He sat in the half lit room. Mrs. Darlene liked it that way, regardless to the fact that it was an English class which required a lot of reading. The lighting didn’t help matters. Jason sighed loudly, causing all the attention in the room to be directed toward him. With a half toothed grin he looked right back at the class, and sighed again. As the class turned around, they saw that Mrs. D had put up a series of strange pictures. Pictures like a nun sitting in a chair 10 feet in the air, a house lifting off like a spaceship, a cruse ship in Venice, a boy wizard, and a ship in a bay with a captain and a boy standing on land.

“We are going to use these to help us write,” she announced

“How?” stated a random classmate
A small chuckle filled the room

“Knock that off….. we are going to use these pictures as inspiration to help you write a creative story which is due….. in two days” proclaimed Mrs. D.
Then the bell rang.
Soon the halls were filled with people standing and talking arbitrarily throughout the hall. It caused a backup of traffic of students trying to get to their next class including Jason. He enjoyed power walking during classes to help stretch his legs, which, except for the occasional shake, didn’t move during class.


His mind was going crazy. He had picked the picture of a ship in a bay with a captain standing by it with a lantern and a child with him. He didn’t know what he was
going to write about, but he changed his focus, for he had approximately forty seconds to get to the band room.

He brought up the assignment at lunch with his friends Gavin and Ryan.

“What should I write about?” he asked Gavin

“How about they travel around the world to come meet me, because I can offer them something… I don’t know what, but something.” Gavin rambled.

“ Darlene is going to love that Gavin; she already hates you for how you constantly back sass her.” Jason declared

Ryan interjected in a condescending tone. “Your story should entail the sailor and the boy travel the world in search for something, and they come across problems people in society can relate to. In the end they become richer from the experience.”

“ Vague, genius,” Jason replied.

“ Fine my friend, don’t listen to me I already got an ‘A’ in her class last semester.”

Later that day, he came home with just the homework of writing a draft but was unable to deal with it because he had swim practice. He figured that he would think about it when he was swimming laps, repetitively. That all changed when he got in the water, which was so cold he could not even about swimming, let alone his paper.



Three hours later he was able to sit down at the computer desk and start pressing the keys that would eventually make his paper. He started up iTunes, and Firefox. Procrastinating, he checked his email, Facebook, and then moved on to iTunes. After
spending 45 minutes trying to find the appropriate music to listen to while typing, he opened Word.

“Better save it first,” Jason uttered. He realized he was procrastinating.

“ Why can’t I think of anything to write about? My imagination runs wild when I’m in school daydreaming,” he moaned.
He was right; his mind always went wild. He sat there until his mother turned on the TV in the other room and started watching “Dancing with the Stars.”

“Mom,” he ordered, “can you watch that downstairs, I’m trying to write here.”
Two minutes later, the TV was off; he was ready to work. Five minutes after that his outlook was different; he needed a break and he did have another day to do this.

The next day came and went; school, swim practice, homework. The white computer screen, ready to be pierced by black letters, glowed in his face. He threw ideas around, resulting in multiple File New. Forty five minutes later it hit him; an idea he could write about. Thank goodness for that; it was 9:00 and he was exhausted. The paper needed to be done, revised, and finished for tomorrow. Wasting no time, his fingers started flying all over the keyboard. Writing put Jason in control, he liked the power. He could decide a characters fate in a couple of seconds.



He thought the story was strong and solid. It was about an orphan who was adopted by the sailor to help lend an extra hand on his ship. The boy was bitter toward the sailor; he had secretly wanted to be adopted by a rich family so he would never have to work. The two sailed the Atlantic Ocean, doing various jobs from fishing, to helping Cubans see their “so called” relatives in Miami. Eventually, the boy matured and realized how lucky he really was. This was after they had been caught amidst a massive hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico. Their boat was tossed about causing a cabinet to hit the boy on his head, resulting in him loosing consciousness. The sailor was able to get their ship a shore and the boy to a hospital. It was then, that the boy realized how lucky he really was.

Ctrl S, and with that he saved it, and proceeded to print it. Before he knew it his heart was racing, realizing that he had no paper on which to print it. He searched throughout the house and only found two pieces of paper. One with balloons on it as a border, and the other was a piece of his father’s company’s letterhead. This didn’t make a difference. The paper was four and a half pages long. He used his last resort he saved the file on a CD, hoping that the school’s out dated computers would be able to open it and allow him to print it.

The next day Jason arrived at school a half hour early. He went straight to the computer lab and sat at a computer and put the CD in. After five minutes of strenuous waiting, it came up, but in some weird font. Jason, ticked off, slapped the side of the computer. The girl sitting next to him glared over at him and said


“Go to the new lab, those computers should be able to read it”

“Thanks,” remarked Jason as he sprinted out of the computer lab and headed toward the new one.

The bell rang as he was running through the halls toward the new lab. Jason was late and needed to get straight to homeroom or else he would be late. He had a habit of being late and another tardy would land him in detention. Mrs. D’s room was cold that day, Jason handed her the CD hoping that she would accept it. She looked up at him and said, “What is this? This is unacceptable.”