Personal Narrative- Final Draft

Assigned Seats

            Reluctantly, I flipped the bathroom light switch off and ducked into the hallway, the open door pulling a small cloud of steam out behind me as I made my way toward my room. I shivered slightly in the relative coolness of the air in the hall, wincing from the occasional water droplet that trickled from my still-damp hair down my back. The house was silent and dark except for the faint glow coming from beneath my parents’ bedroom door, and I hurried through the gloom to the warm safety of my bed.

            Despite the darkness, my eyes adjusted quickly, letting me see the faint shadows of twisting tree limbs dancing on my walls. Foregoing my bed for a moment, I kneeled down next to it carefully, shifting in discomfort as my skin came in contact with the damp spots on my pajama pants. Warily, I glanced toward each corner of my room, making certain they were empty, before quickly closing my eyes and rattling off a prayer. I snapped my eyes back open and checked the corners again. Still empty.

            Feeling relieved – but by no means safe – I hopped up onto my bed and pulled my covers down, preparing to burrow into the comforting confines of the sheets when I heard it. The noise was faint – only a slight murmur over the squeak of bed springs – but it was there. A quiet giggle? A malevolent cackle? Slowly, I moved to the edge of my bed and leaned down to peer into the empty space beneath, eyes wide, hands trembling slightly. And, there, a shape sat – a darker patch in the blackness that shifted toward me as I watched it.

            “Hi, Ryan!” my sister said. “I’m under your bed!”

            Suddenly furious that I had let my six-year-old sister frighten me, I bellowed, “Get out of my room, Chandler! Now!”

            Squeaking, she scurried out from beneath my bed and bolted for the door as I scrambled out of my sheets and ran after her, yelling and chasing her down the hallway toward her own room. She burst through her door and immediately turned, slamming the door in my face and locking it before I could get to the knob. Pounding on the door, I continued yelling at her until I heard the shriek from my parents’ room – “RYAN!!!”

            Filled with panic, I raced back to my room and dove under my bed, huddling down in the cramped space and vainly hoping that my mother would not find me. My heart raced and my adrenaline-enhanced ears clearly heard the creak of the opening door and the quick footsteps as my mother approached my room. From beneath the bed, I saw her feet as she entered, and light suddenly flooded the room. She approached the bed, and I knew that she would find me. Terror and guilt laced my mind and I squirmed farther into the corner. Perhaps she wouldn’t see me – it was dark beneath the bed, after all. But no, she knelt down and looked directly at me.

            “Ryan,” Mom said. “Come out from under the bed.”

            Reluctantly, I obeyed, crawling out from my hiding spot and sitting on the edge of my bed. I looked down at my knees, at the floor, at my dresser – anywhere but directly at my mom.

            She sighed and sat down next to me. “Ryan, you shouldn’t yell at your sister,” she said. “Why were you chasing her?”

            “She came into my room!” I mumbled, still looking away. “She’s always coming in here and bugging me!”

            “She only comes in because she likes you,” my mom said. “She’s just trying to have fun.”

            “But she always comes in when I don’t want her here!” I whined. I looked up at her for the first time, my mouth set in a pout and my eyes filled with righteous fury. “And she’s always touching my stuff!”

            “Ryan, she’s your sister,” she sighed. “You’re going to be together for a long time. You need to learn to tolerate her. Besides, she looks up to you – you need to be nicer to her.”

            “I try,” I grumbled. “But she makes it so hard! She’s annoying!”

            “Well, just keep trying,” my mom said. “Okay?”

            “Yes ma’am.”

            She left the room, flipping the lights off again, and I was left in the darkness to contemplate what she had told me. I lay down under my sheets and stared up at my dark ceiling, thinking, until I finally drifted off to sleep.

*      *      *      *

            I was waiting with my sister in the bus rider line a few days later, waiting for the buses to pull up so that we could go home after a long day of school. We were in the middle of a solid wall of kids, bustling and talking noisily along the sidewalk a “safe” distance from where the buses would pull up. The din of over one hundred yelling, screaming elementary school students was deafening, and I could barely hear my sister’s constant stream of chatter over it.

            “…and then we got to read our books, and then we had snacks, and I had goldfish, and they were really good, and Mrs. McMillan brought us juice, and Emily spilled it on the ground and got in trouble, and then we took a math test, and I got them all right, and then we got to take a nap, and then we went to lunch, and then we wrote in our journals, and then we went to recess, and then…” she said, relentlessly giving me every detail of what she had done that day. She barely even paused for breath, bouncing up and down excitedly with her small, light blue backpack.

           I thought of what my mom had told me and, through some monumental effort, I endured her endless babble, nodding, inserting the occasional appropriate interjection. Finally, after eons of torture, the buses arrived to pick us up, and the chaperoning teachers signaled us to get in. My sister stopped talking as soon as we moved through the door, and we walked down the aisles slowly, carefully reading each sign above the seats, trying to find our names for our new assigned seats.

            My sister found her seat first and sat down next to another girl as I kept looking for mine. I saw the sign with my name on it a few seats down and sat down right next to the window. The stiff, wrinkled seat material crackled under me as I shifted around, pulling my backpack off and reaching in to grab my book. I knew it would make me car-sick to read while the bus was moving, but it was Redwall! You didn’t just stop reading those books for something as minor as a little headache.

            I was just starting to pick up where I had left off when I glance up and saw a large boy standing next to my sister’s seat, glaring down at her with murderous eyes.

            “That’s my seat!” he yelled at my sister. “Get out!”

            My sister cowered down in her seat as the strange boy continued to yell at her, obviously intimidated. Immediately, fury welled up inside of me, and I shot up out of my seat, stomping down the aisle to confront him.

            “DON’T YELL AT MY SISTER!” I bellowed at him, face contorted with rage. I continued to advance towards him and he backed off, looking nervous. “Go sit somewhere else!”

            He quickly squeezed past me and hurried towards the back of the bus, sitting down very quietly and not looking toward me at all. I glanced down at my sister to see her smiling up at me gratefully. I smiled back at her, then returned to my own seat to continue reading the adventures of Redwall.