by DuBois M.
I quickly maneuvered around Chloe’s pieces as I smashed the hand with my final player on the other end of the board. I screamed out in triumph and-
WAIT. I didn't say to start here. This is the story of how I gambled a soda off of my sister.
Rewind.
It started with a cooler. That cooler was in a general store. And that general store was in North Carolina.
Mast General Store looked and smelled like something straight out of the 1700’s. Old. I could hear people talking all around it, but couldn't distinguish voices. Dad was already in the car. Meanwhile, Chloe and I found a cooler, but we didn't really look inside of it. We went to find mom and we asked her if we could get a soda. She said yes, so we opened the cooler and found a coke and Shirley Temple. We both wanted the Shirley Temple so we fought like bookworms and cliffhangers over it. But then we stumbled across a checkers board. The pieces were soda caps.
“How about we play for it.” Chloe suggested.
“I’ve never played checkers.”
“That’s okay, I'll teach you. So first you have to-”
After Chloe taught me how to play we placed the bet that the loser would get the Coke while the winner got the Shirley Temple. We started playing and Chloe started mowing through my pieces as fast as a speeding car runs down the highway. But I had a plan. Chloe told me that if I could get all my pieces to the end of the board I could win, so I let her take all my pieces but one which I got to the other side of the board easily.
“HA,” I said grinning “I win.”
“Um, actually DuBois you have to take all my pieces first as well.”
I was mortified but I should've guessed that’s what I had to do to win.
“I can’t really win anyway so you can have the Shirley Temple,” I said slightly disappointed.
“I mean yeah but we can still play again if you want.”
“Nah, dad’s been waiting in the car for like thirty minutes so we should probably just go.”
I didn't really mind that I had lost the game. At least I got a Coke. After all I know some kids whose parents won’t let them drink soda. In the end I might not have won the checkers game, but I got a soda and learned how to play a game of checkers with my best friend.
Okay now we’re at the end, now you can finally fast forward.
by Anthony B.
In Hilton Head, South Carolina, 2023, it was a nice, calm, cool day to go to the beach! I packed all the stuff I was taking to the beach which included just a towel and my phone. After we got to the hotel there was a short path we had to walk across to get to the beach. It was a bridge-like path which had a shower and a hose that you could wash yourself off with. Little did I know how much I would need that shower by the afternoon.
Once we arrived at the beach the first thing I did was start looking for turtles because I saw a sign that said there were gonna be turtles around the beach so I started looking for turtles near the grass but I didn’t find any. I was like a pirate looking for lost treasure. I played around with the sand and water picking it up, kicking it around, and all sorts of stuff. When I saw the water I decided to run around trying to escape the waves coming in. I ran around the beach looking for sea shells to collect to put in the jars of sea shells I collected over the years.
Before my mom was about to record a video of me in the water, my grandma said, "Let's take a group photo.” My grandma tried to make sure she got a good angle so the photo wouldn’t be blurry or not visible. Grandma told my mom, “Record Anthony running and playing in slow motion.” Then my mom decided to take some pictures and record videos of me playing and having fun.
A couple minutes go by while there are other kids playing and their parents watching them have fun. I started to notice a little bit of sand pick up and hit my legs but it didn’t hurt and then once I looked around and saw other people’s towels including mine starting to flap.
At first I thought I didn’t think much about it and thought, “Oh it was just a little breeze,” but then suddenly it started to become windy out of nowhere. Right before the storm happens I notice that the clouds begin to turn into a tan-like color and the sky also changes as well. Sand is flying around, giving people scars, families trying as fast as they can to hurry up and leave!
I heard somebody say, “I can’t see there’s sand in my eye!”
Then another person said, “Let's get out of here before anyone else gets hurt even worse!”
Feeling all that sand come at me was like a thousand needles being thrown at a tree, or whenever you fall and the unbearable feeling has you screaming in agony! I was at a somewhat far distance from my family. Then once the mini-sandstorm happened, I ran as fast as I could and grabbed my stuff and got out of there! We went back to the hotel, took a shower, went to bed and got ready for the day that awaits us.
I’ll never forget the time I went to South Carolina with my mom and my grandma and there were families having fun until a mini-sandstorm came unexpectedly then a lot of people got hurt. That day was really painful for me and all the rest of the people that were there at the beach. Next time I go to the beach I’m going to focus on water waves instead of sand ones and I’ll bring an umbrella.