The Story Of A Short Story Essay

Rachel begins saying “What they don’t understand about birthdays and what they never tell you

wants to be a free spirt and isolated. As Rachel turns eleven, her attitude towards the end of the

Rachel is a generally nervous person throughout the course of the story. She constantly worries about what the town, and more specifically her father, might think. Lawrence and Lee establish this when Rachel goes to the jail to visit

self. Rachel’s dad moved away so now her mom and dad are filing separation and Rachel is not happy about it. So she goes and buys a plane ticket to go see her dad but in order to do that she has to take money out of her college savings account. So she has to help her mom with her cleaning business in order to get the money she needs to make it look like she never took money out of her account in the first place.

Rachel grew up without having any parents, only a grandma, uncle, and aunt who later passed away. Grandma and Rachel were talking about

Middle school can be filled with challenges, and Rachel Lee, an eighth grader, seems to be facing quite a few of them. She's extremely insecure, or as she says, "freakishly shy" and only feels comfortable around her dad and her best friend Marisol or when she's baking. Her lack of confidence has made her a target for mean girls Briana and Caitlin. Unfortunately, as she says, "...when the popular girls finally learned my name, it was only so they could make fun of me." When her dad abandons their little family to start a scuba-diving business, Rachel is devastated and determined to stop the divorce. She comes up with a "Get-My-Parents-Back-Together Plan" that includes stealing money from her college fund, lying to her parents, and secretly buying a ticket to Florida so she can talk some sense into her dad.

“It got me a date, didn’t it?” Dean gave her a little smirk before he flipped the channel and the eleven o’clock news came on. Rachel really had no idea what to say to that, so she just sat there and watched the news. It was the usual awful nonsense that was on every

It can be hard to stand up for yourself. Rachel knows what she wants, but it is hard for her to get it. Everyone thought that Mrs. Price was right because she is the teacher and “teachers are always right.” This shows that because Rachel did not find courage in herself, everyone just thought Mrs. Price was right. This also shows that Rachel was an outsider in the class if everyone took Mrs. Price’s side, and no one stood up to Mrs. Price.

Rachel already wants to grow old and be so far away from her childhood. Because of one altercation with the girls she doesn 't like, she already wants to grow old and throw away her whole childhood. Throughout the story she referenced growing up as collecting ages as you go instead of changing into them each year, "Because the way you grow old is kind of like an onion or like the rings inside a tree trunk or like my little wooden dolls that fit one inside the other, each year inside the next one." She says this because instead of never being any of the those younger ages every again, she thinks of it as something you can put away for when you are acting not like the age you really are. “I 'm crying like I 'm three in front of everybody.” In this part of the story, instead of being 11, like she really is, she is using the 3 year old inside her. She collects and later uses all the ages that she passes along and adds them to a collection of feelings. In the end of the story, Rachel compares the passing days of her life to a balloon floating away in the sky, “Far away like a runaway balloon, like a tiny o in the sky, so tiny-tiny you have to close your eyes to see it.” She knows that one day the red sweater, Ms. Price, and all the other girls will be far behind her. She was forced to grow and mature in that moment to handle and come to terms with the

called out in the middle of class for something that did not even belong to her, Rachel expresses how

After Sarah hides her brother in a cupboard and is arrested by French police, she is brought to Darcy labor camp. Soon after her arrival, she is ripped away from her mother and father and when she escapes with her accomplice Rachel they are hidden on a farm by French couple Jules and Geneviéve. Rachel’s

During her daily trip, she looks out the train and examines a couple named Scott and Meghan. She has no relationships with these characters but she calls them Jess and Jason, idolizing them. Rachel can describe them very clearly and knows a lot about their lives just by seeing into their house for seconds twice a day. Rachel relates to this “perfect” couple easily because she used to share similar moments with her ex-husband Tom. In a sense, Rachel is jealous of them. In the beginning, she just watches everyday but something changes and then it all is different. Rachel witnesses Meghan kissing another man and she does not think much of it until in the next couple days, Meghan goes missing. Rachel takes matters into her own hands and decides that she needs to figure out what happened. Watson felt obligated to tell Scott because that is how she lost her husband Tom and she was concerned about this seemingly perfect couple. She works up courage and goes to the police to report what she has witnessed and what she knows about the couple. The police were confused and skeptical of her story due to not being able to validate

In the events of the story. Rachel is given a sweater that isn’t hers but is forced to take it because the teacher was fed up with all the arguing, and gave it to rachel because she” remembers her wearing it once” so Rachel afterwards say’s “ Not mine, not mine, not mine, but Mrs. Price is already turning to page thirty-two, and math problem number

Then right when the bell rang the girl who forgets everything says it was hers. Once Rachel was out of the classroom she just keep on with her day. She got to lunch she sat down alone like always does.

Closing the rear trunk, he said something that will be with her for the rest of her life. “I saw something, off in the distance. As did Derick.” walking past Rachel and turned around by the time he could see over his house, pointing “it was over there on that light post.”