She danced with beauty and grace. Her 18-year-old body was at its bloom of womanhood, and was the envy of all the others in her class. She was dancing in what would be her final recital with this dance company, as the following Autumn would bring her to a distant state and university.
Her 20-year-old brother sat in the audience, enjoying the show. He had laughed at the 4 and 5-years-olds doing their cute dances in their cute outfits, some taking center stage, still others crying for their mommy, afraid of being in front of so many strangers. He sat patiently through all the "grades" of the evening... beginners tap, beginners ballet, beginners jazz, all the way up to just before the final-. The last dance was with the graduating Seniors and the head dance instructor, the owner of the studio. Many of the girls going off to college had been with the instructor since they, themselves, were the cute 4 and 5-year-olds, a few of them accepting assistant roles with the nearly three dozen different dance classes.
Collette was one of them. She had started dancing almost as soon as she could walk, and her parents had enrolled her into classes as soon as it was feasible. After that, there was no turning back for her. She had a passion for dance and felt the need to make it her life's work. That's why she had decided to go so far away to the Big City for college.
Hi, my name is Jim. My story is about the summer my sister Anna and I shared. My story begins about three weeks into our summer break.
I had just broken up with my girlfriend Jill. We had been dating all year and I thought it would last forever. She said she needed to spend time with others and wanted to date other people that summer. None of her reasons were very good. Well, we separated. I was devastated. I didn't understand what had gone wrong. For about a week, I ran through every-thing in my mind to try and figure out "why?" It was driving me mad.
My sister tried to help. We talked about girls and relationships. She tried to help me make some sense of the breakup. Eventually, we both decided that it was best to let go and move on. Maybe later in life these things would make sense.
To help me take my mind off of things, my sister offered to take me mountain biking up in the hills near our house.
"Ware swim trunks because there was a creek where we were going that we could swim in." Anna said.