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Amy Pond's Writing
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ChildrenMeet Arthur:
He is six years old. He likes to play in the woods outside his house with his friend, Rose.
Meet Rose:
She is five. Her whole world revolves around her best friend from the other side of the trees. He is the only friend that matters.
Allow me to paint an image in your head:
Rose is sitting in her dormer, her face smushed against the window. She is waiting for her friend to give her the signal. Her long, blonde hair falls around her shoulders and her dirty bare feet tap against the floor in excitement.
tap, tap, tap.
She sees a light, flashing on and off in the trees. She face lights up with her smile and she runs down the stairs.
clunk, clunk,clunk.
She opens the front door, and it slams shut behind her. She runs to the woods as fast as she can, hair blowing in the wind, dress flapping around like a bird trying to fly.
He is waiting for her. He has dark brown hair and one of those faces that everybody likes. "Hi, Rose." He says.
She leans against a tree and picks a thorn from her foot. "Hi, Arthur."
They stare at each other for a moment before they brake into gales of laughter. "Chase you to the tree house!" Arthur shouts.
They run, stumbling over logs and rocks, feeling the pain in their bare feet, but ignoring it as all children do. Arthur gets there first, because he has longer legs, much longer than Rose's.
She looks up at the tree house. It is small, and haphazard. The work of two children and their fathers on a hot summer's day. Arthur goes up the ladder.
"Ladies first," Rose complains.
"That's a stupid rule." Arthur replies,swaying back and forth as he puts one step in front of the other.
She climbs up after him, gripping the rope with her toes. He pulls her up into the tree house. an apple crate is used as a make-shift table. The kids sit around it.
"So," Arthur says matter-of-factually. "Before this meeting goes into session, we have to do out secret vows."
Deathly serious, he holds out his pinkie finger. She hooks hers around his and together they say:
"I solemnly swear that forever and ever, we will never be boring stupid teenagers and we will always be best friends."
ElevenIf you will allow me, I would like to flash forward
five years:
Arthur is now twelve years old. He is skinny and his voice breaks and he has developed a very fair complexion from staying inside playing video games.
Rose is eleven. Rose really never changed very much.
She still loved the woods. She still loved her friend
Arthur. She still had long, blonde hair and dirty toes. Some things did change of course.
You see, when you are eleven and twelve, you are at the prime age for growing apart.
you are changing so much, and you become at extreme risk of changing so much you no longer have anything in common.
This is what happens to Rose and Arthur.
Time goes on, and they reach that horrible nine-ish age in which cooties exist, and they barely speak at all. Rosie makes friends who were girls, and they do girly things like paint their nails and back-flips on the trampoline.
As for Arthur? He makes friends who liked gaming, and thumb-fights and playing pranks on unsuspecting older sisters.
The real question was: do they enjoy it? I don't think so. Certainly not as much as they enjoyed playing with each other. But as I said, people grow apart. Don't worry, though, because usually this doesn't last forever. Eventually you realize it doesn't matter.
They only see each other at school, or maybe around the neighborhood.
He never waits for her in the woods anymore.
One day, that year, Arthur makes the unforgivable mistake: he takes his friends to the tree house.
Rosie finds them in the house, using it as a fort. Messing it up, drinking soda pop and leaving their muddy shoes on the floor.
Her heart is broken. She runs all the way back to her house in tears. They would never be friends again, not ever, he had betrayed her.
Thirteen
I am pleased to tell you that they didn't keep from being friends forever. The age of the cooties passed into a new, possibly stranger era in which girls actually tried to play with boys. Only it wasn't playing anymore, it was 'hanging out'.
Arthur and Rose make amends. They move on. It had never happened.
Middle school was far more complicated than they had anticipated, however. Teachers were stricter and bullies were meaner, and everybody thought that if you spent a lot of time together, than certainly you must be going out.
Whenever this happens, Arthur looks down at his feet and Rose flushes red.Were they going out? Not at all. Did they want to? No, not quite yet.
Arthur is actually beginning to get his tan back. He spends less time playing on the computer and more time running. He is in the track club at their school.
When Rosie asks why he would want to do something like running, he grins sheepishly and says:
"Well, all the guys say that you have to be strong if you want to get a girl."
She would shrug back and they went running off to their tree house. They had started going back there together again, but two things had changed:
1) They wore shoes
2) They stopped doing the super swear.
Fifteen
On Rose's fifteenth birthday, she wants to invite
everyone in the entire school to her party.
But their house isn't quite big enough.
She picks her top ten friends, the ones she most likes.
You might find this inconsiderate, but remember that at the time she was fifteen, and as I am sure you know all fifteen-year-olds can be a bit selfish.
There is only one boy in the entire party: Arthur.
Of course, Arthur. While she has absolutely know interest or care about any of the other boys in the entire school, Arthur is special. She enjoys being in his company.
The other girls complain quite a bit.
"Why aren't there any guys at the party?" they say. "You could have invited a bunch of hot guys for us to hang out with!"
She shrugs.She just doesn't like the guys at their school.
One girl pushes it a little bit too far. "Instead you invited" she turns and wrinkles her nose at Arthur. "That one."
Rose slaps her in the face.
No one insulted her friends and got away with it, especially when that friend was Arthur.
Arthur wasn't unpleasant.He didn't tell bad jokes or
smell funny and he was never mean to anyone. He wasn't bad looking, he was actually a little bit cute!
That thought startles Rose. Did she think Arthur was cute? She smiles.
She did. She thinks Arthur is cute.
And I am happy to tell you Arthur felt the same way about her.
Late that night, as people start to leave, he pulls her aside. They go up to her bedroom. "Rose, I like you." He says, in a very matter-of-fact way.
"I like you to." She says. And he kisses her.
Mod
“It shines of breaking away from society, embracing your individuality”
“She definitely captures the aspect of them being children. Focusing in on how as kids grow, they change. The tragedy of them growing apart comes across very well.”
“A very emotive piece”