Lemonade

• Charlotte Dunn, Grade 9
• Short Story
• 2020

You never know what life will throw at you. Many people say ‘if life gives you lemons, just make lemonade!’ But that can’t and won’t always happen. What if one day you were thrown something bigger, stronger and more powerful than ever before.
Staring at my phone I am curiously indulged in the article about green tree frogs. ‘They can camouflage, they can hunt and have a stealth mode like nothing before,’ as I carefully read this, my mind starts to wander. To a place that I never wanted to go back to.
Living on Hill Street isn’t one of my finest memories as a child. It was dark, it was scary and the people were overtaken by severe violence. One night I lay in bed reading my new book, as I started to drift to sleep. I was the eldest of two children. Denise is my baby girl. I put her to bed every night and taught her to spell her name. I walked her to school and I fled our hometown with her and me, well I practically raised myself. Dad died when I was six. Mum remarried when I was six and a half and gave birth to Denise when I was seven. Steven was our new dad, but nobody knew what he would bring to the family.
One wet, cold and awful night, I sat in the rocking chair cradling Denise to sleep, when I heard the most horrid, violent and scared scream in the whole world of infinity. A gunshot went off, as I placed Denise in her cot. I race to the living room hall and hid in the shadow of the ironing board. Mum saw me and gave me the look to getaway. She was scared and hurt, and I had to do something. Steven had shot her in the leg and blood was weeping from her everywhere. I felt faint and dizzy, but out of thin air I leapt towards Steven, he turned around. Another gunshot was let off and I soon realized I was bleeding from my right bicep. But that didn’t stop me. I picked myself up and latched on to Steven’s neck, however, that wasn’t enough to stop him. He’d shot mum and he’d stopped moving. He stood there limp. I knew I had to get out. I ran past the handheld phone and slid it into my back pocket of my pyjama pants. Racing into my room, I reefed Denise up by her arm and threw her onto my hip. We’d fled the house. We’d fled Hill Street. And we’d fled the town. Denise is now 25 and I’m 32. Steven was found guilty of murder and attempted murder. But being locked up for life won’t rid me of the thought of him doing it again and what our life we could have had.
A voice starts talking and I soon realized that my life’s story has been told to a stranger on the bus stop bench.