Miss Amethyst." "Why, thank you." Amethyst curtsied to her mother and then yawned. "Well I'd better be getting to bed, goodnight, mother." "Goodnight, darling," Maggie replied before wandering to her own bedroom. Sliding under the thick quilt and turning out the bedside table lamp, Maggie laid her head down on her pillow and listened to the soft autumn winds rattle the window. The neighbor's dog was barking, and all was right in Maggie's world once again. Baylie Cross Heritage Middle School 8th Grade Mrs. Carlock
The One Who Sees Everything You Can't They say that when a butterfly lands on you, it means you're pure. Where I'm from there are none. When am I from? I'm from the woods, from the unthinkable, and what you feel without a doubt in your mind. But the question is; who am I? Do you really want to take that step to into the traumatic segment of your life? I grasp all treacherous truths that you may miss. I am the one unknown, the one who holds the key to open a door of harrowing secrets, and I am Dather Keith 11 years old. My hair is brown, my skin is hazel, a deep look into my eyes tells you they're blue. And that's not just the color. You might look at me and feel trepidation creep upon you and say; do you see? My heart is irregular, you hear it and stare, you feel it and you jump, you know me and see me as a fascination. Or does it come across as the girl without a personality. It is my character traits. My story begins in Memphis, Tennessee on January 19, 1936, in my little town called Defin just off the west borderline of Tennessee. Defin is an indigent town. It is a town of cropping and raising their cattle, pigs, and sheep. There wasn't much to expect from the education. The most we were taught was counting, a little dancing, and writing. But, I had more intelligence. Whatever books we did have in town, I would discover and read them. An intrinsic disease that I was born with to find, capture, and keep. As I sat in the back of the classroom, I glare at my teacher, Mrs. Donney. She was a slender woman with brown bulging eyes, brunet hair, and a pale-orange skin that lay roughly upon her. All the children in my class looked as if they were born in mud. They had poor hygiene, and little to no teeth. Each student had a cavity or two or more teeth missing. I was different didn't work on the farm or stay away from body cleansers. . I began to glance around the room, and look at the old, aged classroom. It had old splintered wooden wall that began paring years ago, the desk was just a vertical slab of wood that had a horizontal piece of dark wood laid flat across the top, and the chairs are crates flipped upside down. Since the crates were plastic and hard, we brought our own blanket (if we did have one) to play the role of a cushion on the crates. When Mrs. Donney finished talking, she gazed to the far west of the classroom and asked, "Dather what does sharecropping mean?" I glanced down at the ancient textbook; pages torn; cover ripped, and had been passed down from generation to generation or about fifteen years. "Um I don't know," I replied in fear of what would come next. 303