Shayla blurts out, and the rest of the class whispers excitedly.
Laura holds up a stack of white papers.
“Got a pen?”
Permission slips. Yes!
I just hope Mom and Dad like France as much as I do.
