my lucky day [الأرشيف] - سعودي انجلش

muhamedr

15-01-2010, 08:05 PM

Frankie’s Lucky Day

The morning sun peeked through the white lace curtains at Frances Sharon’s window. As it teased her eyelids open, she first yawned and stretched, then got out of bed to slide her feet into the fuzzy pink slippers that were waiting patiently on the floor -- things she had done a thousand times before. For Frances, today began like any other normal day ...

Frances was standing in front of the mirror on her dresser. She brushed at the tangled auburn hair, finally deciding on a ponytail to tame the collection of curls into submission. While she was attaching the little gold pin to her Brownie uniform, her mother called, "Frances? Frances Sharon! Now don't forget to wear your Brownie uniform. Remember, you have Scouts after school today."

She hated it when her mother called her that! Frances was such an awful name. She didn’t care that she was named after her great-grandmother Frances! Maybe it had been a fine name … way back then. But to Frances Sharon Curtis, a girl who lived in the here and now, it sounded like something a farmer named a horse wearing a straw hat with holes cut out for its ears!

As she ate her breakfast, her thoughts turned to her two best friends, Sarah and Allie. They both called her Frankie -- she couldn't even remember anymore how long ago it came about. Allie had just let it slip out one day, and the nickname stuck, and that was just fine with Frankie. How she wished her parents would call her 'Frankie' instead of … (eww, gross) … 'Frances'.

Gathering together her books, homework, and lunch bag, she kissed her mom goodbye in the doorway and left to meet the school bus.

“I’ll pick you up right after school for Brownies.” Her mother reminded her as Frankie was closing the door.

Frankie ran down the front steps of her house just like she did every day. Today when she got to the bottom, though, she could see a small, pink 3-inch square piece of paper lying on the sidewalk. Frankie bent down and picked it up, admiring the curly design across the top of it. Thinking she would like to try to draw it, she tucked it into the pocket of her Brownie uniform.

The morning was way too long. Frankie felt as though she was going through each of her classes in a fog. She could remember turning in her homework and writing down the information each teacher wrote on the blackboard, but that was about it. Frances Sharon Curtis, also known as Frankie, felt as though something BIG was about to happen, although what it could be, she had no clue.

When the lunch bell finally rang, Frankie hurried to meet her friends in the cafeteria. There was Sarah at their regular table, just across from where the lunch line formed. Sarah had the prettiest wild and curly red hair that Frankie had ever seen on anyone, boy or girl -- and a wild sense of humor to match. She was covered in freckles that were nearly the same color as her hair. Sarah could always make Frankie laugh! They had known each other since meeting on the playground in kindergarten and had been best friends ever since.

Right beside Sarah, sat Allie. She was a new girl in town. Frankie and Sarah had met her on the very first day of school while they were all waiting for the bell to ring and the doors to open. Most kids thought Allie was stuck-up, but Sarah and Frankie both knew she was only shy.

"Hey, Frankie!" Sarah yelled, waving both hands in the air. "I have PB and J today. Wanna trade?"

"Shhh, you’re gonna get us in trouble!” Frankie teased. “And sorry, Sarah. Mom made me a turkey sandwich, my favorite."

"I have a chocolate pudding to trade, too," teased Sarah back.

Frankie thought about the small pink square of paper she had found on her way to school with the curly design she was going to try and draw. She hated to part with it, but she decided she could probably remember how the design looked, and besides, she really loved chocolate pudding! "Sarah, I found this cute little paper on the sidewalk this morning. You want to trade my paper for your pudding?"

Sarah studied the little pink square that was handed to her. Like Frankie, she thought it might be fun to draw the funny little design that ran across at the top. "Sure, Frankie. I'm too full for the pudding anyway." Sarah said as she tucked the small pink square into the front of her book.

When Sarah went back to class, Wanda (the nerdy girl who sat in front of her) walked in with a fistful of new pencils. Sarah's pencil had shrunk to nearly half its size from sharpening it, and the eraser was completely worn away. Sarah thought about the small pink square of paper she had just traded her pudding for with Frankie. As much as she hated to part with it, she really needed a better pencil, so Sarah offered to trade the small pink square for one of Wanda's new pencils.

Wanda studied the paper with the same intensity that she often studied a small scab on her arm in class before picking at it. There under the design was a line of numbers. Among them, of all things, was her exact birth date -- a ten for the month of October, and a thirteen. "Sure," Wanda agreed, "I'll trade."

She was thinking how unusual it would be to have some random thing like this tiny piece of pink paper with her exact birthday numbers on it -- who knows, maybe it was even lucky!

Later in the day, right in the middle of math, Wanda found she was out of paper. Well … to someone like Wanda, a nerd … a very snobby nerd who was ALWAYS prepared, that was nothing short of a tragedy! She turned to Mandy who sat in the seat just behind her. "Would you trade me some paper for one of my new pencils?”

Mandy was one of the nicest girls in class. She offered to give Wanda some paper for math, but Wanda said, “No. I would always feel like I owed you something. BUT, I have this really lucky piece of pink paper. It has my exact birthday numbers on it. I would be willing to trade it for some paper. Okay?”

Mandy loved anything that might be lucky! She studied the small pink square and decided it would make a perfect bookmark for the book she was reading for her book report! She agreed, and after handing Wanda a few pages of paper, Mandy tucked the little pink square into her book, allowing it to stick out right between the pages where she had stopped reading last night.

Frankie’s afternoon had been almost as strange as her morning had been. She couldn’t get rid of the feeling that something big was going to happen. She pushed the thought from her mind several times -- she had no idea what it could be about and she just wanted the school day to be over.

Finally, the dismissal bell rang. The three friends had met up outside and were walking towards Frankie's Mom's car for a ride to their Brownie meeting when Mandy came running up to them. She said her mother had called the school saying she wouldn't be able to pick her up and she didn't want to take the bus to the meeting. Mandy asked Frankie, "Could I please ride along with you guys? Tell you what -- I'll even give you my lucky bookmark if you'll let me ride along to Brownies."

As Mandy held out her bookmark to Frankie, Frankie's jaw dropped. She could hardly believe what she saw! Mandy’s bookmark was the same small 3-inch square of pink paper she had found on the sidewalk this morning! It was crumpled now, and one of the corners was bent, but there at the top was the curly design she had wanted to draw! Frankie smiled and told her, "Sure -- hop in!" Then Frankie tucked the little square back into the same pocket in her uniform where it had first rested early that morning.

At home that evening, Frankie still had that goofy feeling about something happening while she was getting into her favorite pajamas. Suddenly, she heard a loud shout from her father downstairs. Her father never shouted! Something was wrong!

Frankie ran down the stairs, two steps at a time, and into the living room. Her parents were sitting on the couch in front of the TV.

"Dad, what's wrong?" she asked.

Her mother said, "Honey, everything's okay. Daddy’s just disappointed. He bought a lottery ticket last night and somehow, he lost it. He's been playing the same numbers every week for years and tonight, his number -- every one of his numbers -- finally came up. He's just disappointed -- we're both disappointed."

Her dad then said to no one in particular, "I don't understand how I could have lost it. I put it in my shirt pocket, then I drove home. I walked to the mailbox to mail some letters just before dinner, but then I came right back into the house for supper. I didn't even know it was gone until just now, when I looked for it in my pocket."

"Daddy, what exactly did the ticket look like?" Frankie asked, thinking about her small 3-inch square of pink paper with the curly design.

Her mother smiled. "Frances, it looked like ... well, like a lottery ticket. It had a lot of numbers on it. Frances, don't worry about it. It isn't like we lost something we already had. We're no worse off now than we were before."

Frankie ran back up the stairs, back into her room, and pulled the small wrinkled square of pink paper from the pocket of her Brownie uniform. Then she took it downstairs to the two people she loved most in the world. "Did it look like THIS?" she asked.

Her mother and father stared at the paper, and then at each other, then back at the small and wrinkled pink square once more. Suddenly, as one single excited voice, they both screamed, "Frankie! That's it!"

Frances Sharon Curtis, a girl with unruly auburn hair, a girl with two best friends, smiled. Her parents had called her 'Frankie'!

Then she smiled again, thinking about a small square of pink paper, everything it must have been through, and finally finding out what her funny feelings all day really meant: Today was a very lucky day.

The End
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