Rotary Club of Pismo Beach / Five Cities
Maria Chavez, Second Place
Grade 6, Intermediate Division
Staci Andrews, Grover Heights
If I would have had another chance, just one chance to undo what I had done, I would have taken it. If I would have had a wish I would have wished for a chance, and all because I wanted to save a friendship. It was an ugly, cold, probably going-to-rain type of day. Despite the weather the day had gone on fairly well and all my friends and I were sitting in our usual spot in the school cafeteria. We were talking and laughing doing what normal 5th graders do, until one of my best friends, Sally, showed us a picture of a mermaid she drew. It wasn’t exactly the best mermaid in the world but, hey, she’s only in 5th grade and mermaids aren’t the easiest things to draw. So like a best friend would do I exclaimed “Hey! That’s great.” Unfortunately, my other best friend Karla wasn’t so considerate. I don’t exactly remember what Karla said but it was enough to see the pain and hurt in Sally’s eyes. Sally, no longer excited about her drawing, gloomily walked to the far end of the table. It was very depressing, it was as if a gray cloud was pouring rain on top of her head. When Sally left I turned to Karla and said “Karla, that was a horrible thing to do! You should go and apologize!” Karla shrugged her shoulders. I knew that Karla wasn’t being fair so I told my friend Jake what had happened. Jake came up with a plan, it was a mean plan, but since we were both so angry about what she did we didn’t really care. Both Jake and I snatched the tangerines off our plate and slowly inched the tangerines closer to Karla and “Now!”, Jake yelled. We both squeezed the tangerines as hard as we could. Once the juice made contact with Karla we didn’t feel big, we didn’t feel better and we especially didn’t fix anything. Actually, we probably made things worse. The path that the juice decided to take was straight into her eyes. Her eye almost instantly turned red and swollen and started to overflow with tears of pain. Our jaws practically dropped to the floor in astonishment. The glare that Karla gave us went straight past my eyes and burned the back of my skull. For the rest of the day Karla gave us the cold shoulder. It felt as though frost was sliding down my spine and my insides were getting ripped apart every time I would try to apologize. By the end of the day I decided to write her an apology letter, it was my only hope. I didn’t know if she forgave me or not until the next day. Karla did end up forgiving me and she even said sorry to Sally for the comment that she made about her drawing. This incident happened about a year ago and Karla, Sally and I are better friends than we were before. All of this story is completely true with the exception of the names, which shall not be given out under any circumstances.