Left Behind

• Rhiannon Jongeling, Grade 7
• Short Story
• 2012

“It’s not fair!” Shannon screamed, and threw herself onto the bed, loud sobs wrenching her body, as she beat her pillow over and over again.

“I wanted to go too!”

Her dad and her younger brother, Jake, had gone hunting, and all that while, Shannon would be stuck at home with her frustrating, overprotective mother. When they had left, Shannon tried her best to hide her disappointment, but it hadn’t worked. The tears that she had tried so hard to hide just flowed freely down her sunburnt complexion. When they had gone, Shannon had escaped up to her bedroom, and there she let out all her anger and despair of being left behind.

A while after, Shannon woke up and found herself still in bed. She felt a bit better now, but her throat still felt a bit raspy and her body felt all stiff. She crawled out of bed, and moved towards the door. As she walked past her mirror, she caught sight of herself and groaned. Her hair was a disastrous mess, and her face was still flushed from her crying. She moved her hand across her hair to smooth it down and rubbed a finger along her face to make it look a bit more normal. Definitely better, Shannon thought. She went downstairs, shuffled her way toward the couch and started switching through the channels on TV. She found nothing interesting, so she put down the remote, and strode out the back door. When she was outside, Shannon walked around to the shed, and went in. The door creaked as it opened. Shannon groped around in the dark for a while, as the only light in the big shed came from the open door. Then, she found what she was looking for, her slingshot. Shannon grabbed it with glee, and raced out towards the woods. What she was exactly hunting for, Shannon didn’t know. But if it were to be anything, it would be a rabbit. Shannon liked the softness of rabbit’s fur.

When she heard a rustle in the bushes behind her, Shannon moved cautiously toward the tree closest to her. Her hand slid into her pocket, her fingers closing around a smooth round stone. She attached it to her sling and swung it around, before sending it off toward its target. BAM! A perfect shot. But only when she heard a soft, weak ‘Miaow’ Shannon realized that she had not shot a rabbit, but a tiger cub.

“What do I do, what do I do?” Desperately Shannon started to run towards the house to get her mum, but stopped herself. Her mum would kill her if she knew Shannon had been hunting. She ran back toward the tiger cub, but the fluffy body lay limp on the ground, its chest no longer moving up and down. Shannon sat down, and burst into tears. “Why did I ever want to go hunting at all?” She wondered.