Goodbye, Old Friend. | Teen Ink

Goodbye, Old Friend.

March 19, 2021
By Anonymous

After a boring, uneventful day at school, she ran out of the car, eager to get home. As her mother slowly creaked open the door, the little girl kicked off her shoes in a hurry and rushed to the aquarium. There, inside of her beloved tank was her bright red betta fish sleeping as sound as a baby. She was quiet for a moment, but then started rapidly tapping on the aquarium’s glass. “Wake up, wake up!” she exclaimed, as her darling fish slept soundly, probably listening to the small, but mighty waves inside of the aquarium, enjoying peace for the first time. She was puzzled. What was wrong? Why wouldn’t her precious pet wake up? He was probably just tired from staying awake all day. He would soon arise from his dreams to greet her, after a long day for both of them, she decided. Her father walked into the room, picked her up, and hugged her. After a dry conversation about her day at school, she went to the kitchen to get a snack, and then departed upstairs to finish some homework. When she came back down, there was no aquarium. It was gone. Her heart sank. What happened to my favorite friend? Where is he? She had experienced death for the first time. Loss. Goodbye, old friend.


The author's comments:

With this set-piece, the writing pursuits that I was practicing when I wrote it, was the point of view, tone, and detail. I decided to write the piece in a third-person omniscient view and tried to play around with the thoughts and feelings of the character in the story. I also tried to depict the tone of a young girl’s enthusiastic curiosity by using words like “eager” and “puzzled”. Additionally, I tried to use many details to translate a clear picture into the reader’s head. I like this piece because it represents a child slowly losing her childhood innocence by discovering new things as she grew up (in this case, death), which I thought was an interesting idea for the feeling of the story.


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