Second Place Winner (tie)

Leader TriStripe
Author: Luke Shiller (6th grade)
Colfax Spanish Academy

A boy with a ruddy face woke suddenly at the sound of splintering wood. His back felt as if it were going to break under the intrusions of the hard earth and rock. It sounded as if metal and wood kept colliding. BAM! As the ground shook, the boy’s eyes snapped open to see the inside of a cloth enclosure that came together at the top. He saw a slit in the cloth and walked through it. There was a giant red wood tree lying about four feet away from him. A man with face paint and dark skin said something in a funny language. It sounded like a question. Maybe, it was, “You’re awake?” He wondered if the man knew the English.

“What are you doing here?” the boy asked.

“Nobuata!” said the man.

Nope, no English, the boy sighed. This was probably some stupid dream he was having. He knew pinching himself wouldn’t do. You cannot feel pain in dreams, and unless this was a rare occasion, you wouldn’t actually be pinching yourself. ‘I may not be good looking, but I’m not dumb’ was his motto. It may not be a good motto, but everyone had one right? The man had apparently run off because the boy saw footprints leading to a giant pillar of smoke off in the distance.

As he arrived at a clearing, he could see nothing but a suffocating gray-black smoke rising from the red licking tongues of fire. There were people that looked like the man he had seen earlier, except they were women and children. They were dancing around a fire. Then, with sudden recognition, he realized that they weren’t dancing. They were prancing around in fear.

What were they thinking? There was a small lake about twenty feet away. The fire was spreading from one teepee to the next. He ran, grabbed a tightly woven straw basket and dipped it in the lake water. The water seeped through the basket, but if he ran quickly enough, he could get three quarters of the water into the fire. He pantomimed instructions to the villagers to help him. Soon, the fire was out. He tried to sneak away, but they closed in, holding sharp rocks. He couldn’t escape.

All of a sudden, there was a crash, and a leopard appeared and began attacking villagers. The men started throwing their rocks at the leopard, and he snuck away. He began running, hoping for civilization, but none came. Eventually, he reached a shore, and he sat there thinking about his mom and all the fun they had…all the movies they had watched…MOVIES! The last movie he had seen was called Stranded Alone (lame title), and the main character had written S-O-S in big letters. He went over to the beach and wrote S-O-S. Each letter was about five-feet deep. Tired from the effort of running and digging, he fell to the ground. No doubt, he wanted to go home. Home sweet home. And with that, he drifted off into slumber.

When he awoke, he was in the tent he had been in before. There was a liquid sensation above his head now. He touched it and saw what seemed to be paint. He sniffed it. It didn’t smell of paint…it smelled of…blueberries? He went through the flap again and traveled to the lake he had doused the fire with. There were people present, but no one stopped him. He knelt by the lake and looked (somewhat reluctantly). The blueberry stain had not faded. He tried to rub it off, but nothing happened. Washing it didn’t help either.

Many years later, the man had learned many things from them, such as, how to speak their language, that the stripe was for good deeds, and if you get three stripes, you become a tribal leader. He had three stripes and had become good friends with the man who he had first seen.

There came a day when his friend said, “Big wind dragonfly have men who say ess-ow-ess.” He went to have a look, and to his astonishment, he saw a helicopter. The pilot came out and said, “Did you write S-O-S?”

“Yes,” he answered.

“Come on, let’s get you out of here.”

The pilot turned to leave.

“Farewell, Leader TriStripe,” his friend said.

He had his first doubts of if he wanted to leave. It took him minute to realize he didn’t want to go. The last English he would ever speak was, “No, I want to stay.”