Today I’m offering up a sampling from a middle grade short story I wrote called Mrs. Billing’s Long Vacation. I hope you enjoy.
***
It had snowed the night before and all morning — not too heavy, but enough to make driving hazardous and the kids cantankerous, at least that’s what mom said as we loaded up in the old station wagon. When I arrived at school, the heaters were moaning and groaning, the classrooms were about as warm as glaciers, and the sun decided to take the day off. By the time I got to my third period Science class, I felt like a popsicle stuck to the inside of a down coat.
Mr. Windem canceled his normal class lecture and shuffled us all to the pocket of warmth in the rear of the classroom, where he gave us slides of bugs to look at under magnifying glasses and microscopes. My slide consisted of an unusual bug, a fire beetle, which I soon learned was the brightest, bioluminescent insect in the world. It was also the source of my expulsion from Meadowlark Elementary.
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YA Chit Chat 
Cool, is that your opening? I like. I like a lot. I feel the chill of that school in my bones (though I did just eat a choc-ice)!
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Takes me back to elementary school. Ha ha!
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You definitely have the descriptions of a snowy day and a freezing cold classroom down pat! Believe me when I say, I have plenty of experience about BOTH those things! lol
The fire beetle, on the other hand, I can honestly say I have little experience with, except that I think I saw a specimen in a museum somewhere. I wonder how something like that could get the girl expelled from an elementary school? 🙂
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Oh, I suppose I’ll have to post the next 6 sentences this coming Sunday since I’ve stirred everyone’s curiosity. I suppose that’s a good thing, right? 🙂
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Most definitely a good thing! 🙂
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Lovely piece Jenny 🙂
And thanks for the Pingback!
Xx
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Thanks, and you’re welcome. 🙂
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I vote you tell us more about that expulsion… or explosion if Little Blue Lady is on to something. Or was it both?
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Oh, don’t listen to the The Little Blue Lady from Mars. She’s looking for world domination. She’s no threat.
*pwing* *pwing*
Ahh, I was wrong! Run! Hide before she shoots us all with her blue laser! 🙂
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Her expulsion, or her explosion?
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Hey, I know you! Your alter ego warned me about you. How did you get in here? Guards! Guards!
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Ooo ooo Ooo! What happend with the bug?
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🙂 🙂
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Ha! Loved it, Jenny. That was great. Very colourful and ended beautiful. Now I want to know how she (?) got expelled!
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Thanks, Richard. I might end up posting it on my blog at some point in time.
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I like how the very vivid description of a cold day in school builds up to a mundane activity that then is used to hint at so much more. I especially love the unusual simile at the end of the first paragraph.
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Thanks, Clare. You’re always so positive in your comments.
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