diary

my student's work...potential writer?

A tall, slim girl, sixteen, with serious brown eyes and a mass of long curly black hair which her friends called raven was staring dreamily out of her window. Eliza, her chin proped on her clasped hands and her eyes on the splendid mass of fluffy clouds that were heaping up just over her neighbour's house like a mountain, was far away in a delicious world where a certain graduate was doing wonderful work, inspiring youthful minds and hearts with high and lofty ambitions.

It was a warm gaudy Sunday morning early in October, Eliza Tan sat at the breakfast table with her parents. Her mother was reading the women's page of the morning paper while her father pored through the editorial section. There were dandelions in the center of the table and linen mats under each plate; the eletric coffee pot that was bought at a junk sale exactly four years ago, gleamed in a ray of morning sunlight. It was a peaceful scene, apparently no different from any other Saturday morning at the Tans', but this morning there was a difference, invisible but real. This morning Eliza was plotting.

Outside, she heard the rasp of a dry leaf scudding along the road. The sound meant the season was changing and she intended to make her life change with it. That was what made the end of secondary school interesting- the possibility that this time things could be different. Spotless new JC uniforms, a change of locker patners, a new boy across the aisle in English class, even the lovely breeze, crisp and shining - all these things could make a big difference in her mundane life. Straight after a quick and hurried breakfast, Eliza ran to the telephone and punched her friend's number, trembling with excitment, her hand shook as she held the cordless violet phone to her pointy ears. " Gina, tomorrow is our last day being in Secondary four! I know I'm going to be missing all our classmates terribly but I can't help feeling a twinge of excitement going to National JC. Thank god we'll be in the same classes again", Eliza exclaimed. The phone glued to her ear, she babbled on," I don't what I would do if we hadn't been posted to the same school. Of course we'll be the youngest in the school and I guess it'll feel very different from being in the top form where we were extremely dominering and knew everyone in the school."

The rest of the day was spent day dreaming about JC, a new chapter in her life, an empty, untouched white page that was waiting to be filled in. What will the new school be like? In Cresent, where she was the tennis team captain, everyone had looked at her in awe and admiration- the wonderful, powerful captain- but now she would probably be looking at others in the same way.

For the first time in her entire life, Eliza was extremely eager to get to school early. Grabbing the buttered toast her mum had prepared, she rushed out of the old brick house. Looking at the beautiful nature around her, Eliza thought that each day was becomming more golden and more spellbound. The sun shone and the sky was a clear shade of light blue. The oranges were ripening. Violets and iris bloomed in October. The weird plants beside on her neighbour's door step put forth scarlet leaves. At the same time the spreading grayish green acacia tree that over hung the two-storey house began to burst with buds, clusters of tiny greenish- yellow balls. As Eliza stood under the tall plants and looked up at the acacia tree, she felt like Alice in Wonderland after she had drunk from the bottle labeled Drink Me and found everything different. Yes, Singapore was a magic place.

Eliza, for the first time in her four years she had been in the school, looked at Cresent Secondary School through different eyes. She stopped to stand and stare at the rusty old iron school gates; it would be her last time walking through them as a secondary school student. And the palm trees just outside school- how could she have ever thought those trees with their ragged dirty petticoats old dead fronds was exciting to behold? Eliza began to recall the little things she had done with Gina; the mischeveous pranks she had pulled off on teachers, the days on which she had bribed the school guard to cut her slack and let her in school when she was late with out complaining to the discipline mistress. Cresent contained her joyous laughter, all her tears, pain, misery and delight. Gazing at her beloved school for the last time before she went in, she turned around to see Gina putting a reassuring, comforting arm on her shoulders. Eliza appreciated Gina's silent sympathy, but she found being in a situation that called for sympathy hard to take. She was miserable in silence. Who ever thought the last day of school could be soo painful and could bring back soo many memories.

Eliza felt as though a page of girlhood has been turned, as by an unseen finger, and the page of womanhood was before her with all its charm and mystery, pain and gladness.

***

All comments welcome. By the way, she's Sec 1 Express going on to Sec 2.

posted by sin @ 9:49 PM