Sunday, September 7, 2008

Returning home by Marissa K

Daisy was still getting used to life back home in New York when her cousin, Becca, called. She had heard about what had gone on with Daisy in England, and wanted to make sure she was okay. They agreed that Daisy would go down to Massachusetts so they could catch up on what had been going on with them both.

Daisy and Becca were very close and got together as often as possible. Daisy knew about how Becca had gone to Poland to figure out who their grandmother had been. Their grandmother, Gemma, had insisted that she had been living in a castle in Poland and Becca had promised her that she would find the castle and find out who she was. Daisy was so excited to hear all about the trip.

They met up two weeks later at Becca’s house in Massachusetts. When Daisy rang the doorbell, her Aunt Eve answered.

“Oh, Elizabeth, how are you? Your father told us all about your awful trip. I hope the war there didn’t shake you up too much,” said Aunt Eve.

Daisy sighed loudly. “Aunt Eve, you know that no one calls me Elizabeth. I was never an Elizabeth. My name is Daisy.”

“Yes of course, Daisy,” Aunt Eve said. “I just always thought you would grow to love the name Elizabeth.”

No one ever called Daisy by her real name, Elizabeth, except for Aunt Eve. Daisy loved Aunt Eve to death, but it annoyed her just as much when she called her Elizabeth.

“Becca is in her room. She has been waiting to talk to you for quite some time now. She is very excited.” Aunt Eve guided Daisy through the hall to Becca’s room.

Daisy walked into Becca’s room to find her cousin on the phone. But when she saw Daisy she nearly screamed.

“Stan? I’ve got to call you back. My cousin, Daisy, the one I told you about is here! Okay, bye. HI DAISY!” Becca leaped up and gave Daisy the biggest hug she had ever gotten in her life. “How was England? Well, other than the war, tell me about your cousins!”

“Well, Piper is nine and just about the sweetest girl you will ever meet. She even remembered my name as Daisy after I only told her once! Edmond is fourteen and can almost read your mind. You can think something as quietly as possible but he will still hear it,” Daisy paused, wondering if she should tell Becca about what really went on between her and Edmond, but decided against it. She wasn’t sure how Becca would react to Daisy loving her own cousin. “Isaac and Edmond are twins, but Isaac has green eyes. You can leave him for an hour, then turn a corner and he would be there. It’s like he can sense where you are! Osbert is the oldest, and he acts much older than he actually is. He so wanted to be a spy during the war – he and his friends would play it forever! Aunt Penn actually had to leave and didn’t come back until after I left. I still don’t know if Edmond made it back. I had to leave before he came back.”

“Wow, I never thought it would be that bad. And you haven’t even told me about during the war yet!” From the look in Becca’s eyes, Daisy could tell she was interested. And being a journalist, Becca was remembering every bit of the story.

“Piper and I got separated from everyone else and we went to live with a family. But we had to leave and eventually, we were living in the woods! But we finally found our way back to the house, which was trashed from the army people living in it. I haven’t talked to them since I left, and all I know is that Piper is okay. Isaac and Edmond are still missing in my mind, and I’m so worried about both of them. Osbert actually went to work with the army, so I don’t know if he is alive either. But anyways, enough about my time in England. How was your trip to Poland?” Daisy finished her story and was anxious to hear about Becca’s trip.

“I had to get an interpreter first off. Her name was Magda and we stayed at her house. Later on I met Josef who knew Gemma and told us the story of how they met and how they survived. Apparently there was a man that had traveled with Josef during World War II and he was our grandfather. I still don’t know her real name, except that she was called Ksiezniczka, which means Princess in Polish. That’s because the camp that she went to for the war was an old castle, and that’s why she insisted that she was a princess. And she was kissed awake because she had been poisoned by gas and Josef had done CPR.”

“Oh wow, sounds like you did some serious investigating, Becca! Is that story going to be in your newspaper?” Daisy was hooked on the story, and wished she could’ve gone. Then she remembered Edmond and took it back.

“No. Since it’s a family story, we can’t so we don’t upset any distant relatives who were close with Gemma,” Becca looked disappointed. Daisy could tell she would have had fun writing up that article. “Anyways, how’s Davina? That must have been another perk about going to England.”

“Yeah, it was pretty nice not having her always nagging me and pretending to be upset because of me,” Daisy thought about her time in England and how she had had more freedom there than she had ever had in New York. “Who was that you were talking to on the phone earlier? Anyone special?”

“Actually, that was Stan. He’s kind of like my boss. Well, now he’s kind of like...my boyfriend,” Becca started to blush. “It’s new since I’ve come back.”

“Ahh I’m so happy for you Becca!”Daisy really and truly was happy for her cousins new boyfriend, happy that she had ever gone to England to meet Edmond especially, and just happy to be home.

1 comments:

kwhelihan said...

I didn’t read either of these books, but by what I read in this essay, they were very good books. It reminded me of movies I’ve seen before in my life about the war in England, and I kept thinking about them as Daisy talked about them. The part where she talked about being in love with her cousin kind of creeped me out a little, but that isn’t the writer of the essay’s fault; it’s the author of the book’s fault.

It seemed as if you could have pulled the conversation these two girls shared right out of the books. They were believable, they were realistic, and they drew me in and made me want to read more. It was almost as if they had happened in real life or in the book and were simply being retold in this essay, which really impressed me. The girls weren’t just simply trying to get the points of their own sides of the conversation across, they were really reacting to what the other one was saying in a way that any normal person would.

My favorite part of the story was when Becca and Daisy reunited after being away from each other for so long. “…HI DAISY!” Becca leaped up and gave Daisy the biggest hug she had ever gotten in her life.” I thought this part was a really nice point where everything was happy and all right and it was as if their troubles were over (which I don’t truthfully know because I don’t know the actual plots of each book).

One little distraction I had throughout the story was that it wasn’t always specified who was talking each time new dialogue began. It isn’t a big deal, but it left me wondering who just said what I read, and in the following paragraph I still didn’t know whose turn it now was, which made me pay less attention to what they were actually saying. But eventually it would say who was talking and I would understand and everything would be okay again.

In the future, on some of your other essays or stories where there is dialogue, I would specify who is talking at the beginning of each new paragraph, and it doesn’t even just have to be something like, “Daisy said…” It could be something more like, “The smile on Daisy’s face as she spoke told Becca that she had been waiting to tell her this for a long time,” or something of that sort. Just a thought!