Previous Challenge Entry (Level 4 – Masters)
Topic: Cousin(s) (05/22/08)
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TITLE: The Almost Cousin | Previous Challenge Entry
By Ann Stocking
05/29/08 -
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There was nothing to mark the day from any other; the sun rose as usual, the kettle boiled, and smoke swelled from the chimney, oblivious to the small drama unfurling on the verandah.
Emma Ruth’s father lifted the cardboard box from the backseat of the car and passed Emma Ruth, his mouth stiff, his eyes stony. Emma Ruth glanced at her mother. A sheen gleamed on her brow, and she was pale, her fingers jerking at the pearls circling her throat.
“Emma Ruth, say hello to your cousin, Lucas.”
The boy was tall and thin, nondescript. He neither smiled nor scowled. He bore no expression at all.
Emma Ruth’s mother went into the house, leaving Emma Ruth and Lucas to the weight of the sultry afternoon, uncomfortable silence hanging between them like a line of damp clothes, ponderous and heavy. Emma Ruth stared at his trousers, thin-kneed and short, and at his choppy, plastered-down hair.
“What are you gawking at?”
“Nothing.”
“Don’t worry. I won’t stay long.”
But Lucas did stay. The spare room was fitted out with proper furniture; a bed, bureau, and desk were brought down from the attic. Clothes were purchased to replace the colourless, ill-fitting rags Lucas had arrived in.
Warily, Emma Ruth and Lucas tried to weave a relationship, made fragile by Emma Ruth’s childishness and Lucas’s curious arrival and unknown history.
“Can you ride a bicycle?” queried Lucas.
“No,” Emma Ruth replied with a pout.
“Fish?”
“No. Can you play the piano?”
“No.”
“Sing?”
“No.”
No mutual ground could be found. They seemed to be as different as sunshine and shadow, water and stone, sand and stars.
Emma Ruth, with the persistence of a terrier, was consumed with the desire to find something in common with her cousin, and if nothing else, to discover his roots. Why had he suddenly arrived on their doorstep? Nothing was forthcoming from her mother, whose face turned away, cold and rigid, at the sight or mention of Lucas. How odd, thought Emma Ruth, and it gave rise to shivers of suspicious thoughts.
The summer drew on, muggy days followed by firefly nights tossing beneath sodden sheets. Fall came, and Lucas grew tall, outgrowing the new clothing rapidly. Emma Ruth’s father took him hunting up north, and she watched her father and Lucas load gear into the back of the black car, then felt a stab of envy as the vehicle disappeared into the golden foliage, with the two of them sitting side by side, shoulder to shoulder.
Winter passed, and spring.
And when Emma Ruth was twelve, she discovered her cousin wasn’t her cousin at all.
There was nothing to mark the day from any other; the sun rose as usual, the kettle boiled, and smoke swelled from the chimney, oblivious to the small drama unfurling on the verandah.
It was unbearably hot. Emma Ruth sat on the porch swing, taking advantage of the small breeze made by the motion of her swaying. Damp tendrils curled around her temples, and she’d loosened her sash, out of sight of her mother’s eagle eyes.
Lucas lay sprawled on the lawn, trying not to move, except to occasionally shift a limb to a cooler spot in the grass. The sun was merciless, brassy.
Lucas suddenly got up, and wiping his brow with his sleeve, strode down the lane. Emma Ruth wondered how he could bear to move in the heat, then realized he was going to the pond. It’d be worth it for a swim.
Emma Ruth had removed her pinafore, but she was still damp with perspiration and lightheaded by the time she arrived at the pond. She hid behind some shrubbery to undress. She watched Lucas, who was already floating in the middle of the pond, his clothes flung over a nearby bush.
Before she could step out, Lucas swam to shore and flopped down in the grassy verge near Emma Ruth. Cool water streamed down his body, but it was his right leg that drew Emma Ruth’s attention.
There was a star-shaped birthmark. Nothing special, perhaps, except that Emma Ruth’s father bore one exactly like it.
So did Emma Ruth.
A flood of compassion overcame Emma Ruth as she remembered angry whispers, strange mailings, then Lucas’s sudden appearance, and the stony silences of her parents. She understood.
My brother...
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Love this line:
They seemed to be as different as sunshine and shadow, water and stone, sand and stars.
Well done!
I loved the repetition of this paragraph: "There was nothing to mark the day from any other; the sun rose as usual, the kettle boiled, and smoke swelled from the chimney, oblivious to the small drama unfurling on the verandah." Very effective.
Great job, Cheri
Of course I could picture everything happening, because you know how to suck the reader into the environment and not let them go until the very end.