The Letters

• Leann Lenin, Grade 6
• Short Story
• 2020

My name is Kelly, I live with my family, but currently they have been very preoccupied with personal things to even hang out with me anymore.I’m mostly bored all the time, so I decided to find something to do rather than going on my gadgets, sleeping or eating,basically like a hobby. It was just a normal day, adrift as usual and nothing to do except looking around the house for food, when I suddenly trip over a crack in the tiles, it was some old papers.I thought it might be some rubbish my brothers put around to prevent themselves from going to the bin.The letters looked essential , but very tedious and forget my boredom by reading these letters. I opened the rusty , brown paper with cursive writing, started off with “Dear Meggy”, I thought to myself for a second, Meggy, I’ve heard of that name before, I went on my computer and typed Meggy. There on the first page, came up a familiar face, the face of an author, author that came to my school as a guest presenter. She spoke about all her books, her inspirations, motives , literally everything about her except about these letters. She is an old woman who is single and one of the most popular writers in the world. ‘How did these letters end up here’ , I quickly got my diary and noted things down as I read the first letter. It was from her dad, when Meggy was 18 years old, her dad was at war and that he wanted to see her very badly. I thought to myself again, I recall her talking about her dad, She said he was in the army during the war and people told her that he died. Apparently her dad crashed the plane and the only things the people found was his remains. It must be hard to hear that when you're still young, I almost wanted to cry. The second letter was not from her father, it was her father's friend who had confirmed her father's death. The third letter was for her to move to her mother's house in the US. The last letter was a letter by her to give to her dad. The letter stated all their good memories together with him and how she missed him sooo much. She wanted him to read this letter and that she was expecting a reply from him. It was not sealed or have been sent off, something told Kelly to mail that letter, there is some hope that her father might be still alive waiting for his daughter's letter. She went online and bought some stamps. She stuck them onto the letter and with a smile on her face, she said goodbye to the letter, hoping that there will be someone who will receive that letter and hoping that someone will reply. Like that, 3 weeks went by without her realising, she went to the letter box every single day, soon she started to give up, and slowly forgot about the letter. It was a warm sunny friday, her dad came back from work with a handful of mails, he called her down the stairs, she thought maybe, just maybe, one of those letters might be the one. She raced down and grabbed the mails from her dad’s hand, ran upstairs, closed the doors to her room and opened all the letters. Nothing was from Meggy’s dad, just some letter from her school and her daily letters from her aunty. In a frown she went down stairs and her dad was holding a letter in a confused look, she took the letter and again went upstairs and closed the door. She opened the letter, it read “sorry, this address does not belong to this person anymore, but I do know where he lives” at the bottom of the letter it has Meggy’s dad’s name and his new address. She took a picture and sent it to Meggy online. She knew that she had given her hope once again. That's when Kelly realised she also had a passion for writing and that writing is not just writing a book, but it is something to inspire people and to give hope.