Talk About a Grabber!

This piece, by Naiya, was written in the style of famed author Robert Cormier after our class read I Am the Cheese. I must say, Naiya brings her own signature style Cormier's techniques and establishes an enticing grabber for her story. I wonder if even she knows where it's headed?

Stuck in a Maze

I back out of the parking lot, sweat covering my forehead and my mind captivating me. No, no, no this is wrong, this can’t be true. Seconds from now, my alarm going to start ringing, and my sister is going to barge into the room with her mouth stuffed with food. The lovely aroma of mom’s pancakes will fill the house with warmth. This nightmare will end here and my normal life will resume. As I stand there, I realize that this is the truth, nothing is going to change. My sister will never again barge into my room. I will never be in my house where the smell of mom’s pancakes is a wake up call. If this is the truth, then what is it that got me here? Where is my family and why am I not with them? The wind blows my hair into my face and grey clouds are beginning to cluster in further. Lightning cracking and thunder booming.


“Pancakes, anyone,” my mom asks while flinging her hair, like she’s on America’s next top model.

“Oh, oh, me first, coming through,” my sister shouts coming from our attic with a donut in one hand and a picture in anther hand. Her black hair swinging side to side and her skirt ruffling.

“Claire!” I shout with an annoyed tone as she barges in and covers my brand new dress with the icing on her chocolate frosted donut. She looks at me first, with those wide, apologetic eyes, than she smirks.

“Hahahah.”

“What is so darn funny about my dress being covered with frosting?” a bit frustrated at her derisive sense of humor. “This was new; I brought it because today was picture day and you just ruined it.”

“Hey mom, you know how you were telling me that I need to grow environmentally-friendly?” Claire shouts over the blaring news my dad’s watching. “Well, I just started by saving a napkin.”

“That’s really nice, sweetheart,” says mom, obviously not paying any attention to Claire’s blabbering.

But I am not paying attention to what she is blabbering either; my eyes are locked on her hands, where she is holding a picture tightly as if she is protecting it from some evil shadow. From the gaps between her fingers, I see a face, identical to mine, wearing a pink top, with an arm around another face, buried deep under my sister’s fingers. “Claire, whose picture is that, let me see?”

“You, silly goose!” she screams into my ear, while placing the picture on the dining table. Then running off to get herself another donut.

I pick up the picture, staring at it closely. Flipping it over and viewing every corner of it carefully. The girl in the picture who looked about my age, with the same facial features as me, had her arm around a woman whose face looked like my mother’s ten years ago. But the girl in that picture wasn’t me, and I knew that for a fact. But who was it?

“Naiya! Bus!” my mom screeches at the top of her lungs.

“Coming.” I shout back. Curiosity burns within me, but I stuff the picture into my bag, and race to catch the bus.


I hold onto the tree branch for support. This place is driving me crazy, I can’t stay here. My instincts are telling me to turn around and run, away from all this darkness and misery. To tear away from all my tears and grudges with life. I can leave, I will leave, I will. The voice inside my head is telling me to leave, that I deserve a better life. But my feet refuse to move even an inch. My head is screaming, spinning me back and forth along with the wind like a mad woman. I struggle to stay up with only the branch to hold onto.
Boom! Struggling, I turn on my heels, only to see the one thing in the world that I hate the most, him. There he is with that cruel smile and a face that says I found you and prepare for death. My head is throbbing with pain as if someone banging a hammer on it. I close my eyes and wait for the pain in my stomach to come and captivate me. Come on, shoot, I beg in my head, wanting the pain of life to die with my body. That this soul goes to heaven and this body burns all the pain with it. I wait with joy for the pain to come and take me away from this hell.
Then it comes, with its fierceness, and pierces my stomach. Burning and stinging takes the place of my previous passion for death. Slowly my hands loosen the grip on the branch and let go, giving me only the air to hold onto. My body slamming to the ground with a crashing affect.


All through chemistry, I burn within myself and barely resist the temptation to reach into my back pocket and pull out that picture with the familiar eyes and faces. Finally, the bell rings and I rush to get out of the class, excited to go home and take a close look at the picture.

I rush into the house, not even bothering to close the door and dash into my room. Reaching into the back pocket of my jeans, I pull out the picture. I examine every part of the picture. My mind is bombarded with questions like, who is this girl that looks identical to me? Who is the other lady that looks so much like my mother? Why do I not know this person? Is my family hiding something from me? I feel a hand lightly touch my shoulder.

“What are you looking at?” she inquires, like any nosy mother would.

My heart races, and the panic in my voice is noticeably, “Nothing mom.” But as my hand comes down to prevent her from seeing the picture, she catches my hand and raises it up to see what I am panicking about. The panic in my voice appears on mom’s face. She gasps and I can hear her heart beating fast.

“Mom, this person in the picture isn’t me and I know that, but she looks exactly like me, like a twin sister or…” I don’t finish my sentence, expecting my mom to answer my question.

“Look Emmy, it’s a bit complicated, can I explain it later?”

“No,” I say, raising my voice over mom’s. “I want to know now, I should have already known this stuff, now that I find evidence of some sort of secret you’re keeping, all you have to say is, it’s complicated can we talk about it later.” Anger rages inside of me. I stare into my mom’s brown eyes with fury. Her tiny face looks tired and she sits there listening silently to all my accusations.

“Emmy, not a twin sister, a….”

“What mom, you held it back for so many years; blurt it out now at least, to make up for some of this deception.”

“An older sister” she states unwillingly.

For once in my life, I’m speechless. I swallow a lump in my throat, feeling nauseous. I tried to imagine having another sister besides Claire, another sister in the family photos hanging downstairs, another sister to share a room with, an older sister. I couldn’t imagine one. “Where is she now?” I ask, not wanting to know.

“Emmy, sweetheart, she was…..” struggling to finish her sentence.

“Mom,” I say calming, resting a hand on her shoulder. “I need to know.”

“Emmy, I don’t know, she just disappeared, about ten years ago, no note or anything, she could have ran away, or maybe kidnapped…..”

“You didn’t try to look for her?” I asked taken aback.

“We did what we could by ourselves; we couldn’t involve the police because of your dad’s illegal businesses and…….” she paused knowing she let a secret out. “Sweetheart, your dad isn’t what you think he is.”

“Isn’t he a businessman, with many people working under him?”

“He’s a businessman but an…………”