Unbeknownst (Work in Progress) by Shy Ward (animal farm read TXT) 📖

teeth.  She was afraid of them a little, but very amused.

 

One visit into the woods, they were chased by a pig who was outside of the pin.  They ran along with her uncles neighborhood friends, when Tessa fell trying to enter the path into the woods and her uncle Jay had to beat him with a stick to get the animal away as it had grabbed the child by the foot.  Her youngest uncle Myran picked her up and ran.  After that, Tessa was afraid to go play near the farm and she never stepped foot in the woods again.

 

Courtney was Tessa's friend who was two grades ahead of her.  She spent alot of time away with her dad since he had custody of her, however on the weekends, Courtney would sneak on her bike and hurriedly ride to Tessa's house and scream for her to come down the lane to play with her.  Tessa's mother wasn't as strict and would let Tessa ride her bike down the lane to play with her friend, instructing her when she needed to check back in or she would have to stay home.

 

This weekend, Courtney was not home.  Tessa rode her bike down the lane several times looking for her friend to find that no one was home.  She overheard her mother say that she was riding into town and Tessa wanted to go.  She loved going to Mitchell's Mart.  She was in desperate need for some ice cream and she knew that she had been good enough to convince her mother that she could have some.

 

The town was so small, everyone knew everyone.  Tessa got an oreo ice cream cookie.  They were her favorite.  It was starting to get dark as they drove home past the forest.  Inbetween the forest was a grave yard.  Tessa had never been to the graveyard.  Every trip past the graveyard amused Tessa and she always watched and wondered about the people buried there.  On this particular night, she saw a little girl sitting atop a tombstone in the center of the graveyard.  The girl looked about Tessa's age and she wondered if she was visiting someone whom had died and was buried there.  The strange girl dressed in a white dress with a pink bow tied around it hopped off the tombstone and watched as the car passed by.  Tessa felt sad for the girl and the person she had went there to see.  She didn't know whom it could have been, but if anything had ever happened to someone Tessa knew and loved, she felt she would be heart broken.

 

While preparing for bed that evening, Tessa knelt to say her prayers. 

"Dear God,

Thank you for my whole family, especially my mother, because she takes care of me, and my grandma because she saves me from my mom sometimes when I act out, I'll try to do better.  Grandma says to always remember to say my prayers because you gave us all life and to pray for those in times of sadness.  God, I want to pray for the little girl in the graveyard who looked so sad earlier today.  I hope that she has a friend to play with and makes her happy so she doesn't have to be sad all the time.  In Jesus name, Amen."

 

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As Tessa played with her barbie dolls, she talked and talked and talked.  She was having a good ole time, laughing and chuckling, giving directions not just to the dolls, it seemed like to someone else.

 

Clyde her other uncle went to her mother.  "Brenda, do you hear your daughter?  Something is wrong, or she has an immaginary friend or something!"

Brenda:  It's normal to have an imaginary friend.

Clyde:  Well she is talking like she is real, look at her (peeping into the room at his niece).

 

Brenda admitted that it was a little strange.

Brenda:  Who are you talking to Tessa?

Tessa:  My friend.

Brenda:  Your friend who?

Tessa:  Lisa.

 

Tessa continued on, while Brenda left the room.  Over the next few months, Tessa's uncles would pick on her, telling her that Lisa wasn't real, but Tessa said that she was, and even asked Tessa in front of her uncles to tell them that she was real.  When she said this, the front screen door they were playing in front of opened and then slammed shut!  Tessa jumped up and started screaming at her uncles; "Look what you did, you made her cry!" She ran out of the house screaming, "Tessa, come back, come back!"

 

After this, they never picked on their 5 year old niece again about Tessa.  When they walked into the room when she was talking to Lisa, Tessa would stop talking and turn and look at them.  The room would go cold, until they walked out.  Tessa and Lisa would begin playing again.

 

Over the years, Lisa faded away.  Even as an adult, Tessa wonders what happened to Lisa.  Tessa never realized that Lisa was not human until she continuously talked about her, and her mother told her that it was her imaginary friend.  Lisa told her that she didn't imagine her, she was really there, but she did realize that Lisa was a spirit who fell ill and died a long time ago.  Lisa was a lost little girl, searching for her parents, waiting for them to visit her grave, but they never came.  Tessa was the only person who noticed Lisa.  She wondered if Lisa ever found her parents, or was she forever lonely.

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Publication Date: 01-14-2015

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