First Story Draft

A to Brazil

“What do you think of the assignment, Brazil?” Kamille whispered quietly as she smoothed out her bright yellow sun dress, appropriate for the humid-hot air outside in mid-California.

“Say what!? Whatever you just said didn’t make any sense at all.” Kamille’s bestest friend in the whole world yelled a little too loudly.

“Miss Brazil and Miss Kamille, do you have anything you would like to tell the group, since you decided when it is appropriate to talk in my class.” Ms. Perkins, the bubbly six month pregnant teacher asked Kamille and Brazil. She walked slowly over to the pair and looked both girls dead straight in the ogle, picking them apart with her piercing hazel eyes, one by one. “Brazil, explain to me what the assignment is please?”

Brazil slumped in her seat, immediately wrinkling her beige-cream colored pants she had delicately ironed that morning. “Ms. Perkins, you said to ummmm…” Brazil had to think for more than awhile, too long in Ms. Perkin’s opinion.

The teacher continued Brazil’s sentence for her. “Miss Brazil, I just explained your class’ homework project assignment.”
Ms. Perkins strolled slowly, of course, towards the front of the class who was watching an embarrassed Brazil intently. “Once again class,” the now upset pregnant teacher started her sentence. “this assignment is due on the twelfth of November and is expected to be typed. Not hand written. Typed. I expect you to choose one of the topics written on the board. Do not expect anything appealing, as this is history class. I expect each student to come prepared with their essay intact, and a poster board visual to show your classmates.”

All the students knew that Ms. Perkins was not to be messed with. Her class was neat and exceptional. The brown, gum covered bottoms of the desk, were lined up neatly in rows of five. Ms. Perkins had her desk at the front of the room, in her private corner, equipped with an extra desk for the occasional disruptions from Jason Fedd.

Ms. Perkins wobbled towards the window, opening it and immeaditly letting the hot humid air into the musty classroom. Her baby blue maternity dress flew up to her mid-thigh from the searing air, its direction outside. As she unsuccessfully tried to lock the window in place, she instructed the class “Line up for me please, everyone! I need you to speed up your pace Kerrington, Micheal, Bresa.” Ms. Perkins gave up on yelling at her students and trying to keep the window up.

Kamille and Brazil, as always, were the last two to arrive in line. As Kamille took up the rear of the line, Brazil turned to her best buddy “You know, if you didn’t have to take forever to get in line, we would have the good topics. I’m sure there are only the boring topics left. I might as well get a D for Dumb, since that’s all I seem to get in this history class.”

Brazil and Kamille stood in line for what seemed like forever. Finally it was Brazil’s turn to pick her topic since there were only two topics left. Brazil chose the most interesting out of the two, Sojourner Truth and The Abolition Movement. “Kam, it’s your turn to choose the topic you want! Ooops, sorry. You don’t get to choose. Here I’ll write your name next to The Race for Africa, since that’s the only topic left.” Kamille could hear the hint of sarcasm mixed in with Brazil’s mellow pitched voice.

She let her friend Brazil write her name to the most uninteresting topic on the entire board. Kamille and Brazil both walked back to their seats, chitchatting along the way. “Now that everyone should have chosen their topics, sit back and read chapters one through twelve until the half bell rings.”

Riiiiiiiiiiing!!! The half bell rang about two minutes later, not one person had finished their eleven chapters. Along with the projects due in four days, every student now had three hundred and fifty one pages to read along with it.

Soon after school ended a day later, Kamille went directly to the library. Brazil went to dance practice from four to six thirty, so Kam was on her own this day. Kamille walked up the dirty-dust covered concrete steps into the library’s big brown oak doors. She walked straight through her favorite genre section fiction, turned right, walked down the bloody red carpet colored stairs and ended at her destination. As she was the only person in the non-fiction section, Kamille typed in her library pen and identification number and clicked the quick panel button for google.com. She began her research.

Also known as The Race For Africa, this war started between the 1800’s and the start of World War I. By the year 1835, the Westerns had mapped out Africa’s territory and a man by the name of David Livingstone had crossed Central and Southern Africa (the majority of it). David also discovered the Mosi-oa-Tunya waterfall in the year 1855, later renaming it Victoria Falls. Richard Burton, John Speke and James Grant found the Great Central Lakes, and claimed to be the first to find and name the Nile River. Did you know that ten percent of Africa was run by Western Nations? After the explorers settled into Africa, industrialization, caused better communication and transportation systems. Along with these systems were telegraphs, railroads and steam navigation to help people communicate with others still in the country they left behind. Not only did better communication help these settlers, but also better medical medicines, for many forms of tropical diseases such as malaria treatment—quinine…

Kamille was dead bored with her topic by this point. All she understood was blah blah blah. She clicked the back button and scrolled down the page once again. Kamille read the small synopsis on the third row, no this topic was not for her project. She continued to the next for subjects and decided on the fifth to last. She clicked on the blue underlined-highlighted title and waited for the screen to appear. When the screen did appear, Kamille decided to read the extra long passage no matter how long it took.

BANG! One of the British soldiers dropped dead on the ground. Lucas Jackson ran behind a tree and almost peed on himself when he saw another British soldier pointing his pistol at one of his fellow Boer soldiers. BANG! Lucas shot him dead and winked at John Coleman. Lucas ran off.

Continued throughout time…